THE IRREPARABLE
I
Ronnay de Maurel had been absent nearly a year from his home. He had
joined the Emperor in Poland, and despite his game leg, he had fought at
Jena and Auerstadt, at Eylau and at Friedland.
When the two Emperors met upon the bridge at Tilsit and decided on the
terms of peace, de Maurel, created Marshal of France on the field of
Auerstadt, returned quietly to La Vieuville in time, he hoped, to close
the eyes of old Gaston and to hear his last dying words. He had been
home just three days. The day after his arrival he sent back the
military representatives who had looked after his factories for him
during his absence, and quietly took up once more the reins of
government, which an unendurable heart-ache had caused to drop
temporarily out of his hands. He laid aside his fine uniform and once
more took up his blouse and his woollen cap. Old Gaston was too feeble
to note the subtle change which had come over his nephew during twelve
months of rough campaigning among the snows and the marshes of Poland;
he did not perceive how passing seldom Ronnay ever spoke now, or how he
sat late into the night staring straight out before him with a yearning
gaze in his dark, deep-set eyes. He had passed through Paris on his way
home and brought back a number of books with him--he who before this had
never troubled about one in his life--and when his eyes ached from
staring into vacancy, he would open one of these books, and drawing the
lamp closer to him, he would rest his elbow on the table and shade his
face with his hand and become so absorbed, that the grey dawn would oft
find him still sitting in the invalid's room, with the book open in
front of him--unless he had pushed it aside and sat with his head buried
in his hands.
On the day of his arrival he had, with the help of Madame Lapin,
reorganized the La Vieuville household on a more comfortable basis. But
little could be done in the way of comforts for the dying man; he was
past noticing if his room was aired or his food brought to him at
regular intervals. The village doctor visited him from time to time, but
there was nothing to be done now. The machinery of life was worn out;
for over a year now it had threatened to break down altogether--an iron
constitution and an invincible will to live until the beloved nephew
came home once more, had alone kept the enfeebled heart to its work.
To Ronnay de Maurel the aspect of La Vieuville seemed infinitely dreary;
the thought of the factories and the foundries singularly uninspiring.
What mattered it that he had come home--a great deal older, a little
more crippled, more impatient and more indifferent? Old Gaston could not
now last more than a few days, and the representatives of the War Office
had seen to it that the output of guns and of munitions did not fall too
far short of the Emperor's needs. Why should a man come home--a man who
had courted death in an hundred desperate fights--a man who had nothing
to live for, no one to care for, no one who would rejoice when he
returned or who would weep if he fell ... when countless precious sons
and brothers and lovers and husbands were left to rot unburied on the
ice-covered plains of Poland, and countless mothers and widows mourned,
broken-hearted, at their loss?
But it was not his way to let things drift. Peace had, of a truth, been
signed at Tilsit, but it was not like to be a lasting peace. The
European Powers had once and for all decided that France was not to
remain in bondage to the Emperor whom she worshipped. He was in
everybody else's way, he must be swept aside in order to make room for
the effete and incompetent Bourbons, who were hanging on to the
coat-tails of England and Austria and Russia, with a view to reaping the
chestnuts which others had pulled out of the fire for them. De Maurel
was one of those who would have preferred their idolized Emperor to sit
at home after this last campaign, to enjoy the fruit of his victories
and to prove to the world that France, when she divested herself of the
old régime, had gained a benefactor, even though she had had to pass
through fire and water, through crime and ignominy, ere she got him. But
to know Napoleon intimately, as did the privileged few, was to realize
that measureless ambition which was destined to hurl him, not only down
from the giddy heights of triumph and of victory whereon his glorious
achievements of the last two campaigns had established him, but also
from his secure place within the heart of his people, a place which he
would only reconquer when his mortal remains were brought back to France
after the years of conflict and of misery which were to come.
II
That all was not well at the factories de Maurel did not fail to
perceive within four-and-twenty hours of his return. The military
overseers had done their duty--the output of munitions, if not lavish,
had been adequate, and there had been no open rebellion among the
workers. But in the first tour of inspection which the master made of
his demesnes he realized how more than surly was the temper of former
malcontents now and how sorely had the loyalty of the honest workmen
been tried.
