"Oh, my dear fellow," cried Laurent, bursting rather unceremoniously into his friend's bedroom, "what a divine creature your mare is! To-day's was the best gallop I have ever had. It is a thousand shames that you yourself—— What on earth are you doing, Aymar?"
For in the middle of the room, with his back to him, Aymar was on his knees before a little portmanteau. He did not look up, and for a moment did not answer, but folded and refolded a coat which had previously been lying in a huddle in the valise.
"I am going away," he said at length.
"Going away!" repeated Laurent, stupefied. "Now? Not to-day, surely! And where? . . . Aymar!"
He came towards him with the intention of putting a hand on his shoulder, but before he reached him Aymar had risen and was at the window. Standing there, still with his back to him, he said very low, "Everything has gone now, Laurent—everything."
The breeze fluttered the curtain, and except for that there was silence. But the hopeless pain in his voice seemed to go on vibrating after he had spoken.
"Who has told her?" asked Laurent after a long pause.
"Eulalie. She had got it out of Vaubernier after all."
"And she—Mme de Villecresne?" But there seemed no way in which the question could be put. Its answer indeed was the little valise gaping on the floor.
Aymar turned round. "Mme de Morsan did it deliberately, from malice, in the worst way she could. And the shock . . . I tried to explain but, having had to lie the other day . . . it was too difficult for her . . . my cousin . . ." He broke off and indicated the valise. "I must finish that. I suppose they will have taken the saddle off Hirondelle by now?"
Very gently Laurent laid his hand on his shoulder. "Mon ami, you cannot go like this. And you cannot ride Hirondelle, or any other horse, just yet."
Aymar shook his head. "It is of no use, Laurent. I must go. You have galloped Hirondelle. Besides, she does not pull. Perhaps you will fasten this for me? I think I have all I want."
Laurent looked at him, deeply troubled. What was he to do? "You will let me come, too, then, Aymar, will you not? Any horse will serve for me."
"No, I am afraid I cannot let you come."
Impossible to be hurt or offended. The situation was beyond that. "But where are you going?"
Once more Aymar shook his head, and, as Laurent had not moved, knelt down again by the valise. But Laurent lifted it to a chair and strapped it up in silence. As he finished there came the earthquake quiver of the door which testified that Sarrasin had let himself down against it outside.
When he looked round Aymar was standing motionless, gazing at something in his hand.
"It was on the floor. It must have been in the pocket of that coat, which I was wearing the night it broke. . . . And I come on it againnow!"
Laurent came to look. It was the lostjartier, symbol now of so much that was lost. Aymar gave a little laugh, and crushing it together threw it across the room towards the fireplace. Laurent had an impulse, soon gone, to protest; but what did it matter now?
"You will at least write to me, to Paris?" he said pleadingly. "Aymar, do consider——"
"Yes, I will write." He had pulled down a cloak. "It is only that I must get away to . . . to think things over. I have written a note to my grandmother. I dare not see her—she would guess."
An idea struck Laurent. He went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder once more. "Aymar, unless you will give me your word of honour that you are not going away to do . . . what you spoke of in the cave . . . Ishallaccompany you!"
The faintest trace of a smile came. "Dear Laurent! . . . I give you my word."
"May I at least come down the avenue with you?"
"Please. And . . . forgive my leaving you—your last night. I am ashamed . . . but I cannot stay till to-morrow."
Laurent made a gesture. "As if you ever needed to apologize to me!"
When they got to the door of the room he said suddenly, "Has Mme de Morsan left the house?"
"Yes, about an hour ago."
"Thank Heaven! Because—I suppose men have shot women before now!"
Again there was an almost imperceptible flicker of amusement.
"Who do you propose should do it, Laurent—you or I?"
"I, by God! Don't tell me which way she has gone!"
"Long ago," said Aymar de la Rocheterie reflectively, his hand on the door knob, his eyes, wide and dark with pain, fixed on him, "long ago I found, Laurent, that there never was a partisan like you. Nor a friend. Nor one who understood so well. . . . You do understand why I must go alone now?"
"Yes," said Laurent. And he added, with a miserable little laugh, "There is another partisan on the other side of the door who will not, however. You had better take him with you."
"No," answered Aymar, opening the door. Sarrasin was up in a second, his eyes on the cloak over his arm. "Go in and lie down, Sarrasin," said his master. "You cannot come with me."
The great dog gave him a long, melancholy look, licked his hand, and went in like a puzzled but obedient child.
There happened to be nobody in the stable-yard when they got there. Hirondelle was still bridled. Laurent slipped her saddle on again and helped Aymar into it.
