BETWEEN THE BRANCHES
With her arm through the arm of the nun and surrounded by her young
companions carrying her luggage, the girl with the green eyes walked,
smiling happily, towards a brake drawn by three mules. They climbed
into it; and it set off up the steep road to Luz, with a tinkling of
the mules’ bells. Ralph, who had kept out of sight, hired a Victoria to
carry him to Luz.
“Ah, my pretty lady with the green eyes, henceforth you are my
prisoner,” murmured Ralph. “An accomplice of a murderer, a burglar, and
a blackmailer, murderess yourself, daughter of the polite world, prima
donna of light opera, boarder at a convent—whatever you may be, you
shall not slip between my fingers again. Trust is a prison from which
one cannot escape; and however angry you may be with me for stealing
those kisses, in the bottom of your heart you trust the man who never
tires of saving you and is always on the spot when you stand on the
edge of the abyss. One grows attached to one’s St. Bernard, even if he
has bitten you once.
“Lady with the green eyes, who takes refuge in a convent to escape all
those who persecute you, till something fresh happens, you shall not be
to me a criminal or formidable adventuress, or even a singer of light
opera, and I shall not call you Leonide Balli. I shall call you
Aurelie. It’s a name I love because it’s old-fashioned and honest and
suits a little sister of the poor.
“Lady with the green eyes, I know now what it is you possess, a secret
your old confederates do not know, a secret they wish to tear from you
and which you keep fiercely. That secret shall belong to me some day
because secrets are my strong point; and I shall learn that one, even
as I shall scatter the darkness in which you hide yourself, mysterious
and fascinating Aurelie.”
This apostrophe satisfied Ralph, and he went to sleep to think no more
of the disturbing enigma of the girl with the green eyes.
The little town of Luz and the neighboring town of Saint-Sauveur are
famous for their baths which at that season few invalids were taking.
Ralph chose a hotel that was nearly empty and gave out that he was a
student of botany and mineralogy. He devoted all the afternoon to a
careful examination of the country.
A very bad and narrow road, nearly a mile in length and steep, led up
to the Maison des Soeurs Sainte-Marie, an old convent which had been
turned into a boarding-school. In the midst of a bare and rocky stretch
of ground the buildings and gardens of the convent stretch along the
point of a projecting cliff, on terraces which rise above one another
and support strong walls, along the foot of which Sainte-Marie’s brook
formerly boiled. To-day, along this part of its course, it runs under
the earth. A pine forest covers the other slope, traversed by two
roads, that cross one another, for the use of the wood-cutters. There
are grottoes and rocks of strange shapes to which excursions run on
Sundays.
It was on this side that Ralph kept watch. It was a deserted spot, the
silence of which was only broken by the sound of the axes of the
wood-cutters in the distance. From the point he had chosen he looked
over the smooth lawns of the garden and an avenue of carefully clipped
limes which sheltered the path along which the boarders took the air.
In the course of a few days he knew the customs of the convent and the
hours of recreation. After the mid-day meal the walk which ran along
the edge of the gorge was reserved for the big girls.
It was not till the fourth day that the girl with the green
eyes—doubtless she had been so worn out by what she had gone through
that it had kept her indoors—appeared on this walk. Thereupon each of
the big girls seemed to have no other object in life but to monopolize
her, and they quarrelled jealously with one another for the privilege
of enjoying her society.
Ralph perceived at once that she was changed like a child who is
recovering from an illness and expands in the sunshine and keen air of
the mountains. She flitted about among her young companions, dressed as
they were, alert and full of life, charming with all, the leader of
their games, and enjoyed herself so thoroughly that her silvery laugh
was forever echoing among the walls of the gorge.
“She laughs!” murmured the astonished Ralph. “And not with her
artificial and almost dolorous stage laugh, but with the care-free
laugh of one who has no crimes to remember, a laugh in which her true
nature finds expression. She laughs—what a miracle!”
Then the others went back to their lessons and Aurelie remained alone.
She did not appear any the more melancholy for that; her gayety did not
leave her. She busied herself with trifles such as gathering the pine
cones and filling a basket with them, or plucking flowers and laying
them on the steps of a neighboring chapel.