Complaints and grumblings had not been listened to now for over a year;
the rough admonitions of a sympathetic taskmaster had given place to
peremptory commands from military disciplinarians and to threats of
condign punishment at the slightest sign of discontent. It would take
many weeks of untiring patience and firmness to re-establish the happy
concord which reigned in the foundries and armament works a year ago. As
for the powder factories, de Maurel was compelled to reserve judgment as
to where real grievances began and slackness and covert rebellion ended.
Leroux, suave and obsequious, at once aroused his distrust, but the War
Office representatives, when they left, had given the man an excellent
character, both for trustworthiness and for industry, and de Maurel was
not the man to act on mere intuition.
Intuition had played him such a damnable trick a while ago when he would
have staked his soul on the loyalty of a pair of blue eyes!
Mathurin certainly struck a note of warning, but he found his master so
unapproachable, that he dared not say much, and old Gaston had long
since been too feeble to see anything that was going on.
Of Madame la Marquise up at La Frontenay he could glean but little
information. M. le Marquis had been absent a great deal during the year
with M. de Courson, and Mademoiselle Fernande had remained with her aunt
during the absence of M. le Marquis; but neither she nor Madame had done
more than pay the one visit to the foundries as the orders of the War
Office authorities were very peremptory on that point. The ladies were
seldom seen outside the limits of the château; they had dismissed all
the servants whom Vardenne had engaged for them locally, and replaced
them gradually by importations of their own.
It was generally understood in the district that Mademoiselle de Courson
was now formally affianced to M. le Marquis de Mortain.
III
It was on the day following the council of war at La Frontenay that
Ronnay de Maurel started out soon after dawn for one of his favourite
tramps across the moors and through the woods. Before he went away last
July he had left very strict orders that no one should henceforth be
allowed to wander in the La Frontenay woods. The explanation was given
that valuable game was being preserved there, and one of old Gaston's
last efforts at administering his nephew's property was to establish in
accordance with Ronnay's express instructions, a veritable army of
keepers in the district, with discretionary powers to warn every
trespasser off the forbidden grounds.
De Maurel, therefore, when he started off on that exquisite June morning
to re-visit the place where he had suffered the most terrible mental
torture which heart of man could endure, felt confident that he would
remain secure from intrusion; that, above all, he need not fear a
rencontre which would inevitably reopen the burning wound which time had
not even begun to heal.
To him, now that a year of hard work and hard fighting had passed over
that awful day of misery and of shame, it seemed as if time had stood
still; as if it had been but a few hours ago that he had started
out--just as he did now--on that walk beneath the early morning
sunshine, which had ended in such an appalling disaster--in the total
wreckage of his life, of his newly-awakened youth, of every newly-risen
hope of home and of happiness. Then, as now, the dew still lay upon the
carpet of moss, the mountain-ash and the elder were in full bloom, and
the mating birds had finished building their nests. Then, as now, the
swallows circled swiftly overhead, and a lark rose from the ground at
his feet and sang its joyful song of thanksgiving to God.
But then the world held for him an exquisite being who was all
tenderness and charm, who had lured him with her blue eyes, until he
remembered that he, too, was young and he, too, had a right to love and
happiness; the woods had held for him a nymph with feet like the petals
of flowers, with sun-kissed hair which shone like living gold. A nymph!
a creature of grace, of air, of light, whose fragrance was akin to a
wilderness of roses, whose laugh was like the song of the lark, and
whose arms were white and slender like the lilies! And when she stood
before him or lay placid and drowsy in his arms, mysterious voices in
the woods had murmured in his ear insidious promises of happiness to
come.
He, poor fool, had listened to those voices--sirens' voices, which are
wont to lure the unfortunate mariner on life's ocean to his own
destruction--to his own misery and undoing; sirens' voices which
whispered that the exquisite fairy-like form which lay like a nestling
bird in his arms would one day be his for always--that she would always
snuggle up, just like this, against his shoulder; that he would one day
cull a kiss from those perfect lips, that he would one day have the
right to hold her and keep her and to guard her for always against every
ill.
