"How do you get that way? Do you want us all to get soaked to our skins?"
"My dear Jules!" Mr. Phinuit returned with a winning smile--"I don't give a tupenny damn if we do." With that he went to join his company; while Jules, once the other's back was turned, permitted himself, for the sake of his own respect and the effect upon the assembled audience, the luxury of a shrug that outrivalled words in expression of his personal opinion of the madness that contemplated further travel on such a night as this promised to be.
Then, like the well-trained servant that he was not, he meshed gears silently and swung the car away to seek shelter, taking with him the sympathy as well as the wonder of the one witness of this bit of by-play who had been able to understand the tongue in which it was couched; and who, knowing too well what rain in those hills could mean, was beginning to regret that his invitation to the château had not been for another night.
As for the somewhat unusual tone of the passage to which he had just listened, his nimble wits could invent half a dozen plausible explanations. It was quite possible, indeed when one judged Mr. Phinuit by his sobriety in contrast with the gaiety of the others it seemed quite plausible, that he was equally with Jules a paid employee of those ostensible nouveaux riches: and that the two, the chauffeur and the courier (or whatever Mr. Phinuit was in his subordinate social rating) were accustomed to amuse themselves by indulging in reciprocal abuse.
But what Duchemin could by no means fathom was the reason why Phinuit should choose, and how he should rule the choice of his party, in the face of such threatening weather, to stop in Nant for an early dinner--with Millau only an hour away and the chances fair that before the storm broke the automobile would reach the latter city with its superior hotel and restaurant accommodations.
But it was after all none of the business of André Duchemin. He lighted another cigarette, observing the group of strangers in Nant with an open inquisitiveness wholly Gallic, therefore inconspicuous. The entire clientèle of the Café de l'Univers was doing the same; Mr. Phinuit's party was the focal point of between twenty and thirty pair of staring eyes, and was enduring this with much equanimity.
Mr. Phinuit was conferring earnestly over the menu with madame la propriétaire. The others were ordering aperitifs of a waiter. Through the clatter of tongues that filled the café one caught the phrase "veeskysoda" uttered by the monsieur in tweeds. Then the tall man consulted the beautiful lady as to her preference, and Duchemin caught the words "madame la comtesse" spoken in the rasping nasal drawl of an American.
Evidently a person of rich humour, the speaker: "madame la comtesse" was abruptly convulsed with laughter; the chubby gentleman roared; Mr. Phinuit looked up from the carte with an enquiring, receptive smile; the waiter grinned broadly. But the cause of all this merriment wore only an expression of slightly pained bewilderment on his death-mask of a face.
At that moment arrived the calèche which Duchemin had commanded to drive him to the château; and with a ride of two miles before him and rain imminent, he had no more time to waste.
Dinner was served in a vast and sombre hall whose darkly panelled walls and high-beamed ceiling bred a multitude of shadows that danced about the table a weird, spasmodic saraband, without meaning or end, restlessly advancing and retreating as the candles flickered, failed and flared in the gusty draughts.
There was (Duchemin learned) no other means of illumination but by candle-light in the entire château. The time-old structure had been thoroughly renovated and modernised in most respects, it was furnished with taste and reverence (one could guess whose the taste and purse) but Madame de Sévénié remained its undisputed chatelaine, a belated spirit of the ancien régime, stubbornly set against the conveniences of this degenerate age. Electric lighting she would never countenance. The telephone she esteemed a convenience for tradespeople and vulgarians in general, beneath the dignity of leisured quality. The motor car she disapproved yet tolerated because, for all her years, she was of a brisk and active turn and liked to get about, whereas since the War good horseflesh was difficult to find in France and men to care for it more scarce still.
So much, and more besides, she communicated to Duchemin at intervals during the meal, comporting herself toward him with graciousness not altogether innocent of a certain faded coquetry. Having spoken of herself as one born too late for her time, she paused and eyed him keenly, a gleam of light malice in her bright old eyes.
"And you, too, monsieur," she added suddenly. "But you, I think, belong to an even earlier day..."
"I, madame? And why do you say that?"
"I should have been guillotined under the Terror; but you, monsieur, you should have been hanged long before that--hanged for a buccaneer on the Spanish Main."
"Madame may be right," said Duchemin, amused. "And quite possibly I was, you know."
Then he wondered a little, and began to cultivate some respect for the shrewdness of her intuitions.
He sat on her left, the place of honour going by custom immemorial to monsieur le curé of Nant. For all that, Duchemin declined to feel slighted. Was he not on the right of Eve de Montalais?
The girl Louise was placed between the curé and her sister-in-law. Duchemia could not have been guilty of the offence of ignoring her; but the truth is that, save when courtesy demanded that he pay her some attention, he hardly saw her. She was pretty enough, but very quiet and self-absorbed, a slender, nervous creature with that pathetically eager look peculiar to her age and caste in France, starving for the life she might not live till marriage should set her free. A pale and ineffective wraith beside Eve, whose beauty, relieved in candleglow against the background of melting darkness, burned like some rare exotic flower set before a screen of lustreless black velvet. And like a flower to the sun she responded to the homage of his admiration --which he was none the less studious to preserve from the sin of obviousness. For he was well aware that her response was impersonal; it was not his but any admiration that she craved as a parched land wants rain.
Less than three months a wife, more than five years a widow, still young and ardent, nearing the noontide of her womanhood, and immolated in this house of perennial mourning, making vain oblation of her youth, her beauty, the rich wine of life that coursed so lustily through her being, upon the altar of a memory whose high priestess was only an old, old woman....
He perceived that it would be quite possible for him, did he yield to the bent of his sympathies, to dislike Madame de Sévénié most intensely.
Not that he was apt to have much opportunity to encourage such a gratuitous aversion: to-morrow would see him on the road again, his back forever turned to the Château de Montalais....
Or, if not to-morrow, then as soon as the storm abated.
It was raging now as if it would never weaken and had the will to raze the château though it were the task of a thousand years. From time to time the shock of some great blast of air would seem to rock upon its foundations even that ancient pile, those heavy walls of hewn stone builded in times of honest workmanship by forgotten Sieurs de Montalais who had meant their home to outlast the ages.
Rain in sheets sluiced the windows without rest. Round turrets and gables the wind raved and moaned like a famished wild thing denied its kill. Occasionally a venturesome gust with the spirit of a minor demon would find its way down the chimney to the drawing-room fire and send sparks in volleys against the screen, with thin puffs of wood smoke that lingered in the air like acrid ghosts.