Her actions were all gracious. She often talked in a low voice to a
little dog who was always with her, or to a cat who was always rubbing
itself against her calves. Once she twined herself a garland of roses
and laughing, looked at herself in a pocket mirror. Furtively she
powdered her cheeks and put a little rouge on them and at once rubbed
it roughly off. It must have been forbidden.
On the eighth day she made her way along the wall to the last and
highest of the terraces, along the edge of which ran a hedge of shrubs.
On the ninth day she returned to it, bringing a book. On the tenth day
before the hour of recreation Ralph made up his mind.
First of all he had to force his way through the thick underwood on the
edge of the pine forest, then cross a large sheet of water. The brook
of Sainte-Marie flows into a basin, as into a large reservoir, and then
sinks under the earth. A worm-eaten boat was moored to a stake, and by
means of it he was able, in spite of some fairly strong eddies, to
reach a little creek at the very foot of the high terrace which rose
like the rampart of a fortress.
The walls of it were made of flat stones set, without mortar, on the
top of one another, and wild plants grew between them. The rain had
worn runnels full of sand along the face of the wall and paths, which
the boys of the neighborhood would on occasion climb. Ralph climbed to
the top without difficulty. The terrace formed a kind of summer
drawing-room, surrounded by shrubs and set with stone benches; its
center was adorned with a fine terra cotta bowl.
He heard the murmur of the girls at play below. Then there came silence
and a few minutes later the sound of a light footfall coming towards
him. A voice was humming an air from an opera. His heart began to beat
quickly. What would she say when she saw him?
The branches rustled; the foliage was parted like curtains that hang
before the door of a room; Aurelie entered.
She stopped short on the threshold of the terrace with an air of
stupefaction; the song died on her lips. Her book and her straw hat,
which she had filled with flowers and hung by the ribbons from her arm,
fell to the ground. She did not stir, an engaging and delicate figure
in her simple dress of chestnut cloth.
For a few seconds she failed to recognize Ralph. Then she blushed
deeply and stepped back.
“Go away,” she murmured. “Go away.”
Not for a second had he any intention of obeying her; one might almost
have believed that he had not heard her command. He gazed at her with
indescribable pleasure such as he had never before felt in the presence
of any woman.
She repeated in more imperious accents: “Go away!”
“No,” he said.
“Then I shall go away myself.”
“If you go away I shall follow you,” he declared. “We will go back to
the convent together.”
She turned as if to fly. He caught her arm.
“Don’t touch me!” she said indignantly, freeing herself. “I forbid you
to touch me. I forbid you to come near me!”
Surprised by her vehemence, he said: “But why?”
In a low voice she replied: “I have a horror of you.”
The answer was so astonishing that he could not refrain from smiling.
“Do you detest me as much as that?”
“Yes.”
“More than you detest Marescal?”
“Yes.”
“More than you detest William and that ruffian at the Villa Faradoni?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
“But they were harming you and without me who protected you——”
She was silent; she had picked up her hat and was holding it across the
lower part of her face so that he could not see her lips. Her attitude
was explained by that concealment; Ralph had not a doubt of it. If she
detested him, it was not because he had been the witness of all the
crimes and infamies that had been committed, but because he had held
her in his arms and kissed her lips. A strange modesty in a girl like
her; yet it was so sincere and threw such a light on the very recesses
of her soul and her instincts that, in spite of himself, he murmured:
“I beg you to forget it.”
Then drawing back a few steps to show her that she was free to depart,
he continued in a tone of involuntary respect:
“That night was a night of observation of which neither you nor I must
cherish the remembrance. Forget the way in which I acted. Besides it is
not to recall that to you that I am here, but to continue my work of
helping you. Chance threw me across your path and chance willed it that
from the beginning I should be useful to you. Do not reject my help.
The threat of danger, far from being ended, is growing graver. Your
enemies are exasperated. What will you do, if I am not there?”
“Go away,” she said stubbornly.
She remained on the threshold of the terrace as if she were on the
threshold of an open door. She avoided Ralph’s eyes and hid her lips.