Since then the voices of the sirens had turned to harsh and dismal
screeching; the hopes of a year ago had turned to blank despair, and the
savour of that triumphal aspiration turned to the dead sea fruit of
unconquerable humiliation.
Prussian cannon had disdained the prey which Ronnay de Maurel had
offered with crazy recklessness; he had come back laden with honours, a
broken-hearted and lonely man; and the birds still sang, the woods were
still fragrant, the world of sunshine and of springtide, of flowering
trees and full-blown roses mocked at his irretrievable beggary.
IV
And when Fernande de Courson started out that same morning, soon after
daybreak, in a random spirit of wandering, and her footsteps led
her--unconsciously, perhaps--in the direction of the woods, she, too,
had little thought of meeting Ronnay de Maurel again. The hour was so
early that not another soul was abroad--so early that not a sound
stirred the quietude of valley and of hills save the distant murmuring
of the tiny stream which found its resting-place in the silent pool.
It was an hour, too, wherein even the keepers established by old Gaston
to patrol the La Frontenay woods usually slackened their vigilance. It
was too late for poachers, too early for tramps; Fernande, as she left
the meadows behind her, turned into a woodland path unperceived.
For a time she walked on somewhat aimlessly. It was deliciously cool
under the trees, and the smell of budding blossom, of wet moss and of
pine, acted as a tonic on her overstrung nerves. She wandered on, not
allowing herself to think. All through the past few days she had tried
not to feel that Ronnay de Maurel had come back; she had tried to forget
that he was near, that any day, any moment, if she took her walks abroad
she might come face to face with him.
And, in a measure, she had succeeded. She was now Laurent de Mortain's
future wife, the follies of a year ago must yield to a sober view of
future events. Except for that one brief, if vehement outburst yesterday
in the presence of Madame's monstrous callousness, she had succeeded in
relegating the man to whom she had done an infinite wrong to the
furthermost recesses of her mind. But here, in these woods where every
murmur among the trees, every call of bird or fragrance of flower,
reminded her of him--in the woods through which she had once passed
nestling against his shoulder, secure in the embrace of his strong arms,
thoughts of him went hammering through her brain. All the dangers which
beset him through Joseph de Puisaye's plan of campaign and Leroux'
treachery caused her heart to beat with a nameless horror and fear. At
every moment she thought to hear his rugged voice calling her by name,
and even now her heart almost stilled its beating as a woodland echo
seemed to bring back to her ear that cry of triumph which had rent her
very soul: "You love me, Fernande!"
And as she wandered on, she lost count of time, and soon she found that
she had lost her way. She had never entered the La Frontenay woods from
the direction of the château since first she came to stay there, and she
had no idea now which way to turn in order to go back home again. Soon
she felt tired and dispirited; she did not know how long she had been
wandering, nor how far she had gone.
Then all at once she knew where she was. She had walked a few steps
along a moss-covered path, which wound its way right through the
thicket, and suddenly there came a break in the coppice, and there
before her lay the silent pool, with its mossy banks and clumps of wild
iris and of meadowsweet, and the fallen tree-trunk where she had sat
that day--a whole year ago.
And as she made her way nearer to the water, she saw Ronnay de Maurel
sitting there on the bank; he was leaning against the fallen tree-trunk,
his elbow resting upon it and his head supported by his hand.
She would have fled if she could, for at sight of him she had at once
realized that to meet him here and now was the last thing in the world
that she had wished. She realized that rather than he should see her,
rather than she should speak with him, she would have run for miles,
fearful only lest he should follow her track. How could she meet
him--even to speak the words of contrition which for the past year she
had longed to utter one day--how could she meet him whilst up at La
Frontenay her own kindred, her own friends, those whom she loved, were
planning treachery and murder against him!