At such times the curé, sitting at piquet with Madame de Sévénié, after dinner, would cough distressingly and, reminded that he had a bed to reach somehow through all this welter, anathematise the elements, help himself to a pinch of snuff, and proceed with his play.
Duchemin sat at a little distance, talking with Madame de Montalais over their cigarettes. To smoking, curiously enough, Madame de Sévénié offered no objection. Women had not smoked in her day, and she for her part would never. But Eve might: it was "done"; even in those circles of hidebound conservatism, the society of the Faubourg St. Germain, ladies of this day smoked unrebuked.
Louise had excused herself--to sit, Duchemin had no doubt, by the bedside of d'Aubrac, under the duenna-like eye of an old nurse of the family.
Being duly encouraged, Duchemin talked about himself, of his wanderings and adventures, all with discretion, with the neatest expurgations, and with an object, leading cunningly round to the subject of New York.
At mention of it he saw a new light kindle in Eve's eyes. Her breath came more quickly, gentle emotion agitated her bosom.
Monsieur knew New York?
But well: he had been there as a boy, again as a young man; and then later, in the year when America entered the Great War; not since ...
"It is my home," said Eve de Montalais softly, looking away.
(One noted that she said "is"--not "was.")
So Duchemin had understood. Madame had not visited her home recently?
Not in many years; not in fact since nineteen-thirteen. She assumed the city must have changed greatly. Duchemin thought it was never the same, but forever changing itself overnight, so to speak; and yet always itself, always like no other city in the world, fascinating....
"Fascinating? But irresistible! How I long for it!" She was distrait for an instant. "My New York! Monsieur--would you believe?--I dream of it!"
He had found a key to one chamber in the mansion of her confidence. As much to herself as to him, unconsciously dropping into English, she began to talk of her life "at home"....
Her father had been a partner in a great jewellery house, Cottier's, of Paris, London, and New York. (So that explained it! She was wearing the blue diamond again tonight, with other jewels worth, in the judgment of a keen connoisseur, a king's ransom.) Schooled at an exclusive establishment for the daughters of people of fashion, Eve at an early age had made her début; but within the year her father died, and her mother, whose heart had always been in the city of her nativity, closed the house on East Fifty-seventh street and removed with her daughter to Paris. There Eve had met her future husband. Shortly after, her mother died. Eve returned to New York to attend to some business in connection with her estate, remaining only a few weeks, leaving almost reluctantly; but the new love was very sweet, she had looked forward joyfully to the final transplanting of her affections.
And then the War, the short month of long, long days in the apartment on the avenue des Champs-Elysées, waiting, waiting, while the earth trembled to the tramp of armed men and the tireless rumbling of caissons and camions, and the air was vibrant with the savage dialogue of cannon, ever louder, daily more near....
She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and gaze remote.
From the splendid jewels that adorned the fingers twisting together in her lap, the firelight struck coruscant gleams.
"Now I hate Paris, I wish never to see it again."
Duchemin uttered a sympathetic murmur.
"But New York--?"
"Ah, but sometimes I think I would give anything to be there once more!"
The animation with which this confession was delivered proved transient.
"Then I remind myself I have no one there--a few friends, yes, acquaintances; but no family ties, no one dear to me."
"But--pardon--you stay here?"
"It is beautiful here, monsieur."
"But such solitude, such isolation--for you, madame!"
"I know. Still, I am fond of the life here; it was here I found myself again, after my grief. And I am fond of my adopted mother and Louise, too, and they of me. Indeed, I am all they have left. Louise, of course, will marry before long, Georges"--she used d'Aubrac's given name--"will take her away, then Madame de Sévénié will have nobody but me. And at her age, it would be too sad..."
Across the drawing-room that lady looked up from her cards and sharply interrogated a manservant who had silently presented himself to her attention.
"What is it you want, Jean?"
The servant mumbled his justification: An automobile had broken down on the highroad near the château, the chauffeur was unable to move the car or make any repairs in the storm, a gentleman had come to the door to ask....
He moved aside, indicating the doorway to the entrance hall, beyond which Mr. Phinuit was to be seen, standing with cap in hand, tiny rivulets running from the folds of his motor-coat and forming pools on the polished flooring. As in concerted movement Madame de Sévénié, Eve de Montalais, the curé and Duchemin approached, his cool, intelligent, good-humoured glance surveyed them swiftly, each in turn, and with unerring instinct settled on the first as the one to whom he must address himself.
But the bow with which he also acknowledged the presence of Eve was hardly less profound; Duchemin himself, at his best, could hardly have bettered it. His manner, in fact, left nothing to be desired; and the French in which immediately he begged a thousand pardons for the intrusion was so admirable that it seemed hard to believe he was the same man who had, only a few hours earlier, composedly traded the slang of the States with a chauffeur in front of the Café de l'Univers.
Mr. Phinuit was desolated to think he might be imposing on madame's good nature, but the accident was positive, the night truly inclement, madame la comtesse was already suffering from the cold, and if one might beg shelter for her and the gentlemen of the party while one telephoned or sent to Nant for another automobile....
But monsieur might feel very sure Madame de Sévénié would never forgive herself if the hospitality of the Château de Montalais failed at such a time. She would send servants to the car at once with lights, wraps, umbrellas....
There was no necessity for that. The remainder of the party had, it seemed, presumed upon her courtesy in anticipation, and was not far from the heels of its ambassador. Even while madame was speaking, Jean was opening the great front doors to those who proved--formal introductions being duly effect by Mr. Phinuit--to be Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes, monsieur le comte, her husband (this was the well-fed body in tweeds) and Mr. Whitaker Monk, of New York.
These personages were really not at all in a bad way. Their wraps were well peppered with rain, they were chilly, the footgear of madame la comtesse was wet and needed changing. But that was the worst of their plight. And when Mr. Phinuit, learning that there was no telephone, had accepted an offer of the Montalais motor car to tow the other under cover and so enable Jules to make repairs, and Eve de Montalais had carried madame la comtesse off to her own apartment to change her shoes and stockings, the gentlemen trooped to the drawing-room fire, at the instance of Madame de Sévénié, and grew quite cheerful under the combined influence of warmth and wine and biscuits; Duchemin standing by with a half-rejected doubt to preoccupy him, vaguely disturbed by the oddness of this rencontre considered in relation to that injudicious stop for dinner at Nant in the face of the impending storm, and with Mr. Phinuit's declaration that he didn't give a tupenny damn if they did all get soaked to their skins.