He walked down the avenue by him in a dream. Nothing seemed to be true. He had never seen his friend on a horse before, and thought he should never henceforward see him, in memory, anywhere else. Save for his face, he looked so supremely himself there. But how long would he be able to stay in the saddle?
At the gates Aymar spoke at last. "I think, perhaps, that I will go to Eveno for a little. That is instead of taking Sarrasin with me. . . ." He had reined up. "I will not sleep in a ditch, Laurent. I will not throw away all the care—the unspeakable care—you have lavished on this very useless body; and I will write to you—soon. And for this going . . . forgive me again!"
He bent from the saddle and kissed him on either cheek; then Hirondelle carried him between the stone-balled gateposts. The sunlight struck across him; after that he was engulfed in the green gloom of the chestnuts. He did not turn round. Laurent watched him for a little; then he suddenly leant against the post with his arm over his eyes. When he removed it the road was empty.
"Perhaps we had better not wait any longer for my cousin," said Mme de Villecresne at last to the guest. "He must be out, I think."
The two of them were alone in the salon. Supper had been announced five minutes ago, since which event Laurent had been grimly waiting to cast his bombshell—as, obviously, it had not already been cast.
"Heisout," he replied briefly. "I would have told you before, Madame, had I realized that it was for him that you were waiting." (For until that moment he had forgotten that Mme de la Rocheterie was not going to make her appearance at the meal.)
The news discomposed his companion, he could see. Did she then expect Aymar to come and sup with them as if nothing had happened?
"How strange!" she murmured. "Did he say, Monsieur de Courtomer, at what time he intended to return?"
"No, Madame. He has gone away, I fear—if not for good, at least for some time. So, if you will allow me——"
He held out his arm. But Avoye de Villecresne stood perfectly still; she had gone white, then red, and was now white again. Oh, how was it possible that with such eyes as hers she could have done it!
"Gone away!" she whispered. But at that moment the door suddenly opened, and admitted Mme de la Rocheterie, on the arm of her elderly maid, colour in her delicate cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. She might be indisposed, but she was clearly very angry. In her hand was a letter.
"That will do, Rose." And when the door had closed she stood in the middle of the room, extremely erect, and said to Laurent, "As my grandson has so little idea of the courtesy due to a guest, to a departing guest, and one to whom he is under such an obligation, I am constrained to take his place. If you will accept my apologies for his extraordinary behaviour, Monsieur de Courtomer, be good enough to give me your arm to the dining-room."
Laurent, petrified, offered it.
The discomfort of the meal was intense. For one thing only was Laurent grateful—that Mme de la Rocheterie was so wroth that, after announcing that the culprit had said he had gone off on business connected with the late Eperviers, she left the subject of Aymar's defection alone, and kept the conversation going on other subjects. Mme de Villecresne, on the contrary, seemed almost dazed.
After supper, half to Laurent's relief, the Vicomtesse withdrew again, leaving her granddaughter to give him coffee in the salon.
Laurent was in reality quite unwilling to accept even this conventional office from the hands of Mme de Villecresne. That he had come to think her charming only made this evening's revulsion fiercer.Shea worthy mate for Aymar, whom she had forsaken in his bitterest need, stabbed when—nay, because—he had endured so much for her! But, though he was brimming with anger against her, he would probably have held his hand if she, too, had not murmured, as she gave him his cup, something not very coherent about an apology. How was he to guess that she was so torn with misery and dismay that she hardly knew what she was saying, and caught at any banality lest she should weep before him?
He drank off the coffee and cleared his decks for action.
"There is no need for apology, Madame," he observed. "The situation is not unfamiliar to me. It reminds me of the evening I spent when M. de la Rocheterie was turned out of Arbelles."
Mme de Villecresne looked faintly startled.
"You mean the evening after he was released?"
"No, Madame. He never was 'released' in the sense commonly attached to that term. He was turned out into the road, weak and ill, at a quarter of an hour's notice—turned out before the eyes of the whole garrison."
The blood began to ebb from Avoye's face. "But why——"
"Why? To humiliate him, and because, weeks earlier, he would not betray M. du Tremblay's plans. The attempt to wring information out of him then, when he was barely able to speak, nearly killed him as it was."
"Tried to wring information out of him—out ofAymar!" repeated Avoye in a horrified voice. "And turned out of Arbelles! But, Monsieur de Courtomer, why have I not been told these things before—why have they been kept from me, and I allowed to think . . ."
Laurent, who had been standing, sat down heavily. "Yes, it might have been better not. But he would do it—anything to spare you a moment's pain."
She stiffened. "I do not like being spared, Monsieur de Courtomer."
