Chapter XVI: Farewell

“If we must part,
Then let it be like this;
Not heart on heart,
Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;
But touch my hand and say:
‘Until to-morrow or some other day,
If we must part.’”
—ERNEST DOWSON, _A Valediction_.

Lucienne lay long in the deep sleep which Madame Gaumont’s swiftly-administered potion had produced. They had carried her into her bedroom, and Madame Gaumont had determined to wait for the time when her charge should wake up. Lucienne’s bed was in shadow, but in the far corner of the room there was a bright patch from a shaded lamp, beside which sat the widow knitting. And because of the click of her needles Lucienne dreamt that she was a child again, under the guardianship of her old nurse, until, startled by some distant sound into completer consciousness, she opened her eyes and, with a little cry of disappointment, raised herself in bed.

In a moment the ample figure of Madame Gaumont was bending over her, and before she could ask a question a wine-glass, steadied by Madame Gaumont’s hand, was at her lips, and she was forced to drink its contents to the last drop.

“There, my love,” said her hostess, “you’ll soon be well again now, and you mustn’t talk, but just go off to sleep again, and if you want anything, you’ve only to call, and I shall hear.”

Lucienne fixed her eyes on the shrewd, kind face, and lay down obediently. She knew where she was now, and although it all seemed very odd, she was too sleepy to ask any questions. If it were not her nurse it was a very good substitute. To the music of the needles she floated back to the shore of dreams.

Madame Gaumont, returned to her knitting, had an uneasy feeling that all was not well with the girl. It seemed to her that perhaps there was some other trouble in addition even to the natural grief at parting with her lover and with Madame Elisabeth. “Poor child, poor little soul!” she said to herself; “with no mother, and Monsieur le Marquis, so good, so splendid, no doubt, but perhaps a little overwhelming.” Well, well, she should not lack for creature comforts, for the feeding up of the body went, in Madame Gaumont’s opinion, a long way towards bringing peace to the mind.

But presently the quiet sleep came to an end. Lucienne tossed from side to side, and began to break out into the most pitiful sobbing. Madame Gaumont rose and went over to the bed again. The girl lay with her head deep in the pillows, crying with the unrestrained abandonment of a child, and at intervals whispering a name which the good lady could not catch. For a moment or two the latter stood irresolute, and then began to shake the weeper by the shoulder. “There, there, my pretty one,” she said, “you’ve had a bad dream. You must not cry like that, or we shall never be able to let you see Monsieur le Marquis to-morrow.”

This statement was not without its effect. Lucienne instantly sat up. “I don’t want to see him,” she wailed. “You must tell him I'm ill—tell him anything—only do not let him come near me. . . . But find out from him about Louis. I must know—I shall go mad if I don’t! You will find out . . . promise me!”

“Yes, yes, love, I promise you; only lie down now and try to keep quiet,” responded Madame Gaumont, whose mind had just come to several sudden conclusions. She busied herself round the bed, shaking the pillow and smoothing the tumbled bedclothes, and Lucienne lay back and watched her, and seemed content to listen to her prattle. And before long she slept again, and slept quietly, till she woke with a start to find the room full of summer sunlight, and her kind watcher gone.

Almost with the first movement of consciousness her mind made that painful mental effort to reproduce in the morning the vague something which has happened before the period of oblivion. First there came faint images of the night—of Madame Gaumont and a shaded lamp, of restless tossings and bad dreams, and then suddenly a mental picture which eclipsed all others, and a familiar voice sounding in her ears—“I had not meant to tell you, but perhaps you had better know.”

She stretched herself to her full length under the bedclothes, her whole body tingling at the recollection, and buried her burning cheeks in the pillows. With eyes tightly shut as if she were unwilling for outward objects to break the trance of misery, she recalled every detail of Gilbert’s visit. Shame, and something like anger at her own stupidity, came over her, for now he must know, he must guess their secret. Not even Gilbert could think that she cared like that for his cousin. But the torturing anxiety for Louis came to banish her own confusion. If only he were safe, nothing mattered; the world might think what it liked. It was only Louis, Louis that she wanted! Why had she not taken him, when she might have called him to herself through all these months? Because it was against honour and right; and what were honour and right set against love and longing such as this? She had deceived herself; she had listened to Madame Elisabeth, and thought that she too could rise to heights of devotion and sacrifice. . . . Oh, it was mockery! She wanted no favours from the cold heaven of the saints! To feel Louis’ arms round her and his kisses on her hair, that were worth an age-long purgatory. But the gates of love had opened, and closed again for ever, as she believed, and a great darkness came down upon her soul.

* * * * * *

It was no doubt fortunate for Lucienne that the whole of that day was spent in the most engrossing preparations for departure—the final depositing of articles in chests, the final shrouding up of furniture. Dear to the heart of Madame Gaumont were such doings, and little did she intend to find, when she returned from her English visit, that her property had suffered by her absence. Although she would not allow Lucienne to lift a finger, and kept her in bed most of the day, the salutary sense of bustle pervading the house did something to distract the girl’s mind. Lucienne had another distraction also. In the morning she had said that she could not see M. de Château-Foix when he came; by the evening she was in a fever to know why he had not come. Was it because he had guessed her secret, or because he was somehow engaged in Louis’ affairs? The night of July 4th fell and she was no wiser, but filled with surmises each more agonising than the other.