However she did not go. As he had thought, one is the captive of one
who indefatigably saves you. Her look was fearful. But the memory of
the kisses he had stolen was giving way to the infinitely more terrible
memory of the trials she had undergone.
“Go away,” she said again. “I was at peace here. You are mixed up with
all those things—with all those—hellish things.”
“Fortunately,” he said gravely. “And also I must be mixed up with all
the things that are about to happen. Do you think they are not
searching for you? Do you think that Marescal has given you up? At this
moment he is on your trail. He will follow it to Marseilles, to
Toulouse, to this convent of Sainte-Marie. If you lived here happily
during some years of your childhood, as I suppose, he must know and he
will come.”
He spoke gently with a conviction which impressed the girl deeply; and
he hardly heard her as she murmured once again: “Go away.”
“Yes: I will go,” he said. “But I shall be here again to-morrow at the
same hour; I shall be waiting for you here every day. We have to talk.
Not of anything which might be painful to you and not about the
nightmare of that horrible night. We will not speak about it. I have no
need to know; the truth will emerge little by little from the darkness.
But there are other points—questions I shall put to you and which you
will have to answer. That is what I wanted to say to you to-day, no
more. Now you can go. But you will think it over, won’t you? And do not
worry any longer. Get used to the idea that I am always here and that
you must never despair because I shall always be here—in the hour of
peril.”
She went without a word, without a nod of adieu. He watched her descend
the terraces and enter the avenue of limes. When he saw her no longer
he picked up some of the flowers she had dropped and becoming aware of
this unconscious action, he laughed.
“Heavens! This is growing serious,” he murmured in a jeering tone. “Can
it be that—come, come Lupin old chap, take a pull.”
He took his way back down the wall, once more traversed the pool, and
walked through the forest, throwing away the flowers one by one as if
he had lost interest in them. But the image of the girl with the green
eyes still hovered before his own.
Next day he climbed up again to the terrace. Aurelie did not come; and
she did not come the two following days. But on the fourth day she
parted the branches without his having heard the sound of her coming.
“Oh, it’s you—it’s you at last!” he said.
He gathered from her attitude that he was not to advance a step or say
a word which might ruffle her sensibilities. She stood as on the first
day like an opponent who revolts against being dominated and is angry
with an enemy for the service he is rendering.
However her tone was less hard when, with half averted head, she said:
“I ought not to have come. It is not fair to my benefactors, the
Sisters of Sainte-Marie. But I thought that I ought to thank you—and
help you.” She paused, then added: “Besides, I’m frightened, really
frightened—frightened by what you said to me. Question me—I will
answer.”
“Question you about everything?” he asked.
“No, no!” she said in a tone of anguish. “Not about the night at
Beaucourt. But about the other things. As shortly as you can, please.
What is it you want to know?”
Ralph reflected. The questions were not easy to put since all of them
must tend to throw light on the matter of which she refused to speak.
He began: “First of all what is your name?”
“Aurelie—Aurelie d’Asteux.”
“Then why that name of Leonide Balli? Was it a pseudonym?”
“Leonide Balli exists. She was ill and remained at Nice. Among the
actors of her company, with whom I traveled from Nice to Marseilles,
there was one I knew because I played Veronique last winter in some
private theatricals. So they all begged me to take the place of Leonide
Balli for one evening. They were so troubled and upset that I felt
obliged to render them this service. We told the manager of the
Toulouse theatre, who, at the last moment, decided to make no
announcement of the change and let it be believed that I was Leonide
Balli.”
“Then you’re not an actress,” said Ralph in a tone of relief. “I am
glad you’re not. I prefer that you should be simply the pretty boarder
at Sainte-Marie.”
She frowned and said coldly: “Continue.”
“Well, the gentleman who knocked Marescal’s hat off when you came out
of the confectioner’s on the Boulevard Haussmann, was he your father?”
“My step-father.”
“And his name?”
“Bregeac.”
“Bregeac?”
“Yes, Director of Judicial Affairs at the Ministry of the Interior.”
“And consequently Marescal’s chief?”
“Yes. And they’ve always disliked one another. Marescal, who is
strongly supported by the Minister himself, is trying to supplant my
step-father, and my step-father is trying to get rid of him.”