"No, Madame. And I know that you are brave; your cousin knows it, too. But it is difficult for a man—for some men, that is" (he did not at the moment feel himself to be of their number) "to hurt a woman when by keeping the hurt to themselves they can spare her."
"I know they think that. They do not realize what a woman—what some women—feel about it. And need sparing a woman involve lying to her?" There was a passion of abhorrence in her tone—then, with extreme suddenness, she caught herself up. "I do not mean, of course, that my cousin lied to me!" And there was almost defiance in the gaze with which she met Laurent's. But as that young man was speechless, trying to digest this remarkable statement, she was able to hurry on to say, "Then I was misled when I thought he was well treated at Arbelles?"
"I verily believe that she is trying to provemethe liar, Aymar having suddenly become so immaculate!" thought Laurent. He replied soberly, "You must pardon me, Madame, but that was not a thing on which anybody consciously misled you. You assumed it, because he had excellent medical attention and was 'released.' But in other respects he was treated abominably—at least when the Colonel was there." And he proceeded to give her a résumé of what Aymar had undergone at their hands, told her how he had found him exhausted under a haystack—in short, what had nearly been the consequence of his "release."
Avoye turned her face away. After a silence she said in a voice whose tremulousness was pierced with terror, "I knew that there was something more amiss with him than wounds! Monsieur de Courtomer, you swore to me . . ."
She became inaudible; all he could catch was the word "decline."
"No, no, Madame," he said quickly, anxious to reassure her (for it was plain that in spite of what she had done she did care). "No, his condition is merely the result of the blood he has lost. The doctor said so clearly, and that it would perhaps be as much as a year before he was strong again."
"How did he come to—to lose so much blood?" she asked faintly. "Was it then so long before the enemy found him after . . . after what happened in the Bois des Fauvettes?"
"Not so very long—not more than an hour perhaps; but you see he struggled hard to get free, and being fastened like that, upright——"
He broke off before the uncomprehending horror of the face she had raised. Was it possible that she did not know that essence of "what had happened in the Bois des Fauvettes"?
"Don't you know?" he jerked out almost mechanically.
"Know what? Struggled to get free . . .fastened. . . Monsieur de Courtomer, what awful thing are you talking about?"
And Laurent cursed himself. Aymar had not told her the worst. Equally, of course, he did not wish her to know it.
"Oh, nothing, Madame," he stammered. "I would not for worlds have mentioned it had I not thought that you knew already."
"O God!" cried the girl rather hysterically, "more things kept from me! For pity's sake, Monsieur, try to forget that I am a woman!"
Laurent, recovering himself, bowed. "If you wish it." And on that, sparing her very little, he did tell her the true and full story of the Bois des Fauvettes. But he had the grace not to look at her meanwhile.
"Aymar made out that it was . . . all over very quickly . . . done in the surprise . . . almost a mistake," she said faintly at the end.
"On the contrary," replied Laurent remorselessly, "it was as protracted and deliberate as I have told you. You can imagine that the Imperialists, finding him in the situation they did, were not likely to show him more consideration than . . . than some of his friends have done since. He was taken to Arbelles, senseless, in a farm cart. How he was looked on there I have told you. One would have thought he had paid enough. . . ."
He was very brutal; he knew it. He was going very far—he did not care. He was so worked up that a very little more would have brought out the story of the ramrod. But there was also a limit to what his hearer could endure. He saw her now get up, and ask him to excuse her "for a few minutes." As he shut the door which he had held open for her he was almost sure that he heard a stifled sob on the other side.
Then he paced up and down the room thinking, "I have done it now! What would Aymar say if he knew! I don't care, I don't care! It was time she heard these things. Look what keeping this from her has resulted in!" And this was his most secret thought: "She has hurt Aymar bitterly, unbearably:but I have hurt her!"
He did not believe that she would reappear that evening; and she did not. By that he knew that his blows had gone home. After waiting a little he wandered round the salon again, coming finally to an anchor in front of the picture of the two children.Thatto end in this! "How could you?" he said to the laughing little girl, and soon afterwards went unhappily, guiltily, yet unrepentantly to bed.
When Laurent came downstairs next morning, after taking his farewell of the Vicomtesse, he was greatly surprised to find Mme de Villecresne, a little ghost in white organdie, in the hall—waiting for him as was evident by her request that he would speak to her, if he had the time. And as he went out with her into the garden, which she seemed to indicate as the scene of their interview, his conscience rather smote him for last evening's free speech. But the mantle of the avenger had not yet fallen from his shoulders. Mme de Villecresne's first words, however, gave the panoply a perceptible twitch.