It seemed far-fetched and ridiculous to imagine that people of their intelligence--and they were most of them unusually intelligent and alert, if demeanour and utterances might be taken as criterion--should adopt any such elaborate machinery of mystification and duplicity in order to gain an introduction to the Château de Montalais. With what possible motive...?
But there was the devil of having a mind like Duchemin's: once it conceived a notion like that, it was all but impossible for him to dislodge it unless or until something happened to persuade him of his stupidity.
Now to make his suspicions seem at all reasonable, a motive was lacking. And that worried the man hugely. He desired most earnestly to justify his captiousness; and to this end exercised a power of conscientious observation on his new acquaintances.
Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes he was disposed to pass at face value, as an innocuous being, good natured enough but none too brilliant, with much of the disposition of an overgrown boy and a rather boyish tendency to admire and imitate in others qualities which he did not himself possess.
Mr. Phinuit had not returned, so there was no present opportunity to take further note of him; though Duchemin first inferred from Mr. Monk's manner, and later learned through a chance remark of his, that Phinuit was his secretary.
Upon this Mr. Monk Duchemin concentrated close attention, satisfied that he had here to do with an extraordinary personality, if not one unique.
Mr. Whitaker Monk might have been any age between thirty-five and fifty-five, so non-committal was that lantern-jawed countenance of a droll, with its heavy, black, eloquent eyebrows, its high and narrow forehead merging into an extensive bald spot fringed with greyish hair, its rather small, blue, illegible eyes, its high-bridged nose and prominent nostrils, its wide and thin-lipped mouth, its rather startling pallor. Taller by a head than anybody in the room except Duchemin, his figure was remarkably thin, yet not ill-proportioned. Neither was Mr. Monk ill at ease or ungraceful in his actions. Clothed in that extravagantly correct costume--correct, at least, for a drawing-room, if never for motoring--he had all the appearance of a comedian fresh from the hands of his dresser. One naturally expected of him mere grotesqueries--and found simply the courteous demeanour of a gentleman of the world. So much for externals. But what more? Nature herself had cast Mr. Monk in the very mould of a masquerader. What manner of man was hidden behind the mask? His words and deeds alone would tell; Duchemin could only weigh the one and await the other.
In the meantime Mr. Monk was sketching rapidly for the benefit of Madame de Sévénié the excuse for his present plight.
A chance meeting at Monte Carlo, he said, with his old friends, the Comte et Comtesse de Lorgnes, had resulted in their yielding to his insistence that they tour with him back to Paris by this roundabout way.
"A whim of my age, madame." Somehow the nasal intonation of the American suited singularly well his fluent French; he seemed to have less trouble with his R's than most Anglo-Saxons. "As a young man--a younger man--ah, well, in Ninety-four, then--I explored this country on a walking tour, inspired by Stevenson. You know, perhaps, his diverting Travels with a Donkey? But I daresay its spirit would hardly have survived translation.... At all events, I had the whim to revisit some of those well-remembered scenes. I say some, for naturally it would be impossible, even with the vastly improved roads of to-day, for my automobile to penetrate everywhere I wandered afoot. Nor would I wish it to; a few disappointments, a few failures to recapture something of that first fine careless rapture, would instill a lyric melancholy; but too many would make one morbid.... Well, then: at Nant, in those old days, I once had a famous dinner; and naturally, returning, I must try to duplicate it, even though it meant going on to Millau in the rain. But alas! the Café de l'Univers is no more what it was--or I am grown over critical."
What now of Duchemin's doubts? To tell the sad truth, they were just as strong as ever. The man was somehow prejudiced: he found Monk's story entirely too glib, and knew a mean sense of gratification when the curé interposed a gentle correction.
"But in Ninety-four, monsieur, there was no Café de l'Univers in Nant."
Astonished eyebrows climbed the forehead of Mr. Monk.
"No, monsieur le curé? Truly not? Then it must have been another. How one's memory will play one false!"
"How strange, then, is coincidence," Madame de Sévénié suggested. "You who made a walking tour of this country so long ago, monsieur, regard there that good Monsieur Duchemin, himself engaged upon just such an undertaking."
Duchemin acknowledged with a humorous little nod Mr. Monk's look of moderate amazement at this so strange coincidence.
"A whim of my age, monsieur," he said--"a project I have entertained since youth but always, till of late, lacked leisure to put into execution."
"But is there anything more wonderful than the workings of the good God?" madame pursued. "Observe that, if Monsieur Duchemin had been suffered to indulge his inclination in youth, we should all, I, my daughter, my grand-daughter, even poor Georges d'Aubrac, would quite probably be lying dead at the bottom of a cirque at Montpellier-le-Vieux."
Naturally the strangers required to know about that, and Madame de Sévénié would talk, in fact doted on telling the tale of that great adventure. Duchemin made a face of resignation, and heard himself extolled as a paladin for strength, address and valour; the truth being that he was not at all resigned and would infinitely liefer have been left out of the limelight. The more he was represented as a person of consequence, the less fair his chance to study these others at his leisure, in the comfortable obscurity of their indifference.
Now the enigmatic eyes of Monk were boring into him, seeking to search his soul, with a question in their stare which he could not read and, quite likely, would have declined to answer if he could. Also the eyes of Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes were very round and constant to him. And before Madame de Sévénié was finished, Phinuit strolled in and heard enough to make him subject Duchemin to a not unfriendly, steady and open inspection.
And when the trumpets had been flourished finally for Duchemin, and he had dutifully assured madame that she was too generous and had acknowledged congratulations on his exploit, Phinuit strolled over and offered a hand.
"Good work," he said in English. "Seen you before, haven't I, somewhere, Mr. Duchemin?"
Under other circumstances Duchemin, not at all hoodwinked by this too obvious stratagem, would have taken mean pleasure in looking blank and begging monsieur to interpret himself in French. But, with or without cunning, Phinuit's question was well-timed: Eve de Montalais was at that moment entering the drawing-room with Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes, and she knew very well that Duchemin's English was quite as good as his French.
"At the Café de l'Univers, this afternoon," he replied frankly.
"I remember. You drove away, just before the storm broke, in a ramshackle rig that must have come out of the Ark."
"To come here, Mr. Phinuit."
"Funny," said Phinuit, with hesitation, "your being there, and then our turning up here."
Duchemin thought he knew what was on the other's mind. "I was immensely entertained--do you mind my saying so?--to hear the way your chauffeur talked to you, monsieur. Tell me: Is it the custom in your country--?"
"Oh, Jules!" said Phinuit, and laughed. "Jules is my younger brother. When he was demobilised his job was gone, back home, and I wished him on Mr. Monk as a chauffeur. We're always kidding each other like that."