But unfortunately now there was no time to run away; already he had seen
her, and before she could stir from the spot, he had struggled to his
feet and was coming towards her. Even then she would have given worlds
to be able to go, but she could not. For one thing, he walked more
haltingly than he had ever done before--and then he looked older, less
sure of himself, more forlorn and solitary. He dragged his wounded leg
more markedly--more as he used to do in the olden days when he was
overtired, and all her womanly tenderness and pity went out to him,
because of that indefinable air of helplessness which his lameness
momentarily gave him. Not only did Fernande de Courson not beat a hasty
retreat, but when he paused, irresolute and timid, it was she who came a
step or two nearer to him.
"I am afraid that I am trespassing," she said tentatively, for, of a
truth, she felt suddenly frightened--frightened at his look--a look of
bitter resentment, she thought, of hate perhaps as absolute as she had
felt for him in days gone by.
"Nay, it is I," he retorted dryly, "who have no right to be here, seeing
that it is evidently Mademoiselle de Courson's favourite walk. By your
leave, I will vacate the field. The keepers should have warned me. Had
they done so, I would not have come."
He bowed in his usual awkward style and made as if to go, but with a
word Fernande called him back. For a moment or two he hesitated. No
doubt he, too, had as great a desire to run away as she had; but the
girl now--with one of those contradictory impulses which are peculiar to
sensitive temperaments--felt an unconquerable wish to speak with him ...
if only for the purpose of challenging him to those words of reproach
which he had spared her on that day when Laurent's cruel scorn and her
own callousness had struck him as with a physical blow.
"M. de Maurel," she cried, moved by that sudden impulse.
"At your commands, Mademoiselle," he replied.
"I ... I ... believe me I had no thought of meeting you here ... or of
intruding upon your privacy ... but now that we have met, I beg of you
that you will let me tell you...."
She paused, feeling that a hot flush had risen to her cheeks and that
her words sounded both halting and cold. And yet he had made no movement
to stop her. It had never been his way to interrupt. For good or ill, he
always listened to the end of whatever anyone chose to say. He had
listened to the end, when Laurent, with a few harsh words, had shattered
the shrine wherein he had set his fondest illusions; he stood quite
still now, ready to listen to everything she might wish to say. But
somehow it was just his attitude of quiet expectancy which stemmed the
flow of her words. It was only when she had been silent for some few
seconds and apparently was not going to speak again, that he interposed
calmly:
"Is there any necessity for you, Mademoiselle, to tell me anything?
Surely not, seeing that it distresses you. Will you, on the other hand,
permit me to offer you my well-meant congratulations on your approaching
marriage with my brother?"
Already Fernande had recovered some measure of self-control. Her dignity
was on the qui vive. Apparently he meant to meet every advance on her
part with frigid enmity. The look of resentment in his eyes had
deepened, and to Fernande's keen senses it seemed as if they held no
small measure of scorn as well.
"I thank you," she said coolly. "It was _ma tante's_ intention to send
you an announcement of our _fiançailles_, but we only heard yesterday
with any certainty that you had returned."
"There is no occasion for my mother to trouble herself about such
trifling conventions with me," he retorted. "I feel so sure that she
hath no desire to claim the slightest kinship with a de Maurel that any
formalities of the kind which she seems to contemplate would be a mere
farce."
"You are very irreconcilable, M. de Maurel," said Fernande coldly, "and
are making your mother and Laurent suffer for the thoughtlessness which
I committed a year ago, and of which I would like you to believe that I
have since bitterly repented."
"I have no recollection of any thoughtlessness on your part,
Mademoiselle ... certainly of none which should cause you any regret."
"Your actions belie your words," she rejoined quietly. "If, as you say,
you have not only forgiven but forgotten the foolishness of a year ago,
then why have you kept aloof from your mother ... from us all? You were
wont to be a constant visitor at Courson, your mother and Laurent have
enjoyed your hospitality for the past twelve months. Yet you have not
been nigh La Frontenay, and 'tis three days since your return."
"My uncle Gaston is dying," he said curtly; "he and the works have
claimed my attention."
"Does that mean, then, that you will come?" she asked, "one day soon
when you are not so engaged?"