"I am very grateful to you for speaking to me as you did last night, Monsieur de Courtomer," she said. "I am sure you cannot have liked doing it." (Laurent surveyed the grass at his feet.) "I want, while I still have the chance, to ask you something more."
They were now in the middle of the rose-garden, by the sundial, and here she paused; paused, too, in her speech and looked away. Whatever she was going to ask him was not easy to bring out. He supposed he must give her time, even if he had to hurry for the diligence. So he looked down in silence at the sundial, which assured him in its antiquated French "Icy ne verras que les heures sans nuages," though a later hand had scrawled on the copper of the dial the cynical proviso, "Si de telles heures existent!"
Suddenly it came out, in a voice that shook. "Is it really true that it was all done for me?"
"Yes, Madame," said Laurent.
"Then it is the other story that is not true?" said the voice still more tremblingly.
At that the young man looked at her. "Do you mean the sending of the letter as part of a plan already made?—They are both true."
Mme de Villecresne did not exclaim that that could not be, nor did she ask him how it was possible. She went very slowly to the nearest rose-hedge and picked a rose or two. Then she came back. "That was what Aymar said," she murmured as if to herself. "If I could only see how the two stories are compatible—if I could only see it!" And the roses were clutched in her two hands as if they wore no thorns.
"Shall I try to explain it to you?" suggested Laurent gently. She seemed so young suddenly, only a girl—only his own age. She was amazingly free from rancour, too, considering what his "explanations" of last night had been like for she said, with a really touching gratitude, "Oh, if only you would, Monsieur de Courtomer!"
Over the sundial then, Laurent explained to the very best of his ability, and found himself, like Aymar before him, tracing out the figures there meanwhile.
"But I cannot understand how Aymar could be so deluded!" broke out Mme de Villecresne at the end. "M. de Vaubernier, perhaps . . . but Aymar!"
The advocate reminded her that shehadonce obtained military information for her cousin, as he well knew; reminded her also of the known fate of Marie Lasserre. Before the cruel story of the practical joke he hesitated a moment in his new-found consideration, but for Aymar's sake she must hear it. Only, since she was so pale already, he suggested a move to the stone bench in the corner, and she complied. Then, in the very place where the lying information had, all innocently, been passed on to Aymar, he showed her how convincing it had been.
"And, Madame," he concluded, "put yourself in your cousin's place; suppose yourself waiting for his arrival here in this very garden, and suppose yourself receiving instead news of his desperate peril. And suppose further that you had in your pocket a plan for the destruction of the enemy which you had been on the point already of putting into practice, which indeed only needed the pretext of a bargain to make it plausible. Do you mean to say that you would have gone peaceably to bed and said 'Nothing can be done'?"
"No," she said with a strangled sob. "No, indeed, I would not. And so he was tricked . . . tricked. . . . All this misery . . ." As she twisted her now empty hands in an effort to keep her composure Laurent saw how her roses had wounded them. "Yet Aymar told me," she went on, recovering herself, and facing him as pale and piteous as a child, "Aymar told me . . . some things that were not true . . . that were not true at all! I could not have believed that he would tell the merest fraction of a lie—even to spare me."
Laurent could not bear those little scratched hands, and in an almost fatherly way he took out his pocket-handkerchief. "If you will permit me, Madame . . ." and he dabbed at the beads of blood, the girl apparently quite oblivious of what he was doing. "I could not have believed that he would lie," she repeated.
Yes, that was the main stumbling-block of the situation. And Aymar had known it, too.
"No, I can quite understand your feeling that about him," said Aymar's friend, loosing the passive hands. "I should think that a more naturally truthful person does not exist. And yet, Madame, there are instincts . . . For instance, I dare say it has not struck you that last night, to shield him, you told a lie yourself?"
"I?" she exclaimed, and a flush stained her pallor.
"It was so instinctive that you have forgotten it already. I expect you were hardly aware of it at the time. Yet, to protect him from what I might think of him you told me, in so many words, that your cousin had not lied to you. Can you deny that?"
He smiled at her. He did feel himself rather like a wise uncle now—an odd sensation.
The flush ran over Avoye's face again. She dropped her eyes to a tiny red spot on her muslin gown. "That is quite true," she murmured.
"Do you think he would ever lie to save himself," went on Laurent, pursuing his advantage, "any more than you would?"
She shook her head mutely. "But, Monsieur de Courtomer, if he had not kept me so much in the dark—let me think that I knew it all—left me to be enlightened by Mme de Morsan . . . it is that which hurts so."
"Yes, I dare say that was a mistake," assented Laurent, feeling about sixty by this time. "It was a risk, but only his consideration for you prompted him to take it. Yet, as far as that goes, were not you and he leagued together to keep your grandmother a great deal more in the dark? Did that trouble you—the thought of what was being kept from her?"