“And Marescal is in love with you?”
“He asked my hand in marriage. I rejected him, and my step-father
forbade him the house. He hates us and he has sworn to avenge himself.”
“To pass from one to another, what is the name of the man of the Villa
Faradoni?” Ralph asked.
“Jodot.”
“What’s his profession?”
“I don’t know. He used to come to the house occasionally to see my
step-father.”
“And the third?”
“William Ancivel. He used to come to the house too. He is on the stock
exchange and engaged in other business.”
“More or less doubtful?”
“I don’t know—perhaps.”
Ralph summed up the results of the conversation so far.
“These then are your three enemies—for there aren’t any more, are
there?”
“Yes. My step-father,” she said sadly,
“What? Your mother’s husband?”
“My poor mother is dead.”
“And are all these people persecuting you for the same reason—on
account of the secret you know and they do not?” said Ralph
thoughtfully.
“Yes; except Marescal, who knows nothing about the secret and is only
trying to take vengeance.”
“Is it possible for you to give me any information, not about the
secret itself, but about the circumstances connected with it?” he
asked.
She thought for a few moments and then said: “Yes, I can. I can tell
you what the others know, the reason of their fury against me.”
Up to then she had answered the questions briefly and dryly. Now she
appeared to be really interested in what she was saying.
“This is the story, briefly,” she began. “My father, who was my
mother’s cousin, died before my birth, leaving my mother a fair income
to which was added an allowance which came from my grandfather
d’Asteux. My mother’s father, an excellent man, an artist and inventor,
was always in search of discoveries and great secrets, always traveling
on miraculous business which was to bring us an immense fortune. I knew
him very well. I can see myself sitting on his knee and hear him
staying to me: ‘My little Aurelie will be very rich. It is for her I am
working.’ Then, when I was just six years old, he wrote to my mother
and begged her to join him, bringing me with her, without letting any
one know anything about it. One night we took the train and went to him
and stayed two days. At the moment of starting on our return journey,
my mother said to me in his presence:
“‘Aurelie, never tell any one where you have been the last two days,
neither what you have done nor what you have seen. It is a secret which
henceforth belongs to you as well as to us, a secret which will give
you a great fortune when you are twenty.’
“‘A very great fortune,’ said my grandfather. ‘Therefore swear to us
never to speak of these things to any one, whatever happens.’
“‘To no one, except the man you love and of whom you are as sure as you
are of yourself,’ my mother amended.
“I made the promise they demanded of me. I was very much moved by their
earnestness, and I cried.
“A few months later my mother married Bregeac. It was an unhappy
marriage and did not last long. During the course of the next year she
died of pneumonia after having secretly given me a sheet of paper on
which was set out all the information about the district we had visited
and what I was to do when I was twenty. A little while later my
grandfather also died, and I remained alone with my step-father,
Bregeac, who got rid of me as soon as he could by sending me to this
convent at Sainte-Marie. I came to it very unhappy and sad, but I was
upheld by the importance this keeping a secret gave me in my own eyes.
Then one Sunday I looked for an out-of-the-way place and came here, up
to this terrace, to carry out a plan my childish brain had formed. I
knew by heart the information given me by my mother. What good was it
to keep a document which all the world would know if I did not get rid
of it. I burnt it in this vase.”
Ralph nodded his head and said: “And you have forgotten all the
information it contained?”
“Yes,” she said. “As the days passed, without my perceiving it, all
that information was effaced from my mind by my absorption in the
friendships, the work, and the play I found here. I have forgotten the
name of the district, what part of the country it is in, the line which
took us to it, and things I was to do—everything.”
“Absolutely everything?” he asked.
“Everything except some views of the country and some impressions which
engraved themselves more deeply on my childish eyes and ears—pictures
that I have never ceased to see since—noises, the chiming of bells
which I still hear as if they were chiming still.”
“And it is these impressions and images that your enemies wish to know,
hoping to get at the truth by means of what you can tell them?” he
asked.
“Yes.”
“But how did they know?”
