Chapter XVII: Comedy of a Burnt Letter

When Gilbert stood a moment in the street watching the fiacre bearing Louis rapidly away from him, his first feeling was one of violent and unrestrained anger against the impulse which had placed him there. But there was no time to indulge in this emotion. Why the devil, he asked himself, had he not, on his discovery, told the driver to drive straight to the Mairie? Cursing himself, he hailed another fiacre, and set off at a tearing pace in that direction. Fortunately the mistake was soon rectified, and he found himself before long in the courtyard of the Hôtel de la Séguinière. Here a great bustle was in progress. The post-chaise was, rather to Gilbert’s surprise, already there. It would have been quite simple, under the circumstances, to walk in unannounced, but because it might have looked as if he intended spying on his cousin, Château-Foix would not do it. He was therefore preceded up the staircase by a flurried domestic.

At the top of the first flight he came on Louis, standing with his back to a door, and having very much the appearance of supporting himself by the lintel. The light was not good, but no great amount of illumination was required to emphasise the fact that he was extremely pale. He moved aside at once.

“I began to wonder if you were coming,” he said very quietly. “Lucienne is in here waiting for you. I am afraid that you will find her rather distressed.”

Gilbert looked him full in the face. “I expected as much,” he said, equally quietly, and went in.

As for Louis, he went slowly away to the far end of the landing, and sitting down on a couch in the corner buried his face in his hands. He had not, however, remained more than a minute or two in this posture when he sprang hastily up. Madame Gaumont was rustling down the staircase from the floor above.

“Is that you, Monsieur le Vicomte? Is Monsieur le Marquis here? Such a to-do; we must start at once. There was a mistake about the tide, and we shall not catch the packet unless we go immediately. Is Monsieur le Marquis with Mademoiselle? I don’t like to burst in on them. Will you go?”

“I, Madame!” exclaimed Louis with a bitter little laugh. “God forbid!”

Even in her hurry Madame Gaumont looked at him curiously for a second, and seemed about to say something unconnected with travelling arrangements. Then she thought better of it, and entered the room.

The young man looked for a moment at the door which she had left ajar behind her, then turned away, and began slowly to descend the staircase. He would go back to the hotel and wait there for Gilbert. Yet he went so slowly down the stairs, he paused so long at the door, and traversed the courtyard with so lagging a step, that by the time he had reached the gateway a little commotion behind him warned him that the travellers were already starting. Turning, he saw on the steps Madame Gaumont and her maid, and on Gilbert’s arm Lucienne, a hastily but heavily veiled figure; and, as if fascinated, he watched Gilbert helping in the three women. The postilion scrambled to his place, and in another moment the post-chaise came rumbling towards him over the stones. . . . It was gone—passing him as he stood like a statue in the archway, fighting down a wild desire to spring to the horses’ heads and stop it. And Lucienne had not seen him; perhaps it was as well. . . .

Gilbert came across the courtyard, pulling out his watch. “We must get back at once,” he said briefly, and Louis followed him without a word. It suited him well enough that his supposed status required him to walk behind.

Hardly had they got into the yard of the Etats-Généraux when hurrying footsteps were heard behind them, and looking round they both recognised one of Madame Gaumont’s domestics. He held a letter in his hand.

“For you, Sir,” he said, giving it to the Marquis. “It has just been found in Mademoiselle d’Aucourt’s room—in the grate. Thinking it had fallen into the fire by mistake, and seeing that it was addressed to you, I thought it best to bring it on at once.”

“You did quite right,” said Gilbert, giving him a louis. “Pierre, see that the baggage is ready. We start in a quarter of an hour.” And he went in, while Saint-Ermay stared after him, wondering what on earth could be the meaning of this belated missive from Lucienne. It seemed almost like a message from the dead.

To Gilbert also the letter had something of that complexion, as, without opening it, he mounted the stairs to his room. For Lucienne, when he had entered, was not in a condition for a coherent farewell. He had found her bowed over the arm of the big chair in which she sat, weeping her heart out, he would have thought, except that the tears were few. She seemed to have exhausted them. Château-Foix was almost frightened. But his mind had been made up before ever he opened the door. She should have from him neither questions nor reproaches. The fault was not hers; he could not bear that she should have to justify herself. So he had merely raised her up and kissed her wet cheek; then Madame Gaumont had come in, and there was an end.

At last he broke open the letter. It was so short that a second or two sufficed for his eyes to run over the words whose meaning his mind took much longer to grasp.

“I cannot bear it. I cannot go to England. Come to me and tell me that we can be married at once, and that you will take me back with you.—LUCIENNE.”

That was all, but at these few lines Gilbert stood staring, stunned. After a moment he sat dizzily down, and resting his elbow on the table put his hand over his eyes the better to taste this enormous, this overwhelming surprise. He was too dumbfounded for consecutive reflection, but the first thought which penetrated his stupor was one of such radiant and piercing joy that his reason seemed to shake beneath its onslaught. The nightmare was but a nightmare after all. “Thank God! thank God!” he cried with his deepest soul. It was all false. The proof had come to him here in this very room which had witnessed his black night of despair; this was the very table on which he had bowed his head, those were the same chimes of Notre Dame des Victoires floating, now, through the sunlight. . . .

And she had gone; he could not thank her for this great proof of her love; for at first he saw it in that aspect, judging the trust and confidence which must have prompted her to so unusual a step. The trust and confidence; yes, and what must she not have suffered when the next evening he had visited her and said no word of her appeal? He looked again at the date: he was not mistaken; the letter had been written on the evening of the day when she had exchanged the guardianship of the Princess for that of Madame Gaumont. Poor child! how horribly she must have suffered! His stirred feelings lent him enough imagination to put himself in her place. Was it any wonder that she had seemed strange, and that overcome by the strain she had fainted at the additional shock given, very naturally, by the news of Louis’ arrest? What must she have thought of him? What, too, if she had known his unworthy, his vile suspicions of her? How large a part had his involuntary silence not played in the state in which he had just found her?

And she was gone, thinking—what? He walked for a minute or two in agitation up and down the room, until going back to the table he picked up the little note, so pathetic in its need and its trustfulness. An idea that was half a hope flashed upon him. That blackened, scorched corner meant one of two things: either the letter had fallen into the fire by mischance, Lucienne being left in the impression that she had sent it, or she had intended to burn it. It had in that case been but the outcry of her distress, destroyed because it had seemed to her unmaidenly. And he devoutly hoped that this was the case, because it left him all the perfume of the message and relieved her of the dreadful tension of waiting for an answer which he had never given.

Since he had looked down at her in his interrupted leave-taking, since he had given her that kiss, whose remembered coldness filled him with the most burning indignation against himself, not half an hour had elapsed. And he had let her go thus—for ever, perhaps—and could not follow her. But he could write to her. He would write here and now. He looked round impulsively for ink and paper—and then remembered, with a checking of his ardour, that he could scarcely with delicacy reveal to her his knowledge of her letter if, as he hoped, she had meant to burn it.

Footsteps, too, were approaching his door. “Yes; I am coming,” he shouted, guessing that he was being summoned, that the post-chaise was waiting. But he lingered a moment, looking with eyes not quite clear at the little scorched letter ere, kissing it, he thrust it into his breast, and left the room which had seen him go down into hell and come forth again.