Avoye raised her eyes and looked at him. "No," she said. "It seemed the only, the right thing to do."
"One does those things instinctively, you see, with those one cares for," the sagacious young man pointed out to her.
She pondered this, her eyes downcast. Never could the mentor beside her have imagined himself admitted into so much intimacy. Heaven send he had made good use of it! He sat quite motionless, for it was a thousand times better to miss the diligence altogether than to cut short this wonderful chance she had given him. Aymarcouldnot have explained fully to her yesterday, or else she had been in no state to comprehend the explanation.
As he revolved this conclusion Avoye herself said suddenly, "But I am forgetting; you will miss the coach if I keep you longer." She rose, growing less the child. "I can never thank you properly, Monsieur de Courtomer, for what you have done. At least now I understand." Her lip suddenly trembled. "I have really heard everything now, have I not?"
"Everything that matters," replied Laurent after a second's hesitation. The ramrod story had so thin a connection with her, and it would horrify her so—and his last night's desire to do this was now as dead as last night's dreams. "No," he exclaimed abruptly, "thereisone fact more I should like you to know. Your cousin has done many brave things in his career, but you have never heard the bravest. And it was done for you."
Therewith he sat down again and told her the story of the interview with Colonel Richard.
There did not seem to be any place remote enough to shelter her grief and her remorse. Not the house, where Grand'mère might at any time find or summon her; not the rose-garden, where she, the faithless lover, had just said farewell to the faithful friend; not the orchard, where she had once been comforted . . . with lies, as she had said to Aymar yesterday. Theywerelies . . . but he was not a liar. Yet she had told him that he was—told him that he had sold his honour, flung his justification back in his face. At the one moment in their lives when her trust in him should have stood firm it had snapped like rotten thread. After all that he had suffered for her sake it had remained for her, who loved him, to give him the last, the intolerable, enduring wound—the lover who, as she had just learnt, had not spared to crucify for her his pride and his most intimate feelings, and make an appeal to his victorious enemy for silence. And this Colonel Richard, a stranger, a foe, who knew everything, had taken his hand—whereas she . . .
The Aven, by which at last she sat dry-eyed, with a pain in her breast as though it were her own heart, and not Aymar's, which she had stabbed, rippled contentedly through the pastures . . . on its way to Pont-aux-Rochers. Yes, and despite the strain, the unfulfilment, it seemed to her now that these past years at Sessignes had been like this placid and contented stream, compared with the torment into which one hour had hurried her life. Oh, if only she had been able to keep the pale sunshine of those days, even though it should never have been transmuted into a brighter radiance! They would never come again—never, never.
The Aven smiled assent; a wagtail walked alertly at the brink, and the martins swooped above it. But it was going to Pont-aux-Rochers . . .
That afternoon Anselme, Aymar's man, came to her and apologetically asked her if she had enough influence to get Sarrasin out of M. le Vicomte's room, as he refused to stir or to let any of the servants enter. She went in to try. She might have hesitated had she realized how full the empty room would be of Aymar's presence, and how poignantly the traces of his hasty departure would smite at her—the disorder which no one had repaired because Sarrasin would not admit even Anselme into the sanctuary which he was guarding. She could not bear to look at them, and turned her attention instead on the guardian himself who, having risen at her entrance with a soberly wagging tail, was now thrusting his nose into her hand. But even as she looked at him he stalked back to his post by the bed, and lay down in his former attitude, his nose on his paws.
Avoye walked to the door calling him, telling him he must come out of the room. But he only looked at her; he did not stir. The childish thought then came to her that, wise as he was, he knew that his master was soon coming back, and that his refusing to move was a sign of this. But she must put his knowledge to a genuine test, for if he consented to come away, it would show that Aymar was not returning. So she took a coat lying on a chair and showed it to him, and while he sniffed at it she told him that he must take care of it downstairs. Then, going to the door, she held it out to him and called him. He lifted his head and gazed at her earnestly with his wonderful, inscrutable eyes, and she looked back at him and said in her heart, "Oh,don't come, Sarrasin!" Then with a sigh he got up and came to the door.
So she knew that Aymar was not coming back. She stood with the coat pressed closely to her and eyes that were beginning to swim; then she opened the door, called to a passing servant, told her to take the coat and the dog downstairs, and going back turned the key in the lock.
"I cannot bear to see you . . ." Well, she had her wish; she could not see him; she would never see him at Sessignes again. There was no danger of his finding her here in his room, any more than there was a chance of unsaying what she had said, of begging him to listen, to believe that she had spoken in the confusion of shock and fear. He was gone.
