M. GIRAUD AGAIN
The dusk was deepening quickly into darkness. As she ran down the open
stretch of hillside between her villa and the little town, she saw the
lights blaze out upon the terrace of Monte Carlo. Far below her, upon
her right, they shone like great opals, each with a heart of fire.
Pamela stopped for a second to regain her breath before she reached
Roquebrune. The sudden brightness of those lights carried her thoughts
backwards to the years when the height of trouble for her had been the
sickness of a favourite horse, and all her life was an eager
expectation. On so many evenings she had seen those lights flash out
through the gathering night while she had sat talking in her garden
with the little schoolmaster whom she was now to revisit. To both of
them those lights had been a parable. They had glowed in friendliness
and promise--thus she had read the parable--out of a great, bright,
gay world of men and women, upon a cool, twilit garden of youth and
ignorance. She thought of what had come in place of all that imagined
gaiety. To the schoolmaster, disappointment and degradation; while, as
for herself, she felt very lonely upon this evening. "The world is a
place of great sadness." Thus had M. Giraud spoken when Pamela had
returned to Roquebrune from her first season in London, and the words
now came back to her again.
She ran on through the narrow streets of Roquebrune, her white frock
showing in the light from the shops and windows. She wore no hat upon
her head, and more than one of the people in the street called to her
as she passed and asked her whether she needed help. Help, indeed, she
did need, but not from them. She came to the tiny square whence the
steps led down to the station. On the west side of the square stood
the school-house, and, close by, the little house of the schoolmaster.
A light burned in a window of the ground floor. Pamela knocked loudly
upon the door. She heard a chair grate upon the floor-boards. She
knocked again, and the door was opened. It was the schoolmaster
himself who opened it.
"M. Giraud!" she exclaimed, drawing her breath quickly. The
schoolmaster leaned forward and stared at the white figure which stood
in the darkness just outside his porch; but he made no reply.
"Let me in!" cried Pamela; and he made a movement as though to bar the
way. But she slipped quickly past him into the room. He closed the
door slowly and followed her.
The room was bare. A deal table, a chair or two, and a few tattered
books on a hanging bookshelf made up all its furniture. Pamela leaned
against the wall with a hand to her heart. M. Giraud saw her clearly
now. She stood only a few feet from him, in the light of the room. She
was in distress; yet he spoke harshly.
"Why have you come?" he cried; and she answered, piteously, "I want
your help."
At that a flame of anger kindled within him. He saw her again, after
all this long time of her absence--her whose equal he had never spoken
with. Her dark hair, her eyes, the pure outline of her face, her tall,
slim figure, the broad forehead--all the delicacy and beauty of
her--was a torture to him. The sound of her voice, with its remembered
accents, hurt him as he had thought nothing could ever hurt him again.
"Really!" he cried, in exasperation. "You want help; so you come to
me. Without that need would you have come? No, indeed. You are a
woman. Get your fine friends to help you!"
There were other follies upon his tongue, but he never spoke them. He
looked at Pamela, and came to a stop.
Pamela had entered the cottage bent with a single mind upon her
purpose--to avert a catastrophe at the little restaurant on the
Corniche road. But M. Giraud was before her, face to face with her, as
she was face to face with him. She saw him clearly in the light as he
saw her; and she was shocked. The cure had prepared her for a change
in her old comrade, but not for so complete a disfigurement. The
wineshop had written its sordid story too legibly upon his features.
His face was bloated and red, the veins stood out upon the cheeks, and
the nose like threads of purple; his eyes were yellow and unwholesome.
M. Giraud had grown stout in body, too; and his dress was slovenly and
in disrepair. He was an image of degradation and neglect. Pamela was
shocked, and betrayed the shock. She almost shrank from him at the
first; there was almost upon her face an expression of aversion and
disgust. But sorrow drove the aversion away, and immediately her eyes
were full of pity; and these swift changes M. Giraud saw and
understood.
She was still his only window on the outside world. That was the
trouble. By her expression he read his own decline more surely than in
his mirror. Through her he saw the world; through her, too, he saw
what manner of figure he presented to the world. Never had he realised
how far he had sunk until this moment. He saw, as in a picture, the
young schoolmaster of the other days who had read French with the
pupil, who was more his teacher than his pupil, upon the garden
terrace of the Villa Pontignard--a youth full of dreams, which were
vain, no doubt, but not ignoble. There was a trifle of achievement,
too. For even now one of the tattered books upon his shelf was a copy
of his brochure on Roquebrune and the Upper Corniche road. With
perseverance, with faith--he understood it in a flash--he might have
found, here, at Roquebrune, a satisfaction for those ambitions which
had so tortured him. There was a field here for the historian, had he
chosen to seize on it. Fame might have come to him, though he never
visited the great cities and the crowded streets. So he thought, and
then he realised what he had become. It was true he had suffered great
unhappiness. Yet so had she--Pamela Mardale; and she had not fallen
from her pedestal. Here shame seized upon him. He lowered his eyes
from her face.
