THE CHILD UNLOCKS THE DOOR
(1)
The Chevalier de la Vireville was lying, as he had so often lain,
staring at the stuffed trout and the triptych of the Assumption.
The adventurous and disappointed spirit which dwelt in him, that
had always faced with a jest every blow of circumstance--but one--had
indeed ebbed very low. Although the sun which five days ago had
opened the aconites in the garden came streaming into the room in
a way to rejoice the heart of the room's late owner, who had given
it up for that very reason, the present occupant was perfectly
indifferent as to whether the sun shone or no. He was back at
Quiberon in the rain--back at Auray in the little chapel, emptied
of all its victims save him alone--back in front of those levelled
muskets which he alone had escaped. . . . Why, in God's name, had
fate so marked him out for safety? Why had he put himself to the
agony of that derelict voyage to Houat and the long suffering that
came after? Mostly because of his promise to his friend, and because
he thought Anne wanted him . . . or because he wanted Anne. But he
was not needed, neither by the boy nor by anyone. He had built a
foolish dream on the assumption of René's death, which to him had
seemed a certainty. The dream had proved baseless, like everything
else, and all it had done was to plant in his sincere thankfulness
for René's escape a thorn of regret which was horrible to him, and
made him, who had suffered so bitterly from treachery, feel a
traitor himself.
No, he was not needed any more; he had done his work. Or rather, he
had not even that consolation, for everything to which he had set
his hand at Quiberon had been a failure, even though the fault were
not his. His men, whom he had never once led to victory in the
Morbihan, were dead or disbanded. There was nothing for him to do
henceforward, and even had there been, he was useless--a tool that
had never been of much account, and was now blunted for the rest
of time.
And further back still. . . . Had he not failed to keep the woman
he loved, the woman who had spurned even the difficult sacrifice he
had made for her sake, when he had spared her lover? He had no daily
perils now to anodyne that ache. But he had another ache to set
against it. . . .
Yes, for ironically enough, at the very hour, five days ago, when
his mother was protesting in the garden to the Bishop that he could
never think of another woman, he _was_ thinking of one. Equally had
Mme. de la Vireville, almost incredulous, carried about for five days
her half-knowledge, longing for her son to speak that name which
meant nothing to her, yet hinted at so much; studying him at odd
moments, trying not to feel hurt at his reserve, puzzled, hoping,
fearing, and far from guessing that this 'Raymonde,' to Fortuné's
mind, was not a subject of which he could ever speak to anyone. For
the thought of her warred against that perverted faithfulness to
the faithless which had made his torment these ten years.
Yet day after day the vision of Mme. de Guéfontaine had been dwelling
more and more constantly with him, and her image, by a volition,
so it seemed, of its own, seeking to efface that other. From its
beginning in that night of agony and effort at Quiberon, its renewal
in the drifting boat, the process had gone on gaining vitality
with time. At Houat he had wakened once from fever to fancy that
he was lying with his head pillowed on her arm, as he had done
that evening when he had stumbled exhausted into the old manoir.
That had proved to be but fever also; his aching head had no such
support, and the English corporal of marines who sat by him,
though kind enough, had very little suggestion of Raymonde about
him. Yet the illusion had given the wounded man such extraordinary
pleasure, and so surprising a sense of rest and security, that he
used, in those barren days, to try to repeat it by a conscious act
of the imagination. She _had_ sat by his couch, once, through the
night . . . she had walked by his horse's stirrup on a spring evening
towards the sea . . . and among the nodding sea-holly she had kissed
his hand. It was his last memory of her, almost as startling as
his first. . . .
And now in England he thought of her too--fitfully at first, then
incessantly. But this had served in no way to lighten his depression.
For he was not in love with her, he told himself--how could he be?
Was not all his heart seared over with a fatal memory? Those shackles
could not be loosed now--and even were they miraculously to be
smitten from him, what had he to offer another woman? A maimed body,
an empty purse, a ruined home. . . .
And yet oddly, persistently, he would see himself standing with her
under the larches in front of a house like Kerdronan, that was
perished, and with them stood a little boy like Anne, who did not
need him and was gone from him. . . . He was suddenly possessed
now by that foolish and torturing vision, and lay there clenching
and unclenching his hand, as though in physical pain. No, he and
Kerdronan would go into the dust together, and it was no use
reflecting on what might have been. They were both broken and done
with, he and his home--and no great loss, doubtless, after all.