Now what could be more reasonable? Duchemin wondered, and concluded that, if anything, it would be the truth. But he did not pretend to himself that he wasn't, quite illogically and with no provocation whatsoever, most vilely prejudiced against the lot of them.
"But you must know America, to speak the language as well as you do."
Duchemin nodded: "But very slightly, monsieur."
"I was wondering ... Somehow I can't get it out of my head I've seen you somewhere before to-day."
"It is quite possible: when one moves about the world, one is visible--n'est-ce pas, monsieur? But my home," Duchemin added, "is Paris."
"I guess," said Phinuit in a tone of singular disappointment, "it must have been there I saw you."
Duchemin's bow signified that he was content to let it go at that. Moreover, Monk was signalling to Phinuit with his expressive eyebrows.
"What about the car, Phin?"
Examining his wrist watch, Phinuit drew near his employer. "Jules should not need more than half an hour now, monsieur."
Was there, in this employment of French to respond to a question couched in English, the suggestion of a subtle correction? From employé to employer? If not, why must Duchemin have thought so? If so, why did Monk, without betraying a sign of feeling the reproof, continue in French?
"Did Jules say half an hour?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"My God!" Monk addressed the company: "If I were pressed for time, I would rather have one of Jules' half-hours than anybody else's hour and a half."
"Let us hope, however," the Comtesse de Lorgnes interposed sweetly, "by that time this so dreadful tempest will have moderated."
"One has that hope," her husband uttered in a sepulchral voice.
"But, if the storm continue," Madame de Sévénié said, "you must not think of travelling farther--on such a night. The château is large, there is ample accommodation for all..."
There was a negligible pause, during which Duchemin saw the long lashes of the Comtesse de Lorgnes curtain momentarily her disastrous violet eyes: it was a sign of assent. Immediately it was followed by the least of negative movements of her head. She was looking directly at Phinuit, who, so far as Duchemin could see, made no sign of any sort, who neither spoke nor acted on the signals which, indubitably, he had received. On the other hand, it was Monk who acknowledged the proffered courtesy.
"Madame de Sévénié is too good, but we could not dream of imposing ... No, but truly, madame, I am obliged to ask my guests to proceed with me to Millau to-night regardless of the weather. Important despatches concerning my business await me there; I must consider them and reply by cable to-night without fail. It is really of the most pressing necessity. Otherwise we should be honoured..."
Madame de Sévénié inclined her head. "It must be as monsieur thinks best."
"But Monsieur Monk!" madame la comtesse exclaimed with vivacity: "do you know what I have just discovered? You and Madame de Montalais are compatriots. She is of your New York. You must know each other."
"I have been wondering," Monk admitted, bowing to Eve, "if it were possible I could be misled by a strong resemblance."
Eve turned to him with a look of surprise. "Yes, monsieur?"
"It is many years ago, you were a young girl then, if it was truly you, madame; but I have a keen eye for beauty, I do not soon forget it ... I was in the private office of my friend, Edmund Anstruther, of Cottier's, one afternoon, selecting a trinket with his advice, and--"
"That was my father, monsieur."
"Then it was you, madame; I felt sure of it. You came in unannounced, to see your father. He made me known to you as a friend of his, and requested you to wait in an adjoining office. But that was not necessary, I had already made up my mind, I left almost immediately. Do you by any chance remember?"
The effort of the memory knitted Eve's brows; but in the end she shook her head. "I am sorry, monsieur--"
"But why should you be? Why should you have remembered me? You were a young girl, then, as I say, and I already a man of middle age. You saw me once, for perhaps two minutes. It would have been a miracle had I remained in your memory for as long as a single day. Nevertheless,Iremembered."
"I am so glad to meet a friend of my father's, monsieur."
"And I to recall myself to his daughter. I have often wondered ... Would you mind telling me something, Madame de Montalais?"
"If I can..."
"Your father and I entertained one passion in common, one which he was better able than I to gratify, for good diamonds and emeralds. I have often wondered what became of his collection. He had some superb stones."
"I inherited them, monsieur."
"They did not find their way into Cottier's stock, then?"
The Comtesse de Lorgnes gave a gesture of excitement. "But what a fortunate woman! You truly have those magnificent emeralds, those almost matchless diamonds, of which one has heard--the Anstruther collection?"
"I have them, Madame la Comtesse," said Eve with a smiling nod--"yes."
"But, one presumes, in Paris, in some impregnable strong-box."
"No, madame, here."
"But not here, Madame de Montalais!" To this Eve gave another nod and smile. "But are you not afraid--?"
"Of what, madame? That they will be stolen? No. They have been in my possession for years--indeed, I should be unhappy otherwise, for I have inherited my father's fondness for them--and nobody has ever even attempted to steal them."
"But what of the affair at Montpellier the other night?" enquired the Comte de Lorgnes--"that terrible attack upon you of which Madame de Sévénié has just told us? Surely you would call that an attempt to steal."
"Simple highway robbery, if you like, monsieur le comte. But even had it proved successful, I had very few jewels with me. All that mattered, all that I would have minded losing, were here, in a safe place."
"Nevertheless," said Monk--"if you will permit me to offer a word of advice--I think you are very unwise."
"It may be, monsieur."
"Nonsense!" Madame de Sévénié declared. "Who would dare attempt to burglarise the Château de Montalais? Such a thing was never heard of."
"There is always the first time for everything, Madame," Monk suggested gently. "I fancy it was your first experience of the sort, at Montpellier."
"A rascally chauffeur from Paris, a few low characters of the department. Since the war things are not as they were."
"That is the very reason why I suggest, madame--"
"But, monsieur, I assure you all my life I have lived at Montalais. Monsieur le curé will tell you I know every face hereabouts. And I know that these poor country-folk, these good-natured dolts of peasants have not the imagination, much less the courage--"
"But what of criminals from outside, from the great cities, from London and Paris and Berlin? They have the imagination, the courage, the skill; and if they ever get wind of the fortune Madame de Montalais keeps locked up here..."
"What of the Lone Wolf?" the Comtesse de Lorgnes added. "I have heard that one is once more in France."
Duchemin blinked incredulously at the speaker. "But when did you hear that, madame la comtesse?"
"Quite recently, monsieur."
"I had understood that the monsieur in question had long since retired."
"Only for the duration of the war, monsieur, I am afraid."
"It is true, according to all reports," the Comte de Lorgnes said: "Monsieur Lanyard--that was the name, was it not?"
"If memory serves, monsieur le comte," Duchemin agreed.