“Because my mother was so imprudent as not to destroy certain letters
in which my grandfather alluded to the secret which had been intrusted
to me. Bregeac, who found those letters, later, never spoke to me of
them during my ten years here, ten delightful years, the best years of
my life. But the very day I returned to Paris, two years ago, he
questioned me about them. I told him what I told you, as I had the
right to do, but refused to disclose any of the vague memories which
might have put him on the track. After that it was a constant
persecution—reproaches, abuse, terrible rages—up to the very moment I
resolved to fly.”
“Alone?”
She flushed and replied: “No. But under conditions you may believe.
William Ancivel was paying court to me, with great discretion,
pretending to be a friend who wished to be useful to me without any
hope of being rewarded for it. So he won, if not my sympathy, at least
my confidence, and I made the great mistake of informing him of my
intention of flying.”
“And no doubt he approved of it?”
“He approved of it warmly, and helped me in my preparations by selling
some jewels and securities left me by my mother. On the eve of my
flight, since I was uncertain exactly where to take refuge, he said to
me: ‘I have just come from Nice and I have to return there to-morrow.
Would you like me to escort you there? At this time of year you will
not find a quieter place of retreat than the Riviera.’ What motive
could I have had for refusing his offer? It is true that I did not love
him; but he appeared to be entirely devoted to me. I accepted it.”
“How imprudent!” said Ralph.
“Yes,” she said. “And the more imprudent since we were not on those
terms of friendship which would excuse such behavior. But what would
you? I was alone in the world, unhappy and persecuted. A helping hand
was stretched out to me—for a few hours as I thought. We started.”
Aurelie hesitated for a few moments; then she went on with her story
more quickly.
“The journey was terrible—for reasons which you know. When William
lifted me into the carriage he had stolen from the doctor, I was
utterly done. He dragged me wherever he wanted, towards another station
and from there, since we had our tickets, to Nice, where I got my
luggage. I was in a fever, almost delirious. I acted without knowing
what I was doing. He took advantage of it next day to make me accompany
him to an estate where he had to recover, during the absence of the
owner, some securities of which he had been robbed. I went there, as I
should have gone anywhere. I had lost the power to think. I obeyed him
passively. It was at that villa that I was attacked and carried off by
Jodot——”
“And saved, for the second time, by me—whom you rewarded a second time
by flying as soon as you were rescued. But no matter. Jodot also
demanded revelations, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Then I went back to the hotel to which William had begged me to follow
him.”
“But by this time you knew the kind of man he was!” protested Ralph.
“How? One sees clearly enough when one definitely looks; but for two
days I had been living in a kind of madness that had been aggravated by
Jodot’s attack. I followed William therefore without even asking him
the object of the journey. I was alone, ashamed of my cowardice, and
harassed by the presence of this man who was becoming more and more a
stranger to me. What part did I play at Monte Carlo? It is not very
clear to me. William had intrusted some letters to me, which I was to
hand over to him in the corridor of the hotel that he might himself
hand them over to a gentleman. What letters? What gentleman? Why was
Marescal there? How did you snatch me from him? All that is quite
obscure. However, my instincts had awakened; I felt a growing hostility
to William. I detested him. And I left Monte Carlo resolved to break
the agreement which united us and come and hide myself here. He pursued
me as far as Toulouse and when I told him my decision to leave him, and
he was convinced that nothing would make me return to him, coldly and
harshly, with a fury that made him look hideous, he said: ‘Well and
good, let us separate. It’s really all the same to me. But I make one
condition.’”
“A condition?”
“‘Yes. One day I heard your step-father speaking of a secret which had
been bequeathed to you. Tell me that secret and you are free.’”
“Then I understood everything. All his protestations and devotion were
so many lies. His sole object was to get from me some day, either by
winning my love, or by threats, the revelations which I had refused my
step-father and which Jodot had tried to tear from me.”
She was silent. Ralph studied her closely. He had the strongest
impression that she had told the whole truth.
He said gravely: “Would you like to know exactly the character of this
brute?”
She shook her head.
“Is it really necessary?” she asked.
“It would be better that you should know it. Listen. At Nice the
securities which he was seeking at the Villa Faradoni did not belong to
him. He had merely come to steal them. At Monte Carlo he demanded a
hundred thousand francs for the return of some compromising letters.