"Good God!" he exclaimed at last, "what a cowardly fool I am, lying
here and moaning like a sick girl because I am short of an arm!"
He shut his eyes on that self-condemnation (which had not helped
him), and did not trouble to open them when there came a knock at
the door. Nor, as he still kept them closed when he said "Come in!"
did he see who opened it, and Mr. Elphinstone's face in the doorway
looking at him with a smile that died away to concern. He only heard
the door shut again, and supposed that the visitor, his mother, or
Monseigneur, had decided after all not to disturb him.
(2)
The treble voice, therefore, that said his name suddenly and softly
gave him a violent start. He opened his eyes to see Anne-Hilarion
standing by the closed door, carrying in both his hands a large glass
bowl wherein there swam an enormously magnified goldfish.
"_Anne!_" he exclaimed, in a voice of utter incredulity.
And then the sight of him, unchanged, solemn-eyed and engaging as
ever, the touching absurdity of his bringing a goldfish all the way
from London to cheer a sick Chouan, caused La Vireville to break
into a weak laugh that was half something else.
"Oh, M. le Chevalier!" cried Anne, gazing at him. Then he deposited
his precious burden with haste on the floor, and, running to the bed,
flung himself into the welcome of La Vireville's arm.
"My cabbage, my little comrade!" murmured the émigré, and he kissed
the cold, fresh cheek again and again. "You are not changed at
all--yes, I suppose you have grown. . . . Then you have not forgotten
me after all? Have you come all this way to see your poor bedridden
uncle--not by yourself, though, I trust?"
"Oh no," replied Anne-Hilarion, his arms round Fortuné's neck.
"Grandpapa brought me. I wanted to see you so much!" He hugged him
hard, then, drawing back a little, eyed him with a sudden doubt. La
Vireville hastily withdrew his arm and pulled the bedclothes over
his left side.
"Come and get up on the bed," he suggested, "and we can talk better."
The Comte de Flavigny, needing no second invitation, incontinently
scrambled up--not without difficulty, for the bed was high.
"I am not too heavy?" he inquired rather anxiously, as he took a seat
on La Vireville's legs. "Papa says I am getting too heavy for him."
And, as a matter of fact, he had planted himself exactly on one of
the more painful souvenirs of the Ile de Houat; but La Vireville
would not for worlds have asked him to move.
"You are a mere featherweight," he assured him. "And is your father
nearly well again, Anne? He has written to me, but he did not say
much about himself."
"Papa looks much better than you do, M. le Chevalier," said the
little boy critically. "He can walk quite well now. He is coming
to see you when he is quite better. Grandpapa is downstairs, you
know; he will come up soon, I expect."
La Vireville, in his turn, surveyed the visitor perched on his body.
Anne's legs, in their blue pantaloons, stuck out straight in front
of him on the bed; the shoes at the end of them looked ridiculously
small. His curls, falling on his deep ruffle, seemed heavier and a
little longer than of yore, and the sun was busily employed in
gilding them. For the first time, therefore, La Vireville was really
conscious of the presence of that luminary.
Anne-Hilarion was the first to break the silence. "Did Papa tell
you in his letter," he inquired, "that a lady came into the garden
to ask for you, M. le Chevalier?"
"A lady!" exclaimed Fortuné. "What garden, child--here?"
"Oh no," replied Anne. "The garden in the Square at home. It is a
long time ago now. I was there, and John Simms, and I had leaves
in my cart--dead leaves--and she came in, all in black, and she
asked if you had come back from France, and I said no, and then I
cried, and I think she cried too, and she kissed me, and then
Grandpapa came, and----"
"Stop a moment!" cried La Vireville, who was not without experience
of the volume of detail Anne could pour forth when once he was
embarked on the tide of narration. "What was the lady like? Was
she young?"
"She was not so old as Elspeth," pronounced the Comte de Flavigny,
after due thought.
La Vireville gave a rather shaken laugh. Had this impossible thing
really happened? Anne-Hilarion never lied. But--it must have been
someone else!
"You did not learn her name, I suppose, child?" he asked, his heart
beginning to thud.
"Yes," responded Anne. "I asked Grandpapa afterwards, because I
liked her. She was called the Comtesse de Préfontaine--or perhaps
it was Guéfontaine."
La Vireville's heart missed a couple of beats, then pounded harder
than ever, seeming to shake his whole body--a humiliating experience.