"Yes." The count screwed his chubby features into a laughable mask of gravity. "Now one remembers quite well. He passed as a collector of objets d'art, especially of fine paintings, in Paris, for years before the War--this Monsieur Michael Lanyard. Then he disappeared. It was rumoured that he was of good service to the Allies as a spy, acting independently; and after the Armistice, I have heard, he did well for England in the matter of a Bolshevist conspiracy over there. But not long ago, according to my information, Monsieur the Lone Wolf resigned from the British Secret Service and returned to France--doubtless to resume his old practices."
"Perhaps not," Duchemin suggested. "Possibly his reformation was genuine and lasting."
The Comtesse de Lorgnes laughed that laugh of light derision which is almost exclusively the laugh of the Parisienne of a certain class. Remarking this, Duchemin eyed her mildly.
"Madame la Comtesse does not believe that. Well--who knows?--perhaps she is right. Possibly she knows more of the nature and habits of the criminal classes than we, sharing as she does, no doubt, the apparently accurate and precise sources of information of monsieur le comte."
"At all events," Phinuit put in promptly, "I know what I would do if I possessed a little fortune in jewels, and learned that a thief of the ability of this Lone Wolf was at large in France: I would charter an armoured train to convey the loot to the strongest safe deposit vault in Paris."
"Thereby advertising to the Lone Wolf the exact location of the jewels, monsieur, so that he might at his leisure make his plans perfect to burglarise the vaults?"
"Is that likely?" Phinuit jeered.
Duchemin gave a slight shrug.
"One has heard that the fellow had real ability," he said.
The servant Jean came in, caught the eye of Madame de Sévénié, and announced:
"The chauffeur of Monsieur Monk wishes me to say he has completed repairs on the automobile, and the rain has ceased."
Duchemin took back with him to Nant, that night, not only monsieur le curé in the hired calèche, but food in plenty for thought, together with a nebulous notion, which by the time he woke up next morning had taken shape as a fixed conviction, that he had better resign himself to stop on indefinitely at the Grand Hôtel de l'Univers and ... see what he should see.
That fatality on which he had so bitterly reflected when; acting as emergency coachman en route from Montpellier-le-Vieux to La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite, had him now fairly by the heels, as it were his very shadow, something as tenacious, as inescapable. Or he had been given every excuse for believing that such was the case. Impossible--and the more so the longer he pondered it--to credit to mere coincidence the innuendoes uttered at the château by Mr. Monk and his party.
No: there had been malice in that, Duchemin was satisfied, if not some darker purpose which perplexed the most patient scrutiny.
Now malice without incentive is unthinkable. But Duchemin searched his memory in vain for anything he could have said or done to make anybody desire to discredit him in the sight of the ladies of the Château de Montalais. Still the attempt so to do had been unmistakable: the Lone Wolf had been lugged into the conversation literally by his legendary ears.
Surely, one would think, that nocturnal prowler of pre-War Paris had been so long dead and buried even the most ghoulish gossip should respect his poor remains and not disinter them merely to demonstrate that the Past can never wholly die!
Had he, then, some enemy of old hidden under one of those sleek surfaces?
An excellent visual memory reviewed successively the physical characteristics of Messieurs Monk, Phinuit and de Lorgnes, and their chauffeur Jules; with the upshot that Duchemin could have sworn that he had never before known any of these.
And Madame la Comtesse? In respect of that one memory again drew a blank, but remained unsatisfied. When one thought of her some remote, faint chord of reminiscence thrilled and hummed, but never recognisably. Not that there was anything remarkable in this: if one cared to look for them, the world was thronged with women such as she, handsome, spirited, well-groomed animals endued with some little distinction of manner, native or acquired, with every appeal to the senses and more or less, generally spurious, to the intelligence. They made the theatre possible in France, leavened the social life of the half-world, fluttered conspicuously and often disastrously through circles of more sedate society, had their portraits in every Salon, their photographs in every issue of the fashionable journals. Some made history, others fiction: either would be insufferably dull lacking their influence. But they were as much alike as so many peas, out of their several shells, and the man who saw one inevitably remembered all.
Setting aside then the theory of positive personal animus, what other reason could there be for the effort to fasten upon Duchemin suspicion of identity with the late Lone Wolf?
A sinister consideration, if any, and one, Duchemin suspected, not unconnected with the much-talked-about jewels of Madame de Montalais...
But it was absurd to believe that persons fostering a design of such nature would so deliberately and obviously advertise their purpose!
Cheerfully admitting that he was an imbecile to think of such a thing, Duchemin set his mental alarm for six the following morning, rose at that hour, and by eight had tramped the five miles between Nant and the nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde; where he despatched a code telegram to London, requesting any information it might have or be able to obtain concerning Mr. Whitaker Monk of New York and the several members of his party; the said information to be forwarded in code to await the arrival of Andre Duchemin at the Hôtel du Commerce, Millau.
And then, partly to kill time, partly to get himself in trim for to-morrow's trip, which he meant to make strictly in character as the pedestrian tourist, he walked round three sides of a square in returning to Nant--by way, that is, of Sauclières and the upper valley of the Dourbie.
In the rich sunshine that fell from a cloudless sky--even the twin peaks that stood sentinel over Nant had shamelessly put off their yashmaks for the day--the rain-fresh world was sweet to see; and Duchemin found himself consuming leagues with heels strangely light; or he thought their lightness strange until he discovered the buoyance of his heart, which wasn't strange at all. He knew too well the cause of that; and had given over fretting about the inevitable. The sum of his philosophy was now:What must be, must.It would have been difficult to be unhappy in the knowledge that one retained still the capacity to love generously, honourably, expecting nothing, exacting nothing, regretting nothing, not even in anticipation of the ultimate, inevitable heartache.
Toward mid-afternoon a solitary mischance threw a passing shadow upon his content. As he trudged along the river road, on the last lap of his journey--Nant almost in sight--he heard a curious, intermittent rumble on a steep hillside whose foot was skirted by the road, and sought its cause barely in time to leap for life out of the path of a great boulder that, dislodged from its bed, possibly by last night's deluge, was hurtling downhill with such momentum that it must have crushed Duchemin to a pulp had he been less alert.
Striking the road with an impact that left a deep, saucer-shaped dent, with one final bound the huge stone, amid vast splashings, found its last resting place in the river.
Duchemin moved out of the way of the miniature avalanche that followed, and for some minutes stood reviewing with a truculent eye the face of the hillside. But nothing moved thereon, it was quite bare of good cover, little more than a slant of naked earth and shale, dotted manywhere with boulders, cousins to that which sought his life--none, however, so large. If human agency had moved it, the stone had come from the high skyline of the hill; and by the time one could climb to this last, Duchemin was sure, there would be nobody there to find.