Then, as he made no reply, she added more insistently: "Your mother and
Laurent bore no part whatever in the wrong which I alone committed. M.
de Maurel, why should you remain at enmity with them?"
"At enmity, Mademoiselle?--am I at enmity with my mother or with my
brother? Surely not."
"Why not go to see them? Why not come to see us all as you used to do?"
"Chiefly, I think," he replied roughly, "because up at La Frontenay no
one has any desire to see me. My brother and I have nothing in
common--my mother and I still less. You, Mademoiselle Fernande, proved
to me a year ago what an utterly ridiculous boor I was, fit only to be
jeered at and made game of. Now a bear is not usually a good plaything
for women; he is apt to snarl and render himself odious by his antics.
He is far better out of the way, believe me."
"You are ungenerous, M. de Maurel. God knows how bitterly I have
regretted my folly! I had no thought of seeing you here, 'tis true, but
now, despite your harshness, I am glad that we have met. Words of sorrow
and of repentance which refused me service a year ago have seared my
heart ever since. I could not speak then, I was too much overcome by
shame and by remorse. But I entreat you to believe that not a day has
gone by during the past twelve months that I did not in my heart pray
for your forgiveness. I was very young then, very thoughtless and very
inexperienced. I knew nothing of men, nor was I vain enough to gauge the
amount of mischief that thoughtless coquetry on my part would wreak. M.
de Maurel, for the hurt I caused you that day I do sincerely beg your
forgiveness. Before then _ma tante_ and Laurent had reason to believe
that in you they had found a friend. I entreat you, do not add to my
remorse by venting on them your resentment which should be for me
alone."
Her voice broke in a short sob. Her blue eyes were filled with tears.
Overhead the sun had hidden its radiance behind a bank of clouds, and
all around the woods appeared grey and desolate, and from the pool there
came the melancholy croaking of frogs and the call of wood-pigeons was
wafted through the trees.
"The bear must dance again, eh?" rejoined de Maurel harshly. "He may
prove dangerous if he slips his chain. I wonder what it is that does go
on inside La Frontenay that all this _mise en scène_ should have been
resorted to once more in order to hoodwink me?"
Fernande drew back as if she had been struck. A hot flush rose to the
very roots of her hair; it seemed to her as if an unseen and aggressive
hand had thrown a veil right over her head, and then dealt her a heavy
blow between the eyes. Everything around her suddenly appeared blurred
and a strange sense of cold crept into her limbs.
"I don't understand," she stammered.
"Ah! but I think you do, Mademoiselle Fernande," he retorted. "A year
ago it was thought necessary to enchain the Maurel bear so that he might
dance to Royalist pipings; for this he was lured and cajoled and fed
with treacle and honeyed words. The foolish, awkward creature began to
dance; he was ready to see nothing save a pair of blue eyes that looked
as limpid as a mountain stream, to hear nothing save the piping of a
voice as clear and guileless as that of a lark. Unfortunately the
jealous ravings of a puppy wakened the clumsy brute from his trance ...
wakened him too soon, it seems, but so roughly that, feeling dazed and
shaken, he preferred to crawl away out of sight rather than remain a
butt for mockery and ridicule. Now he has come back and may prove
dangerous again--what? Bah! the same old methods can easily be tried
again, the same honeyed words spoken, the same blue eyes raised
tantalizingly to his. Too late, Mademoiselle Fernande!" he added, with a
laugh which sounded strident and harsh as it echoed through the woods.
"The bear has awakened from his winter sleep, he is not like to be
caught napping again."
"M. de Maurel," protested Fernande, "you are not only ungenerous now,
but wilfully cruel and unchivalrous; and, of a truth, your harshness now
hath killed every feeling of remorse which I have felt. You have, of a
truth, the right to hate me, the right to hate us all; but I spoke to
you in all sincerity, and my humility and repentance should at least
have saved me from insult."
"Sincerity!" he exclaimed, "sincerity from a Courson! Ah! Mademoiselle
Fernande, you said just now that I was at enmity with my brother
Laurent. By my faith, I will remain for ever his debtor. But for his
interference on that memorable day meseems that Madame my mother would
have succeeded in staging once again the tragedy which had already once
been enacted at La Frontenay, when a de Maurel took a de Courson for
bride, and the final curtain rang down upon his broken heart."