She rose on the morning of the start pale and heavy-eyed. Madame Gaumont repressed with difficulty the exclamation of dismay which trembled on her lips, when Lucienne appeared in her hostess’s boudoir about ten o’clock. Had she not guessed that there was something very much wrong she would have given vent to it.

“Does Justine want any help, my dear, or has she quite finished your trunk? I declare,” pursued the good lady, “if she has not left out my second-best silk!”

As the injured mistress rang for the erring maid Lucienne sank down into a big chair. “How long before we leave the house, Madame?” she asked listlessly.

“More than three-quarters of an hour, love, so you need not put on your cloak yet. Remember to take your smelling salts in your reticule, my dear. Some persons find them beneficial during the sea passage.—What is it, Henri?”

“M. de Château-Foix’ valet, Madame,” said the man. “He has come with a message for Mademoiselle from his master, and begs that Madame will permit him to give it in person.”

Madame Gaumont gave a sigh of relief. But, not knowing of what disconcerting news the messenger might be the bearer, she felt that she must interview him first herself.

“I will come down immediately,” she said. “It is best that I should see him first, my dear child,” she added, casting a glance on Lucienne, into whose white cheeks had sprung a patch of red, and whose hands were grasping the arms of her chair.

When she came back, panting a little from the ascent, Lucienne was walking nervously up and down the room. She tried to read Madame Gaumont’s face, and found it grave, for the good lady was not sure that she was about to do right.

“There is nothing wrong, dear,” she said. “But Monsieur le Marquis has sent a better messenger than his valet.”

“Louis—is it Louis?” gasped Lucienne.

“His cousin—M. de Saint-Ermay, I think he said his name was,” went on Madame Gaumont, affecting not to notice the girl’s discomposure. “And so, my dear, as he comes straight from Monsieur le Marquis, I think you may go down and see him.—If I were a Frenchwoman I shouldn’t let her,” she thought to herself.

“And M. de Château-Foix . . .?” faltered Lucienne.

“I understand that he is following shortly. Go, my child—unless you would rather not.”

Meanwhile Louis stood in the middle of the dismantled salon. It struck him as he waited that the room might be the bare boards of a stage, for the suddenness with which he had been precipitated there had given him something of the unreality of the player. Gilbert had told him how he had promised Lucienne that she should see them both before his departure, and they had been seated side by side in a fiacre on their way from the Hôtel des Etats-Généraux to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, when the Marquis, who was even more silent than his wont, had pulled out his passport to examine it, and had uttered an exclamation of dismay.

“There has been some mistake,” he said, in answer to his cousin’s query. “Here is a perfectly wrong description of you—it will never pass.” And thrusting his head out of the window he called to the driver to stop. “Go on and tell Lucienne that I will come as soon as I can,” he said hastily. “I must go back and rectify this.” And before Louis realised what had happened he was alone in the vehicle, driving on by himself to bid Lucienne farewell.

The feeling of unreality did not wholly leave him when the door opened, and Lucienne came slowly in, ghostlike in her pallor, her quiet movements, and even in the way she looked at him, as over some indefinable barrier.

He too went forward without saying a word, and catching her cold hands pressed them to his lips.

“You are safe, Louis—you got out of prison?” said the low, shaken voice.

“Gilbert got me out. I am sorry you ever knew I was in. You are not fit to stand—come, let me put you into this chair, though it doesn’t look very comfortable.”

She suffered him to put her into one of the swathed chairs, and asked faintly: “Why have you come?”

“Gilbert sent me on,” said Louis, looking down at her. “He had some business to see to at the last moment—something wrong with the passport—but he is following.”

She said nothing, and after a moment he knelt down beside her.

“This is good-bye, Lucienne.” Whether her evident state of stupor steadied him or no he could not have told, but after a long look at her passionless white face and down-dropped lids he took one of her hands, kissed it gently, and got to his feet again. All the way from the Rue des Petits-Pères the violins of passion had played in his breast little sad airs of farewell, to which he could listen without danger. And in this ghostlike room, with Lucienne who looked like a ghost, who spoke like a ghost, with his kiss on her cold unclinging fingers, it was not so hard then to act like a gentleman, and after last night there could be no question of doing anything else.

“At what time are you leaving the house?” he asked at last; not caring for an answer, since he knew it, but in order to break a silence which was becoming charged with something too potent for safety.

Nor did Lucienne give the answer. She lifted her eyes, and what the young man saw in them sent all the gentle minor airs crashing into discords, overridden by a deeper, insistent, triumphal note. . . . Involuntarily he went a step nearer. . . .

And then—to that music she was in his arms, clinging, sobbing, entreating. “Louis, you shall not go—you shall not, you shall not! It has been a horrible mistake. . . . I have tried—I promised the Princess—but I can’t, I can’t, Louis . . . it’s impossible!”