The remainder of the afternoon was wasted utterly on the terrasse of the Café de l'Univers, with the château ever in view, wishing it were convenable to make one's duty call without more delay. But it wasn't; not to wait a decent interval would be self-betraying, since Duchemin had no longer any immediate intention of moving on from Nant; finally, he rather hoped to get news at Millau that would strengthen a prayer to Eve de Montalais to be sensible and remove her jewels to a place of safe-keeping before it was too late.
Millau, however, disappointed. At the end of a twenty-mile walk on a day of suffocating heat, Duchemin plodded wearily into the Hôtel du Commerce, engaged a room for the night, and was given a telegram from London which rewarded decoding to some such effect as this:
"MONK AMERICAN INDEPENDENT MEANS GOOD REPUTE NO INFORMATION AS TO OTHERS HAVE ASKED SURÉTÉ CONCERNING LORGNES WOULD GIVE SOMETHING TO KNOW WHAT MISCHIEF YOU ARE MEDDLING WITH THIS TRIP AND WHY THE DEUCE YOU MUST."
Few things are better calculated to curdle the milk of human kindness than to find that one's fellow-man has meanly contrived to keep his reputation fair when one is satisfied it should be otherwise. Duchemin used bitter language in strict confidence with himself, disliked his dinner and, after conscientiously loathing the sights of Millau for an hour or two, sought his bed in the devil's own humour.
Though he waited till eleven of the following forenoon, there was no supplementary telegram: London evidently meant him to understand that the Surété in Paris had communicated nothing to the discredit of Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes and his consort.
Enquiry of the administration of the Hôtel de Commerce elicited the information that the Monk party had stopped there on the night of the storm, doubled back in the morning to visit Montpellier-le-Vieux, returning for midday déjeuner, and had then proceeded for Paris, just like any other well-behaved company of tourists.
There was nothing more to be done but go back to Nant and--what made it even more disgusting--nothing to be done there except ... wait...
Thoroughly disgruntled, more than half persuaded he had staked a claim for a mare's-nest, he took the road in the heat of a day even more oppressive than its yesterday. In the valley of the Dourbie the air was stagnant, lifeless. After eight miles of it Duchemin was guilty of two mistakes of desperation.
In the first instance he paused in La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite and, tormented by thirst, refreshed himself at the auberge where the barouche and guide had been hired to convey the party from Montalais on to Montpellier. The landlord remembered Duchemin and made believe he didn't, serving the wayfarer with a surly grace the only drink he would admit he had to sell, an atrociously acid cider fit to render the last stage of thirst worse than the first.
Duchemin, however, thought it safer than the water of the place, when he had spied out the associations of the well.
He drank sitting on a bench outside the door of the auberge. He could hear the voice of the landlord inside, grumbling and growling, to what purport he couldn't determine. But it wasn't difficult to guess; and before Duchemin was finished he had testimony to the rightness of his surmise, finding himself the cynosure of more than a few pair of eyes set in the ill-favoured faces of natives of La Roque.
One gathered that the dead guide had enjoyed a fair amount of local popularity.
While Duchemin drank and smoked and pored over a pocket-map of the department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a dreary animal, apparently a horse designed by a Gothic architect, mounted, and rode off in the direction of Nant.
Then Duchemin committed his second error of judgment, which consisted in thinking to find better and cooler air on the heights of the Causse Larzac, across the river, together with a shorter way to Nant--indicated on the pocket-map as a by-road running in a tolerably direct line across the plateau--than that which followed the windings of the stream.
Accordingly he crossed the Dourbie, toiled up a zig-zag path cut in the face of the frowning cliff, reached the top in a bath of sweat, and sat down to cool and breathe himself.
The view was splendid, almost worth the climb. Duchemin could see for miles up and down the valley, a panorama wildly picturesque and limned like a rainbow. Across the way La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite stood out prominently and with such definition in that clear air that Duchemin identified the figure of the landlord, standing in the door of the auberge with arms raised and elbows thrust out on a level with his eyes: the pose of a man using field-glasses.
Duchemin wondered if he ought to feel complimented. Then he looked up the valley and saw, far off, a tiny cloud of dust kicked up by the heels of the horse ridden by the boy from the auberge, making good time on the highway to Nant. And again Duchemin wondered...
Having rested, he picked himself up, found his road, a mere trail of wagon tracks, and mindful of the cooling drinks to be had in the Café de l'Univers, put his best foot foremost.
After a time something, call it instinct, impelled him to look back the way he had come. Half a mile distant he saw the figure of a peasant following the same road. Duchemin stopped and waited for the other to come up, thinking to get a better look at him, perhaps some definite information about the road and in particular as to his chances of finding drinkable water. But when he stopped the man stopped, sat him down upon a rock, filled a pipe, and conspicuously rested.
Duchemin gave an impatient gesture and moved on. After another mile he glanced overshoulder again. The same peasant occupied the same relative distance from him.
But if the fellow were following him with a purpose, he could readily lose himself in that wild land before Duchemin could run him down; and if, on the contrary, he proved to be only a peaceable wayfarer, he was bound to be a dull companion on the road, and an unsavory one to boot. So Duchemin did nothing to discourage his voluntary shadow; but looking back from time to time, never failed to see that squat, round-shouldered figure in the middle distance of the landscape, following him with the doggedness of Fate. Toward evening, however, of a sudden--between two glances--the fellow disappeared as completely and mysteriously as if he had fallen or dived into an aven.
Thus definite mental irritation was added to the physical discomforts he suffered. For if anything it was hotter on the high causse than it had been in the valley. An intermittent breeze imitated to vicious perfection draughts from a furnace. And if this were a short cut to Nant, Duchemin's judgment was gravely at fault.
Otherwise the journey was not unlike an exaggerated version of his walk from Meyrueis to Montpellier-le-Vieux, except that the road was clearly marked and he found less climbing to do. He saw neither hamlets nor farmsteads, and found no water. By the middle of the afternoon his thirst had become sheer torture.
In dusk of evening he stumbled down into the valley again and struck the river road about midway between the Château de Montalais and Nant. At this junction several dwellings clustered, in that fading light dark masses on either side of the road. Duchemin noticed a few shadowy shapes loitering about, but was too far gone in fatigue and thirst to pay them any heed. He had no thought but to stop at the first house and beg a cup of water. As he lifted a hand to knuckle the door he was attacked.