He was gone, and on the hearthstone, broken and thrown aside, lay the uselessjartier. Had it been thrown there because he felt that all it represented was over for him now? Oh no, no, no! He might not be her lover any more, but he should not, he could not cease to be L'Oiseleur; and he should not throw away the talisman. She had not now the right to keep it for him herself, and she looked round the deserted room for a safe place in which to bestow it. Out of a half-open drawer there trailed the sleeve of a uniform. Thejartierseemed to have more affinity with that than with anything else. She put it for a moment to her lips, and, taking out the coat, slipped the amulet into the breast pocket. Then she gave a miserable little laugh. "I always said I should end by being superstitious about that thing!"
She was on the point of leaving the room, when, passing by the bed, she perceived something she had not noticed before. By the impress on the coverlet it was clear that at some point yesterday Aymar must have thrown himself there, worn out, he who had never before in his life known other than reasonable fatigue. Probably he had dragged himself from this refuge to come down tothatinterview with her. Avoye bent over the pillow as though his head were really resting there, and broke suddenly into bitter sobbing.
How she got through the next three empty heartsick days she could hardly tell. On the third she became desperate. For if Aymar really were not returning the precious hours were slipping away, and she was doing nothing to make a last effort to retrieve her shattered happiness, or even to tell him how deeply she sorrowed for what she had done to him. He must be thinking—if he thought of her at all—that she was still of the same mind. But what could she do? She had no idea where he was, and unfortunately she had never asked M. de Courtomer if he knew.
But Eveno might know, because Aymar had spoken in his note to Mme de la Rocheterie of having gone on business connected with the Eperviers. Then it suddenly occurred to her that Aymar might actually be found in person at Eveno's cottage, conferring with him. What if she, too, went there in person? And, though the thought of that meeting was not easy to face, she set out that afternoon on horseback, a groom following her, for the cottage in the wood to which she had once declared that she would make pilgrimage.
But she had not ridden half the distance when she saw, between the chestnut boles, another horse and rider coming slowly towards her. The horse she knew in a moment. The rider . . . her heart stood still . . . No, certainly not Aymar. She moved forward again, and soon saw, with an indescribable sinking, that it was Eveno himself, riding the mare very softly, the reins in his right hand.
He had to shift them to his teeth before he could uncover, and remove the reins again before he could speak. But Avoye guessed.
"M. le Vicomte? Yes, Madame, he has been with us these three days. But he left this morning early, and I do not know where he has gone—a long distance, I think, for he went to catch the diligence. I am bringing Hirondelle back to Sessignes as he ordered me. Perhaps Madame would wish to ride her now, if I changed the saddles?"
"No," said Avoye with a catch in her breath, as she turned her horse's head homewards. "No, stay where you are, Eveno. I think M. le Vicomte would prefer it!"
And meanwhile the Vicomtesse de la Rocheterie had come to the end of her patience.
The relations of Avoye and Aymar for the last five or six years, as with a shrug of the shoulders she would admit, had been frankly beyond her comprehension. Mid-eighteenth century in her outlook as she was to the marrow, she had often told herself that in her young days such a situation as continued year after year at Sessignes would have been impossible; no Frenchman who prided himself upon being agalant hommewould have endured it for more than a month or two. The cold Northern strain in his blood, inherited from his and Avoye's paternal great-grandmother, presumably accounted for, though it hardly excused, Aymar's patience. A man might have a mistress, and he might have a wife, but for a young man to live for years under the same roof with the woman he loved, who was neither, really struck Mme de la Rocheterie at times as improper.
But now the arrangement, which one would have thought just about to issue in a more satisfactory relation, had received a shrewd blow of some kind. Of the hand that had dealt it there could be no doubt; it only remained to discover the weapon which had been used. To this end she had just summoned her granddaughter to her boudoir, and as she sat there, beautifully attired as usual, there was that in her air which told the girl at once what the subject of the interview was likely to be.
There was indeed not time for doubt. Mme de la Rocheterie, motioning her to a chair, said coldly:
"I should like to know, Avoye, for what reason you have driven Aymar out of his own house?"
The fact that the phrase embodied her own self-reproach did not prevent Avoye from resenting it. Her colour rose. She could not possibly give the reason. . . . At that moment, with an almost sickening leap of the heart, she saw on the little table at her grandmother's elbow an opened letter in Aymar's handwriting.
"It is true that Aymar and I have had a . . . a disagreement," she admitted, her eyes fixed on the letter. "But I assure you, Grand'mère that I had not the slightest idea that he was going to leave the house like this, and I . . . I hope he is coming back."