The fellow is just a crook and a thief, perhaps worse; that’s what he
is.”
Aurelie did not protest. She must have had some notion of the real
facts, and this brutal enumeration of them did not surprise her.
“You have saved me from him. I thank you,” she said gently.
“Alas, you ought to have confided in me instead of flying from me,” he
said. “What a lot of time we have lost!”
She turned to go but paused to say: “Why should I confide in you? Who
are you? I don’t know you. Marescal, who accuses you, does not even
know your name. You saved me from every danger—for what reason? With
what object?”
He laughed gently and said: “With the object of tearing your secret
from you, like the others: is that what you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything,” she murmured despondently. “I know nothing, I
understand nothing. For two or three weeks I have been dashing myself
against walls of darkness on every side. Do not ask more trust from me
than I can give. I distrust everything and everybody.”
He took pity on her and let her go.
As he went away himself, he thought: “She has not said a word about
that terrible night. Miss Bakersfield was murdered; two men were
murdered. And I saw her disguised and masked.”
While waiting for her on the topmost terrace he had seen a little door
in the wall of the terrace below it. That terrace also was empty.
Keeping under cover, he went down to the little door and easily opened
it. It gave him a much easier way of access to the topmost terrace.
He descended to the pool, very thoughtful. For him also everything was
mysterious and inexplicable. Round him, as round her, rose those same
walls of darkness, through the tiniest cracks in which here and there
filtered a dim light. In the presence of the girl herself, moreover—and
it had been so since the beginning of the adventure—he never thought
for a moment of the oath of vengeance that he had sworn above the body
of Miss Bakersfield, or of anything else which could disfigure the
gracious image of the girl with the green eyes.
During the next two days he did not see her. Then she came three days
in succession without a word of explanation of her return, but as if
she was seeking a protection she could not do without.
The first day she stayed for ten minutes, the second for fifteen, the
third for thirty. They talked little. Whether she wished it or not
confidence in him was slowly taking possession of her. Gentler and less
distant with him, she came as far as the breach in the wall and looked
down on the eddying waters of the pool. Several times he tried to
question her. At once she fled, trembling, terrified by anything which
might be an allusion to the terrible hours at Beaucourt. However she
talked more, but of events in her distant past, of the life which she
formerly led at Sainte-Marie, and of the peace she was again enjoying
in its kindly and serene atmosphere.
Once, when her hand lay palm upwards on the rim of the vase, he bent
down and, without touching it, examined the lines.
“It is exactly as I guessed the first day I saw you—a double destiny,
one dark and tragic, the other happy and quite simple. They cross, are
entangled and mixed, and it is not yet possible to say which will win
in the long run. Which of them is your true destiny, the destiny that
corresponds to your true nature?” he said slowly.
“The happy destiny,” she said. “There is in me something that rises
quickly to the surface, which brings me, as it does here, cheerfulness
and forgetfulness, whatever be the perils.”
“The danger is passing,” Ralph declared, and he continued to study her
hand and added: “Distrust water. Water may be fatal to
you—ship-wrecks—floods—what perils! But they are passing. Yes; things
are settling down in your life. Already your happier destiny is
prevailing over the unhappy one.”
He lied in order to soothe her, out of the constant desire that a smile
should sometimes wreathe her delightful lips, at which he dared hardly
look. For his part, indeed, he wished to forget, to be deluded. So he
lived for a fortnight in a profound lightness of spirit which he forced
himself to hide. He was afflicted by the dizziness of those hours in
which love casts you into an intoxication and renders you insensible to
everything but the joy of contemplating the beloved and listening to
her voice. He refused to call up the threatening image of Marescal, of
William, or of Jodot. If none of these three enemies appeared, it was
because they had certainly lost track of their victim. Why then should
he not abandon himself to the delightful ease which he enjoyed in the
presence of the girl? Why should he not, since he loved her and
confessed to himself that he loved her, abandon himself to this love
which was little by little becoming, almost without his knowing it, the
very principle of his life and all his actions?