With no more warning than a cry, the signal for the onslaught, and the sudden scuffling noise of several pair of feet, he wheeled, found himself already closely pressed by a number of men, and struck out at random. His stick landed on somebody's head with a resounding thump followed by a yell of pain. Then three men were grappling with him, two more seeking to aid them, and another lay in the roadway clutching a fractured skull and spitting oaths and groans.
His stick was seized and wrenched away, he was over-whelmed by numbers. The knot of struggling figures toppled and went to the dust, Duchemin underneath, so weighed down that he could not for the moment move a hand toward his pistol.
Half-stifled by the reek of unwashed flesh, he heard broken phrases growled in voices hoarse with effort and excitement:
"The knife!" ... "Hold him!" ... "Stand clear and let me--!" ... "The knife!"
Struggling madly, he worked a leg free and kicked with all his might. One of his assailants howled aloud and fell back to nurse a broken shin. Two others scrambled out of the way, leaving one to pin him down with knees upon his chest, another to wield the knife.
Staring eyes caught a warning gleam on descending steel. Duchemin squirmed frantically to one side, and felt cold metal kiss the skin over his ribs as the blade penetrated his clothing, close under the armpit.
Before the man with the knife could strike again, Duchemin, roused to a mightier effort, threw off the ruffian on his chest, got on his knees and, raining blows right and left as the others closed in again, somehow managed to scramble to his feet.
Fist-work told. For an instant he stood quite free, the centre of a circle of uncertain assassins whose cowardice gave him time to whip out his pistol. But before he could level it a man was on his back, his wrist was seized and the weapon twisted from his grasp.
A cry of triumph was echoed by exclamations of alarm as, disarmed, Duchemin was again left free, the thugs standing back to let the pistol do its work. In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a nearby corner and smote the group: the twin, glaring eyes of a motor car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies.
Duchemin's cry for help was uttered only an instant before his pistol exploded in alien hands. The headlights showed him distinctly the face of the man who fired, the same face of fat features black with soot that he had seen by moonlight at Montpellier-le-Vieux.
But the bullet went wild, and the automobile did not stop, but drove directly at the group and so swiftly that the flash of the shot was still vivid in Duchemin's vision when the car swept between him and those others, scattering them like chickens.
Simultaneously the brakes were set, the dark bulk began to slide with locked wheels to a stop, and a voice cried: "Quickly, monsieur, quickly!"--the voice of Eve de Montalais.
In two bounds Duchemin overtook the car and before it had come to a standstill leaped upon the running-board and grasped the side. He had one glimpse of the set white face of Eve, en profile, as she bent forward, manipulating the gear-shift. Then the pistol spat again, its bullet struck him a blow of sickening agony in the side.
Aware that he was dangerously wounded, he put all that he had left of strength and will into one final effort, throwing his body across the door. As he fell sprawling into the tonneau consciousness departed like a light withdrawn.
In the course of two weeks or so Duchemin was able to navigate a wheeled chair, bask on the little balcony outside his bedchamber windows in the Château de Montalais, and even--strictly against orders--take experimental strolls.
The wound in his side still hurt like the very deuce at every ill-considered movement; but Duchemin was ever the least patient of men unless the will that coerced him was his own; constraint to another's, however reasonable, irked him to exasperation; so that these falterings in forbidden ways were really (as he assured Eve de Montalais when, one day, she caught him creeping round his room, one hand pressed against the wall for support, the other to his side) in the nature of a sop to his self-respect.
"You've only got to tell me not to do a thing often enough," he commented as she led him back to his chair, "to fill me with unholy desire to do it if I die in the attempt."
"Isn't that a rather common human failing?" she asked, wheeling the invalid chair through one of the french windows to the balcony.
"That's what makes it all seem so unfair."
Smiling, the woman turned the back of the chair to the brightest glare of sunshine, draped a light rug over the invalid's knees, and seated herself in a wicker chair, facing him.
"Makes all what seem so unfair?"
"The indignity of being born human." He accepted a cigarette and waxed didactic: "The one thing that the ego can find to reconcile it with existence is belief in its own uniquity."
"I don't think," she interrupted with a severe face belied by amused eyes, "that sounds quite nice."
"Uniquity? Because it sounds like iniquity? They are not unrelated. What makes iniquity seem attractive is as a rule its departure from the commonplace."
"But you were saying--?"
"Merely it's our personal belief that our emotions and sensations and ways of thought are peculiar to ourselves, individually, that sometimes makes the game seem worth the scandal."
"Yes: one presumes we all do think that..."
"But no sooner does one get firmly established in that particular phase of self-complacence than along comes Life, grinning like a gamin, and kicks over our pretty house of cards--shows us up to ourselves by revealing our pet, exclusive idiosyncrasies as simple infirmities all mortal flesh is heir to."
"Monsieur is cynic..."
"Madame means obvious. Well: if I patter platitudes it is to conceal a sense of gratification." Eve arched her eyebrows. "I mean, you have shown me that I share at least one quality with you: instinctive resentment of the voice of reason."
She pronounced a plaintive "Mon Dieu!" and appealing to Heaven for compassion declared: "He means again to wrestle spiritually with me about the proper disposition of my jewels."
"No, madame: pardon. I am contemplating a long series of exhaustive arguments designed to prove it your duty to leave your jewels where they are, in all their noble insecurity. This in the firm belief that to plead with you long enough to adopt this course will result in your going and doing otherwise out of sheer..."
"Perversity, monsieur?"
"Humanity, madame!"
Eve de Montalais laughed the charming, low-keyed laugh of a happily diverted woman.
"But spare yourself, monsieur. I surrender at discretion: I will do as you wish."
"Truly? Rather than listen to my discourse, you actually agree to remove your jewels to a safe place?"
"Even so, monsieur. As soon as you are able to get about, and the Château de Montalais lacks a guest, I will leave Louise to take care of madame ma mère for a few days while I journey to Paris--"
"Alone?"
"But naturally."
"Taking your jewels with you?"
"Why else do I go?"
"But, madame, you must not--"
"And why?"
"You, a woman! travel alone to Paris with a treasure in jewels? Ah, no! I should say not!"
"Monsieur is emphatic," Eve suggested demurely.
"Monsieur means to be. Rather than let you run such a risk I would steal the jewels myself, convey them to Paris, put them in safe keeping, and send you the receipt."
"What a lot of trouble monsieur would save me, if he would only be so kind as to do as he threatens."
"And how amusing if he were arrested en route," Duchemin supplemented with a wry smile.