"A broken heart!" she retorted hotly, "you! Nay, every word that you
utter hath proved to me the foolishness of my remorse. Your heart hath
been full only of outraged vanity and of unreasoning resentment, the
while I wept countless tears of sorrow and of regret."
"Regret for what, Mademoiselle?" he exclaimed roughly. "What, I pray
you, had you to regret? You say that you wept countless tears--what for?
Had you to mourn the only illusion of your life? Had you to mourn the
loss of every hope which for days and nights had haunted you with its
sweet, insistent call? Had you to weep because the one being in this
mean and sordid world whom you thought pure and true--almost
holy--suddenly appeared before you false and cruel--double-tongued and
insidious, a commonplace siren set to lay a trap for men? Had you to
weep because the being whom you had learned to worship had with wanton
frolic and a mocking smile plucked out your heart-strings and left you
forlorn and desolate, a prey to ignominy and to lifelong regret? And had
you to weep tears of bitter humiliation in the knowledge that those who
hated and despised you were laughing their fill at your folly? Oh! I,
too, Mademoiselle Fernande, was young then ... I, too, was inexperienced
... I was a dolt and a fool--but what wrong, in God's name, had I done
you that you should treat me so?"
Silently Fernande had listened, her hand grasping a clump of branches of
young chestnut, else mayhap she would have fallen. That feeling of a
veil enveloping her head was still with her; there was a buzzing in her
ear through which his harsh voice came with a sound like hammering upon
the portals of her brain. The agony and misery which rang out from his
words found their echo in her own heart. Indeed, many a time in the past
year had she felt pitifully sorry for the man whom she had wronged with
such unpardonable thoughtlessness, but never before had she felt as she
did now; never before had she realized the full extent of the misery
which she had caused.
His voice broke into a heartrending sob. He covered his face with his
hands with a gesture of such racking pain, that she would have given her
very life at this moment for the right to comfort him.
"M. de Maurel," she said gently, and, indeed, now her voice was softer
than that of a cooing dove, "God alone knows how deeply your words have
hurt me; and I go away to-day feeling that you have made me atone for
all that I made you suffer. Indeed, indeed, I had no thought a year ago
that my senseless coquetry could arouse in a noble-hearted man like you,
feelings which I so little deserved. Whatever you may think, however, I
did not lie to you when I told you that for the past year, not one day
has gone by without a thought of burning remorse in my mind for what I
had done. I did not lie when I sued for your forgiveness. This I do
swear to you by every memory that clusters round this glade, by every
memory that speaks to you as well as to me in the rustle of the
leaf-laden trees and in the murmurings of the woods; I swear it by the
unforgettable hour when we both heard the gentle cooing of the
wood-pigeons, and my hand rested in yours in complete amity. As for the
future, 'tis not likely that we shall ever meet again. I hope to leave
La Frontenay very soon--to-day if I can. May I therefore beg you in all
earnestness to take up the threads of friendship with your mother--there
where my own foolishness caused them to snap? Go to her, M. de Maurel
... go to-day if you can. Do not forget that she is your mother.... Do
not let her forget that you are her son. God be with you and guard you!
And whatever may happen in the future, will you at least try to bear in
mind that Fernande de Courson would gladly give her life to heal the
wound which she hath inflicted. Time will inevitably do that," she added
with a choked little sigh, "and in the years to come you will mayhap
think less bitterly of me."
Then she turned and, like a deer, she vanished in the thicket. Ronnay's
hands fell from his face. For a long while he remained there gazing on
the spot where she had stood. Through the murmurings of the wood he
still could hear the echo of her silvery voice, and it seemed to him
that her pale face, with the tear-filled eyes, still peeped at him from
between the branches of the coppice, and that the perfume of her white
gown and of her golden hair still filled the air with their intoxicating
fragrance.
Then with a heavy sigh he, too, turned and went his way.