But for his present physical condition, however, no doubt he would
not have gasped for breath as he did, nor would the colour have come
and gone like a woman's in his hollow cheeks. Nevertheless, as both
these things happened, Anne-Hilarion looked at him in a little dismay.
"You are--do you feel ill, M. le Chevalier?" he asked solicitously.
"No--yes," stammered Fortuné, lifting himself on his elbow. "No,
child, don't move! It is not that you are . . . too heavy." He drew
a long breath, closed his eyes, and dropped back on his pillows.
"What did you and Grandpapa tell Mme. de Guéfontaine?" he asked,
after a moment.
"Grandpapa told her, I think, that the Republican soldiers had shot
you at that place--Quiberon. . . . M. le Chevalier," continued Anne,
leaning with very wide-open eyes towards him, and thus still further
contributing to the discomfort of the leg on which he was situated,
"did they really and truly shoot you?"
"Well," said Fortuné, in a dreamy voice, "they did and they did not.
Anyhow, here I am, you see." He reopened his eyes.
"Yes," said Anne, in a tone of great contentment, and bestowed on
his friend one of those infrequent smiles of his, sudden and shy,
at the same time sliding his hand into the strong, wasted one lying
idly near it on the coverlet.
A thrill ran up Fortuné's arm. Ever since he had seen Anne standing
by the door he had been conscious of a strange sensation, as if,
with the advent of the child who had sailed the seas with him on
that wild adventure, there had begun to blow through his hot brain
the first whisper of a clean and joyous breath that came from the
waves themselves. A moment or two ago, those lips had made him an
annunciation the full meaning of which he could hardly grasp. Now,
at the little warm touch, his eyes were suddenly opened, and he saw
the tainted memory in his heart as only a handful of dead dust, not
worth the keeping, fit only to be scattered on that wind of morning.
It was the past, useless and done with, a thing long dead. . . . Here,
close to him, touching him, smiling at him, enshrined in this child
who had no past, shone the future, like something gallant and green
with the dew on it, and, blowing over it, that strong, fresh wind.
The worthless burden he had carried for years fell from him. He too
could have what René de Flavigny had, the air of morning at his
gates--nay, morning's self. . . .
In the almost physical sense of deliverance he must have gripped
Anne-Hilarion's hand very hard, for the child gave a movement.
"Little pigeon, have I hurt you?" cried La Vireville, instantly
penitent, releasing the imprisoned hand. "I am so sorry. . . . I
did not know that I was still so strong." At the moment, indeed, he
hardly knew anything--scarcely, even, what he was saying.
Anne-Hilarion carried the injured member to his mouth for a second
or two, then he put it back in La Vireville's palm. "I am very
glad that you are so strong, M. le Chevalier," he said valiantly.
"Perhaps you will soon be quite well again. I hope so very much. And
then--what are you going to do?"
"What am I going to do, Anne?" A little while ago, under that cloud
of lassitude and depression, the question would have seemed a
mockery. "Well, you know--or you will soon know--that they had to
cut off my other arm, but I can still hold a sword--and hurt a
small boy's hand, eh? When I get quite better I shall go back to
the heather, and the sea, and perhaps . . ." He broke off and fell
silent, staring at his visitor with an air compound of bewilderment
and meditation. "Meanwhile, am I not to see the new goldfish?"
Anne-Hilarion slipped promptly from the bed and ran to the corner
by the door. Anon, raising himself from his stooping position, and
carrying it between his hands with even more than his accustomed care,
he came back with his trophy. His eyes were very bright.
"It is my biggest one of all," he observed, as La Vireville propped
himself on his elbow to view the captive. "I called it after you, M.
le Chevalier . . . you do not mind? And I thought, as you were
ill . . . and I heard Papa and Grandpapa say you could never be
repaid for coming after me to France . . . you might . . . I mean
I brought it to give it to you, if you liked . . . for your own!"
"Oh, my child," said La Vireville, rather breathlessly, "you have
given me much more than that!"
BOOK FOUR
THE OLDEST ROAD OF ALL
"Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet,
Our ship must sail the faem;
The king's daughter o' Noroway,
'Tis we must fetch her hame."
_SIR PATRICK SPENS._
"All quests end here, all voyagings, all ventures:
Is not my white breast haven to your sail?"
_THE WAVE'S SONG._