"I am quite confident of your ability to elude the police, monsieur."
"Do I hear you compliment me?"
"If you take it so..."
"But suppose you were not confident of my good will?"
"Impossible."
"Madame is too flattering; one is sure she is too wise to put so great a temptation in the way of any man."
"Monsieur is the reverse of flattering; he implies that one does not know where one can repose trust."
"I must warn madame there are those in this world who would call her faith misplaced."
"Doubtless. But what of that? Am I to distrust you because others might who do not know you so well?"
"But--madame--you can hardly claim to know me well.
"Listen, my friend." Eve de Montalais flicked away her cigarette and sat forward, elbows on knees, hands laced, her level gaze holding his. "It is true, our acquaintance is barely three weeks old; but you do injustice to my insight if you assume I have learned nothing about you in all that time. You have not been secretive with me. The mask you hold between yourself and the world, lest it pry into what does not concern it, has been lowered when you have talked with me; and I have had eyes to see what was revealed--"
"Ah, madame!"
"--the nature of a man of honour, monsieur, simple of heart and generous, as faithful as he is brave."
Eve had spoken impulsively, with warmth of feeling unrealised until too late. Now slow colour mantled her cheeks. But her eyes remained steadfast, candid, unashamed. It was Duchemin who dropped his gaze, abashed.
And though nothing had any sense in his understanding other than the words which he had just heard from the lips of the woman who held his love--as he had known now these many days--some freak of dual consciousness made him see, for the first time, in that moment, how oddly bleached and wasted seemed the powerful, nervous, brown hands that rested on his knees. And he thought: It will be long before I am strong again.
With a troubled smile he said: "I would give much to be worthy of what you think of me, madame. And I would be a poor thing indeed if I failed to try to live up to your faith."
"You will not fail," she replied. "What you are, you were before my faith was, and will be afterwards, when..."
She did not finish, but of a sudden recollected herself, lounged back in her chair, and laughed quietly, with humorous appeal to his sympathy.
"So, that is settled: I am not to be permitted to take my jewels to Paris alone. What then, monsieur?"
"I would suggest you write your bankers," said Duchemin seriously, "and tell them that you contemplate bringing to Paris some valuables to entrust to their care. Say that you prefer not to travel without protection, and request them to send you two trusted men--detectives, they may call them--to guard you on the way. They will do so without hesitation, and you may then feel entirely at ease."
"Not otherwise, you think?"
"Not otherwise, I feel sure."
"But why? You have been so persistent about this matter, monsieur. Ever since that night when those curious people stopped here in the rain.... Can it be that you suspect them of evil designs upon my trinkets?" Duchemin shrugged. "Who knows, madame, what they were? You call them 'curious'; for my part I find the adjective apt."
"I fancy I know what you thought about them..."
"And that is--?"
"That they rather led the conversation to the subject of my jewels."
"Such was my thought, indeed."
"Perhaps you were right. If so, they learned all they needed to know."
"Except possibly the precise location of your strong box."
"They may have learned even that."
"How, madame?"
"I don't know; but if they were what you suspect they were, they were clever people, far more clever than poor provincials like us." She took a moment for thought. "But I am puzzled by their harping on the subject of--I think they called him the Lone Wolf. Now why should they do that?"
Duchemin was constrained to take refuge in another shrug. "Who knows?" he iterated. "If they were as clever as we assume, doubtless they were clever enough to have a motive even for that."
"He really existed, this Lone Wolf? He was more than a creature of fable?"
"Assuredly, madame. For years he was the nightmare and the scourge of people of wealth in every capital of Europe."
"Why did they call him the Lone Wolf, do you know?"
"I believe some imaginative Parisian journalist fixed that sobriquet on him, in recognition of the theory upon which, apparently, he operated."
"And that was--?"
"That a criminal, at least a thief, to be successful must be absolutely anonymous and friendless; in which case nobody can betray him. As madame probably understands, criminals above a certain level of intelligence are seldom caught by the police except through the treachery of accomplices. The Lone Wolf seems to have exercised a fair amount of ingenuity and prudence in making his coups; and inasmuch as he had no confederates, not a living soul in his confidence, there was no one who could sell him to the authorities."
"Still, in the end--?"
"Oh, no, madame. He was never caught. He simply ceased to thieve."
"I wonder why..."
"I believe because he fell in love and considered good faith with the object of his affections incompatible with a career of crime."
"So he gave up crime. How romantic! And the woman: did she appreciate the sacrifice?"
"While she lived, yes, madame. Or so they say. Unfortunately, she died."
"And then--?"
"So far as is known the converted enemy to Society did not backslide; the Lone Wolf never prowled again."
"An extraordinary story."
"But is not every story that has to do with the workings of the human soul? What one of us has not buried in him a story quite as strange? Even you--"
"Monsieur deceives himself. I am simply--what you see."
"But what I see is not simple, but complex and intriguing beyond expression. A woman of your sort walling herself up in a wilderness, renouncing the world, renouncing life itself in its very heyday--!"
"But hardly that, monsieur."
"Then I am stupid..."
"I will explain." The sleekly coiffured brown head bent low over hands that played absently with their jewels. "To a woman of my sort, monsieur, life is not life without love. I lived once for a little time, then love was taken out of my life. When my sorrow had spent itself, I knew that I must find love again if I were to go on living. What was I to do? I knew that love is not found through seeking. So I waited..."
"Such philosophy is rare, madame."
"Philosophy? No: I will not call it that. It was knowledge--the heart wise in its own wisdom, surpassing mine, telling me that if I would but be patient love would one day seek me out again, wherever I might wait, and give me once more--life."
She rose and went to the window, paused there, turning back to Duchemin a face composed but fairer for a deepened flush.
"But this is not writing to my bankers, monsieur," she said in a changed but steady voice. "I must do that at once if I am to get the letter in to-day's post."
"If madame will accept the advice of one not without some experience..."
"What else does monsieur imagine I am doing?"
"Then you will write privately and burn your blotting paper; after which you will post the letter with your own hands, letting nobody see the address."
"And when shall I say I will make the journey?"
"As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais."
"That will be in three days..."
"Or less."
"As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais."
"That will be in three days..."
"Or less." "But you will not be strong enough to leave us within another week."
"What has that to do--?"
"This: that I refuse positively to go away while you are our guest, monsieur. Somebody must watch over you and see that you come to no harm."
"But madame--!"
"No: I am quite resolved. Monsieur has too rare a genius for getting in the way of danger. I shall not leave the château before you do. So I shall set this day week for the date of my journey."