The heart against which she lay beat furiously, all its hot young blood vibrating to her words. The ghostlike room went dim; she alone was real—too real, overpoweringly human and appealing. And everything pleaded for her—the scent of her hair, Saint-Ermay’s own temperament, his past of facile conquests. . . . Probably only one thing could have saved him; it was on his side now.

“Lucienne,” he said in a strangled voice, “it is impossible. I cannot be such a hound, though God knows I would like to be. Let me go, dear. It is impossible.” And he tried, very gently, with hands that shook a little, to unclasp her twining fingers.

But Lucienne had the tenacity of many impressionable natures, and too little experience to know that there is often more fighting to do after victory than before it. Her victory had been won six months ago; but to-day, after all, she had flung herself into the embrace which then she had repulsed. Unstrung, in bitter revolt against fate and the part she had herself taken in moulding that fate, conscious only of her passionate desire for happiness—conscious, too, that the lover of to-day was not the almost suppliant of that January afternoon—she snatched up arms for a new and a different combat. The force of her love and misery rushed against Saint-Ermay like the tide, and tossing on that impetuous sea like wrack and seaweed went all maidenly reserve and pride.

“Louis, Louis,” she kept repeating over and over again, like a child, and strained him the closer, “I can’t live without you . . . I have tried, but I can’t. . . . I can’t go to England! Oh, why do you say that it is impossible?”

The sight of her beautiful, agonised face, so near his own, made Louis’ head whirl. “Because,” he said hoarsely, looking away, “I owe Gilbert my life, and I can’t do it. Let me go, my darling; it has to be.”

Even with the music of passion in his ears he was conscious of his delicate and ironical situation. It was impossible to avoid the thought that his cousin might at that very moment be coming up the stairs. Nothing but dire catastrophe for all three of them could result if it were so. But he could not bring himself to say it. As he hesitated Lucienne herself loosed her arms from about him.

“Then you do not love me, after all! . . . No, no, Louis—I did not mean it. . . . Do not look like that. . . . I did not mean it. . . . It is God who is against us!” Her voice sank. “If he saved your life——” Turning away she hid her face in her hands and broke into fresh weeping.

And—strange perversity—the moment that she saw the thing as he did, and acknowledged the inevitable, Louis would have given everything he possessed to have her in his arms again. There surged over him a mad desire to dare that inevitable, to defy Gilbert, to claim her, cost what it might. Should he do it? Her sobs, the line of her neck, her shaken body wrung his heart. . . . He could give Gilbert his life if he demanded it. . . .

And there stole into his mind the last recollection that he wished to have at such a moment, the last that he could imagine would be conjured up. For once before he had staked his life for a woman; and had been, too, within an ace of paying it: once before he had felt, with fire in his veins, that a stake so supreme ennobled the cause for which it was ventured. And had it ennobled what followed? No! a thousand times no, and Lucienne was degraded by the parallel. He trampled down the wild impulse.

“Lucienne,” he said unsteadily, “don't cry so—I can’t bear it. I . . . Say good-bye and let me go!”

Still sobbing, and with her face hidden by one hand, she put out the other to him blindly. He did not dare to trust himself at that moment to take it, and it fell like a wounded bird to her side, so that they stood by each other in the big empty room without speaking, she weeping, and he, with his hands clenched, looking at her in torture and impotence. Perhaps it was the fact that her hand had not been taken which enabled Lucienne a little to command herself. And when her tear-blinded eyes rested on her lover, standing so near, but with so white and rigid a face, she recognised the futility of rebelling any more. It seemed to her that all her youth went from her in that moment, and that she was suddenly very old, very prudent, and did not care for anything very much, like the old Marquise de la Ferronière, her grandmother, who spent her days in a convent but was not a nun. So she sank down in the chair behind her, and, shutting her eyes, leant her head against the back, the better to taste this wisdom and detachment, and the sooner to forget Louis, whom henceforth she must never remember.

Saint-Ermay bent hastily over her with an exclamation. She opened her eyes.

“Say good-bye quickly. . . .”

“I thought you had fainted!”

“No,” said Lucienne, “I hardly ever——” She stopped, and a shiver of reminiscence ran through her. Ought she to tell him? But the remembrance was horrible and shameful; she could not.

Louis saw that something was troubling her.

“Does it matter?” he asked tenderly, kneeling down once more beside her. “There is only one thing that matters to me, Lucienne, and that is that I shall love you as long as I live. . . . But perhaps you had best forget that. . . . Good-bye, my darling.”

The passionate kisses which he set on her hand woke on the instant in Lucienne that youth which she had felt slip from her—woke it to a last desperate revolt.

“No . . . no, Louis,” she gasped in agony. “Not yet . . . a little longer. . . . It is too cruel. . . .”

And for a moment longer his head remained bowed on her hand, while she looked down at it to imprint for ever in her mind all that she could see of him, till she felt that she could remember to eternity every rippling strand of his dark-brown hair, the dull black ribbon that tied it, the tiny curl by his ear, and the strong, delicate hand, emerging from the coarse and ruffleless sleeve, that had clenched itself on the other arm of the chair. But before she had made an end of gazing he got up from his knees, and, without a word, without a backward look, walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.