"Help!" he stammered. "You ask me to help you? Look at me! I can give
you no help!"
He suddenly broke off. He sat down at the table, buried his face in
his hands, and burst into tears. Pamela crossed to him and laid her
hand very gently upon his shoulder. She spoke very gently, too.
"Oh yes, you can," she said.
He drew away from her, but she would not be repulsed.
"You should never have come to me at all," he sobbed. "Oh, how I hate
that you should see me like this! Why did you come? I did not mean you
to see me. You must have known that! You must have known, too, why. It
was not kind of you, mademoiselle. No, it was not kind!"
"Yet I am glad that I came," said Pamela. "I came, thinking of myself,
it is true--my need is so very great; but now I see your need is as
great as mine. I ask you to rise up and help me."
"No, leave me alone!" he cried. And she answered, gently, "I will
not."
M. Giraud grew quiet. He pressed his handkerchief to his eyes, and
stood up.
"Forgive me!" he said. "I have behaved like a child; but you would
forgive me if you knew how I have waited and waited for you to come
back. But you never did. Each summer I said, 'She will return in the
winter!' And the winter came, and I said, 'She will come in the
spring.' But neither in winter nor in the spring did you return to
Roquebrune. I have needed you so badly all these years."
"I am sorry," replied Pamela; "I am very sorry."
She did not reproach herself at all. She could not see, indeed, that
she was to blame. But she was none the less distressed. Giraud's
exhibition of grief was so utterly unfamiliar to her that she felt
awkward and helpless in face of it. He was yet further disfigured now
by the traces of weeping; his eyes were swollen and red. There was
something grotesque in the aspect of this drink-swollen face, all
convulsed with sorrow. Nothing could well lie less in sympathy with
Pamela's nature than Giraud's outburst and display of tears; for she
was herself reticent and proud. She held her head high as she walked
through the world, mistress alike of her sorrows and her joys. But Mr.
Mudge had spoken the truth when he had called upon her in
Leicestershire. Imagination had come to her of late. She was able to
understand the other point of view--to appreciate that there were
other characters than hers which must needs fulfil themselves in ways
which were not hers. She put herself now in M. Giraud's place. She
imagined him waiting and waiting at Roquebrune, with his one window on
the outside world closed and shuttered--a man in a darkened room who
most passionately desired the air without. She said, with a trace of
hesitation--
"You say you have needed me very much?"
"Oh, have I not?" exclaimed Giraud; and the very weariness of his
voice would have convinced her, had she needed conviction. It seemed
to express the dilatory passage of the years during which he had
looked for her coming, and had looked in vain.
"Well, then, listen to me," she went on. "I was once told that
to be needed by those whom one needs is a great comfort. I thought
of the saying at the time, and I thought that it was a true one.
Afterwards"--she began to speak slowly, carefully selecting her
words--"it happened that in my own experience I proved it to be
true--at all events, for me. Is it true for you also? Think well. If
it is not true I will go away as you bade me at the beginning; but if
it is true--why, then I may be of some little help to you, and you
will be certainly a great help to me; for I need you very surely."
M. Giraud looked at her in silence for a little while. Then he
answered her with simplicity, and so, for the first time during this
interview, wore the proper dignity of a man.
"Yes, I will help you," he said. "What can I do?"
She held out the letter which she had written to Lionel Callon. She
bade him carry it with the best speed he could to its destination.
"Lose no time!" she implored. "I am not sure, but it may be that one
man's life, and the happiness of a man and a woman besides, all hang
upon its quick receipt."
M. Giraud took his hat from the wall and went to the door. At the door
he paused, and standing thus, with an averted face, he said in a
whisper, recalling the words she had lately spoken--
"There is one, then, whom you need? You are no longer lonely in your
thoughts? I should like to know."
"Yes," Pamela answered gently: "I am no longer lonely in my thoughts."
"And you are happy?" he continued. "You were not happy when you were
at Roquebrune last. I should like to know that you, at all events, are
happy now."
"Yes," said Pamela. In the presence of his distress she rather shrank
from acknowledging the change which had come over her. It seemed
cruel; yet he clearly wished to know. He clearly would be the happier
for knowing. "Yes," she said; "I am happy."
"I am very glad," said M. Giraud, in a low voice; "I am very glad."
And he went rather quickly out by the door.