Her grandmother's very rings seemed to flash hostility at her as she stretched out her hand and deliberately dropped the letter into the little fire which, despite the summer weather, burnt on the hearth beside her. "No, he is not," she replied curtly, "and therefore I think I have a right to know why you are, as I say, keeping him out of his own house just when he most needs a home and the care he can get there."
The thrust told. Avoye dropped her head. "I never meant to drive him away," she repeated.
"Nonsense," said Mme de la Rocheterie. "Do not pretend that you are ignorant of what you are doing where Aymar is concerned. You know only too well! Ever since your marriage you have been his evil genius—ever since you left your husband I have had to stand by and watch you slowly ruining his life. All I could do to enable me to bear the sight was to tell myself that a day would possibly come when you could repair the suffering you had caused him. That day has come . . . and how do you act? You choose the moment when he is ill, in straits of some kind—do you think I am so blind as not to know that?—to turn on him and——"
"Please stop!" said Avoye, trembling a little. "There is no need for you to say that again. I will leave Sessignes myself—at once—and then Aymar can come back."
Mme de la Rocheterie gave a short laugh. "As if that would put matters right! You know that he is besotted over you! If he comes back and finds you gone, I shall only have another scene . . . and I am getting too old for scenes. . . . But, for all that, ma fille, you are mistaken in thinking that you can play fast and loose with him like this!"
"Please tell me where he is?" asked Avoye humbly.
"There was no address. He is moving about, he says . . . on affairs. He is well fitted in health for that just now, is he not?—I ask once more, Avoye, on what grounds you drove him away?"
"I told you, Grand'mère, that we had a disagreement, which I regret very much."
"Is that an answer to my question?"
"I cannot answer it more explicitly."
"Perhaps then you will be kind enough to enlighten me as to why this mysterious quarrel coincided with his return from captivity."
"But, Grand'mère, it did not! It . . . it came about suddenly, only the day he left, and it was . . . my fault."
"Indeed!" remarked the Vicomtesse. "And you are now penitent! Nevertheless, I do not believe you. I had observed you for days before that—not at all the happy lovers I expected to see. Tell me, has Aymar taken any steps yet about the dispensation for your marriage?—Answer me, has he?"
"No."
"Why not, pray?"
But Avoye could not, without betraying Aymar, reveal that the abstention was entirely on his side. She did not answer.
"You did not find him so attractive when he was unsuccessful, I suppose?" suggested Mme de la Rocheterie.
"You have no right to say that, Grand'mère!" retorted the girl, firing up. "It is false!"
"How, then, did you prevent so constant a lover from taking that necessary step?"
"I did not prevent him." The words escaped her against her will.
"You expect me to believe that Aymar himself was willing to relegate his marriage to I know not what epoch? He knows how long those matters take." She looked keenly at her granddaughter and again receiving no answer, said: "Then you must have shown him pretty plainly what your feelings were about it."
"I did," said Avoye, goaded, "but they were not what you think."
"You mean to tell me that you did not deter him?"
"I said I would marry him to-morrow if he had the dispensation."
"Oho!" said her grandmother. "So much warmth—after so much scrupulosity! And in the face of that, Aymar—Aymar—still hung back!"
"He had his reasons," said Avoye, very low. "I did not endorse them."
"So you say. If I am to believe that I must know what they were."
But Avoye shook her head obstinately.
"Perhaps he had discovered that he was not your only admirer? Aymar is somewhat exclusive."
"You can think that if you like," replied her granddaughter scornfully.
"Or thatyouwere jealous—of Eulalie, for example?"
Avoye gave a little laugh. Yet she was unable to avoid reddening at the name, a fact which by no means escaped Mme de la Rocheterie, who said, watching her closely: "It certainly was curious that he should ride off in that extraordinary fashion the very day she left."
"Do you really think, Grand'mère, that he rode afterher?"
"No, I am not such a fool," admitted the Vicomtesse. "Unless, indeed, he wished to question her more closely."
"Question her? Why should he?" For she was obliged to say something.
"Because I have been thinking over Eulalie's remarks that evening," answered her grandmother coolly, "and I am convinced that she was not making them innocently. And since his return, Aymar's demeanour has been such——Yes, there is something behind this talk of treachery and mistaken judgment. You will kindly tell me, Avoye, what it is!"
"Why did you not ask Eulalie?" said the girl, her eyes on the ground.
The Vicomtesse waved the question aside. "What story is going about connecting Aymar unfavourably with his defeat?"
No answer.
"Is it some calumny based on his actual absence from the fight?"
"No."
"Or that he is—as I have suspected—shielding the person responsible for the ambush, the person who, I suppose, sent the necessary information to the Bonapartists?"