The awakening was rude. One afternoon, leaning over the wall which ran
along the edge of the gorge, they were looking down into the mirror of
the pool below them, almost still in the middle, its edges ruffled by
little waves hurrying towards the narrow outlet through which the brook
sank into the earth, when a distant voice called out in the garden
below:
“Aurelie! Aurelie! Where are you? Aurelie!”
“Gracious!” cried the girl in troubled accents. “Why are they calling
me?”
She ran to the end of the terrace and saw one of the nuns in the avenue
of limes.
“Here I am! What is it, sister?”
“A telegram,” cried the sister.
“A telegram? Don’t take the trouble to come up here, sister. I’ll come
down to you.”
A few minutes later when she came back to the topmost terrace with a
telegram in her hand, she looked distracted.
“It’s from my step-father,” she said.
“Bregeac?”
“Yes.”
“He is summoning you back to Paris?” Ralph said gravely.
“He will be here at any moment.”
“What for?”
“To take me away!” she gasped.
“Impossible!”
“Look!”
He read the two lines of the telegram, which had been dispatched from
Bordeaux.
“Shall arrive four o’clock be ready to leave at once. Bregeac.”
Ralph considered the message and asked: “Have you written to tell him
that you are here?”
“No: he must have come to the conclusion that I would come here.”
“And what are you going to do?” he asked.
“What can I do?”
“Refuse to go with him.”
“The Mother-superior would never consent to keep me.”
“Then leave here at once,” Ralph suggested.
“How?”
He pointed to the door in the wall of the next terrace and waved
towards the forest.
“Go? Run away from the convent as though I were guilty?” she cried in
protesting accents. “No. It would cause these poor women, who love me
as a daughter too much sorrow. Never will I do that!”
Feebly she sank down on a stone bench under the opposite parapet. Ralph
crossed the terrace to her and said gravely:
“I have made a bad mistake in letting myself be distracted from the
task I have set myself of protecting you. I ought to have remained as
distrustful as I was at the beginning and advised you, urged you
rather, to go away from here. From the very first I was sure that it
was necessary. But the pleasure of being here, of seeing you every
day—no, no: don’t run away. I’m not going to say anything that will
upset you; I’m not going to tell you how I feel towards you, or the
reasons which make me treat you as I do. But all the same you must
quite understand that I am devoted to you as a man is devoted to a
woman whom—who is so much to him—and it is necessary that my devotion
should give you absolute confidence in me and that you should be ready
to obey me blindly. It is the one condition of safety for you. Do you
understand?”
“Yes,” she said, wholly dominated.
“Then listen. These are my instructions—my orders—yes: my orders.
Welcome your step-father peaceably. Don’t quarrel with him. Don’t even
talk to him—not a word. It’s the best way of avoiding mistakes. Go with
him. Return to Paris. On the very evening of your arrival get out of
the house on some pretext or other. A gray-haired old lady will be
waiting for you in a car, twenty yards from your door. I will drive
both of you away into the country to a hiding-place in which no one
will find you. And I will go away at once, I give you my word, and stay
away from you till you tell me to come back. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” she said and bowed her head.
“In that case till to-morrow evening. And remember what I tell you:
whatever happens, you understand—whatever happens, nothing shall
prevail against my will to protect you and against the success of my
enterprise. If everything seems to be against you, do not lose heart.
Do not even worry. Tell yourself confidently, fiercely, that when the
danger is greatest no danger threatens you. At the very second at which
it is necessary I shall be there. I shall always be there. Good-by
mademoiselle.”
He bent down and lightly kissed the border of her cloak. Then, pushing
aside a piece of old trellis-work he stepped into the bushes and took
the hardly visible path which brought him to the door in the wall.
Aurelie did not stir from her seat on the bench of stone.
Barely half a minute had passed when she heard a rustling of branches
near the breach in the wall. She raised her head and looked towards it.
The shrubs were moving. There was some one there. Yes, beyond a doubt
some one was hidden there.
She wanted to call out, to shout for help, but could not. Her voice
died in her throat.
The bushes were moving more quickly as some one forced their way
through them. Who was going to appear? She hoped that it would be
William or Jodot. She feared the two ruffians less than Marescal.
A face appeared among the foliage. Marescal came out of his
hiding-place.
From below, on the right, came the sound of the closing of the door in
the wall.