Avoye shook her head.
"What is it, then? Have I not a right to know?"
Yes, she had, she had! Was she a woman who needed to be "spared" any more than she, Avoye, herself? Mme de Villecresne lifted her head.
"People are saying that it was Aymar himself who sent the information."
Mme de la Rocheterie drew a long breath. Her hands clenched themselves on the arms of her chair, her eyes sparkled. Instead of being withered by the blow, she actually looked younger, rising to meet it. She laughed.
"As 'people' were about it, they might have invented a more likely slander. This one is somewhat ludicrously wanting in plausibility. Aymar betray his cherished Eperviers! But I thank you for telling me, since the imbecility of human nature has always delighted me."
She stooped to replace a piece of wood fallen from the fire, and, raising herself rather suddenly, caught sight of Avoye's expression. Her own changed with startling rapidity.
"Avoye! Is itpossible!. . . Am I to take you for one of the imbeciles?"
"Of course, he sent it as a ruse," murmured Avoye out of her stiffened lips.
Mme de la Rocheterie took no notice.
"You believed it—you believe it!—My God, no wonder Aymar would not stay under the same roof with you! And this is your disagreement, your lovers' tiff, after which you dare to hope he will return to you as if nothing had happened. A La Rocheterie come cringing back to the feet of a woman who could believe him capable of such an infamy! I am glad that he left the house instantly!"
Avoye tried dizzily to think. The fierce, proud old woman, it was clear, would once more pay no heed if she were to repeat the explanation about a ruse. She did not need that explanation for a moment, she who had met the accusation merely with ridicule. Pray God, then, that that was all the impression it would ever make on her! Some atonement, therefore, she herself could offer for the wrong she had done Aymar, by consenting to be sacrificed to that end . . . by holding her tongue and not justifying herself . . . by not saying that it was true, for he had told her so with his own lips . . .
She bowed her head. She made herself, as far as she could, deaf to what her grandmother was saying; she took the lashes in silence, for Aymar's sake—though he could never know . . .
This she heard, after other words:
"I had sent for you to tell you that, unless Aymar could be induced to marry someone else, you would have to marry him, after having kept him dangling all these years, the last of his name. But to demand such a sacrifice of him after this would be infamous! He is free of you at last—I thank God for it!"
It must surely be almost over now. But Avoye raised her head to see her grandmother looking at her with that emotion so terrible to witness in a person of one's own blood—hatred. Drawn and aged enough now, the Vicomtesse said, with astonishing venom, "If only the Fates had not made you that selfish and disastrous creature commonly known as a virtuous woman! Or was it calculated wisdom that has made you refrain from the attempt to sweep Aymar off his feet? You could have done it, I believe, if you had wished, for he has hotter blood than you think—and even in this new century men are still men. . . . But you knew that it was better to keep yourself the unattainable, because a lover may get tired of the attainable.—Yes, if you had been more . . . accommodating . . . he might have been tired of you by now, and have made a marriage worthy of him. And his wife, I fancy, would——"
"Stop, Grand'mère stop!" cried Avoye, trembling from head to foot, and putting out her hands as though to ward off less the insults than the atrocious regret which beat through the old woman's words. "Stop, you cannot know what you are saying!"
It was probable that this was true, though, save for the glitter in her eyes and a slight half-palsied movement of her hands, Mme de la Rocheterie's manner did not suggest loss of self-control. She went on exactly where she had been interrupted:
"His wife, I say, would have displayed more faith in him than you—you, so immaculate and so base-minded! And all these years you have pretended to love him! Why, body and soul, the cheapest girl of the Palais-Royal has a better notion of love than you! Yet you are my granddaughter . . . at least I suppose so! But I shall hope, during the rest of my life, to forget it."
"Oh, I think you have already succeeded!" cried Avoye, almost beside herself. "You who bore my father, to say such things to me! If Aymar were here——" She stopped, suddenly choking.
Her grandmother leant back in her chair with an air of complete victory, and a smile that matched it. "Yes?" she enquired, "if Aymar were here—now—what, then?"
Avoye stared at the pitiless old face and saw completely, nakedly, what her own lack of pity towards her lover had done for herself. The shield between her and that hostility was gone for ever; and till this hour she had not realized how efficaciously it had been her shield. Indeed, there was nothing for her now but the roof of another.
"I shall start for Paris at once," she said, clutching to her the last poor remnants of her composure. "You need not fear, this time, that I shall ever return."
"No, I imagine that I am scarcely in danger of being forced a second time to receive you back," agreed her grandmother, and the smile grew sharper. "—Will you kindly ring the bell for Rose as you go out?"