Chapter XXI: At the Sign of the Good Samaritan

“How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
That hear no more your voice you hear the same,
God! what is left but hell for company,
But hell, hell, hell—until the name so breathed
Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire.”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _A Last Confession_.

Madame Veuve Geffroi possessed to a singular degree the faculty of knowing her own mind, and also, commonly, that of expressing with accuracy and point the resolutions at which, from time to time, she arrived by the assistance of this quality. When, therefore, she took her way between seven and eight that evening to her hay-loft, with the intent of presenting an ultimatum to its temporary inhabitants, the clearness of her mental vision was momentarily obscured by the sight of one of them seated on her chopping-log in the shed, near the foot of the ladder, with his head buried in his hands. In the failing light this figure startled and almost disconcerted her, and she gave vent to a little exclamation. The Marquis raised a ghastly face and looked at her dizzily.

“Bon Dieu! what is the matter with you?” ejaculated Madame Geffroi.

Gilbert rose mechanically.

“Are you ill too?” queried his visitor, peering at him. The Marquis shook his head, murmuring he knew not what, and turned away to escape her eyes. Madame Geffroi scanned what she could see of him sceptically; then she shrugged her shoulders. “Very well then, listen to me. How is the other up there?”

“I don’t know,” said Gilbert rather wildly. “I have been down here . . . my God . . . how long!”

“You don’t know!” repeated Madame Geffroi with some scorn. “But he must be either better or worse. Which is it?”

“Worse, then,” replied Château-Foix almost inaudibly.

“He has more fever?” pursued the inquisitrix. “He is perhaps light-headed—he talks nonsense?”

“That is it,” said the Marquis, and broke—to his own infinite surprise—into unmirthful laughter.

The note of hysteria did not escape his shrewd companion, though she assigned it to a wrong cause. “Come,” she said, more kindly, patting him on the arm; “you have a good heart, you suffer because your friend is ill—or is he your brother? Never mind, but listen to me! I have come to tell you something that will ease your anxiety. I have made up my mind to take your brother into my house until he is better. What have you to say to that, my young man?”

“I—but how can you?” stammered the Marquis. The twilight interview with this insistent female was like a nightmare, from which he more and more earnestly desired to escape, that he might be alone.

“How can I?” demanded the woman of resolution. “But as easily as walking. You, my fine fellow, if you got him up this ladder you can get him down again—isn’t it so?—and you can carry him to the house, a strong man like you! I shall put him in the room I keep for my niece—a small room, but comfortable. Then there will be no more fever—or at least he will have some one not quite ignorant to look after him, and he will be as snug there as a bird in its nest.”

“But, Madame,” began Gilbert, “the danger to yourself——”

“Bah!” said Madame Geffroi, “I snap my fingers at it! Besides, where would it come from? Do you imagine that any one from there”—she indicated Pézé over her shoulder—“would venture to come poking into my house? Holy Virgin of virgins, no! But what would inconvenience me would be a corpse in my loft; _that_ would compromise me! No, the young man must be brought in. Come, up with you, my good man!” And, feeling that he was in the hands of some higher intelligence, Gilbert suffered himself to be waved in front of her up the ladder.

In the loft it was dimmer still. Gilbert stood like a statue when he got there, deprived of all volition; he only felt stupidly that he could never go near that prone, silent figure again. And yet he knew that he was there for the express purpose of doing so. Behind him Madame Geffroi scrambled on to the floor; he never turned his head nor offered to help her. She walked past him, and he saw her bend over Louis. But his own eyes were fixed on the little circular window, and his thoughts followed them, racing round and round its circumference like a squirrel in a cage. Then he perceived his hostess beckoning to him. His feet carried him over to her.

“He is quite quiet now,” she said in a whisper. “See, I will help you carry him to the top of the ladder. But you will have to take him down it alone, only I will stand at the bottom.”

It was a real surprise to Gilbert to find that not very long afterwards he was standing in the midst of a little, very tidy room with a diamond paned casement, where a small white bed, ready prepared, lay along the wall.

“That’s right,” said Madame Geffroi approvingly, as Château-Foix deposited his unconscious kinsman upon it. She set down the candle, with which she had lighted him up the stairs, upon a table bearing a neat pile of bandages, a basin, a sponge, and other appliances. “Now I shall manage better alone. I am sorry that I have not a bed for you too.”

Gilbert, with relief, murmured something about the comfort of his former quarters. Not to be under the same roof would be something.

Madame Geffroi nodded. “You will find some food put out downstairs; take what you want. I will come to you in the morning.”

“You are very kind indeed, Madame,” said Château-Foix. “I do not know why you should do this.”

The lifeless tone of his thanks appeared to reawaken his hostess’s suspicions. She caught up the candle and held it to the level of his face. “You are sure that you are not ill, you?” she asked sharply. The fancy crossed Gilbert’s mind that she was more apprehensive than solicitous about his state of health, and he answered with a grim feeling approaching amusement that he was perfectly well, and turned to go. But at the doorway he stopped and bent a long look on the candle-lit bed, drawn by the very attraction of what his survey cost him. Then he went down the stairs and out of the farmhouse, to carry his agony back to the place where it had its birth.

* * * * * *

Very early next morning Madame Geffroi’s voice floated up the ladder. Gilbert raised himself from where he lay face downwards in the hay and descended into the shed below.

“Your brother is better,” said the lady. “He is sleeping quietly. But no—you shall not see him yet. Later in the day, perhaps. And see that you do not show yourself to-day; it is possible that they may search for you.”

“Then, Madame,” broke in the Marquis hastily, “we must go. I cannot think of exposing you——”

“Bah!” returned his hostess with infinite scorn. “Do you think I shall let that young man out of his bed? He could not stand if I did. And I should like to see those gentry try to search my house! But they may come prowling round, so be careful. If they should come here you can hide in the hay—or, wait a moment, there is a place up in the rafters where no one will ever think of looking. Here is plenty of food—you did not take any last night.”

With this somewhat casual recital of precautions she tendered him a basket and made off. The inadequacy of the former scarcely struck the Marquis, so little did the idea of being taken seen to matter. He climbed back to the loft and threw himself down in his former position.

As hour succeeded hour, the stupor which, in spite of the most active suffering, had held his brain all through the sleepless night began to dissolve. “He trusts us! he trusts us!” Yes, he had trusted them indeed, and with a trust so profound as to be unconscious of its own existence. “He trusts us!” Which of them had said that to the other? It was round these words that the stupor, losing its hold, crystallised into a fierce and absorbing resolution. By no word or deed of his should Louis know that he was aware of his treachery—until the day that he chose. Louis, too, in his turn, should be tricked, gulled, befooled. It should be a part—a small part—of his revenge; though indeed there was in his resolve less of the lust of vengeance than of the instinctive self-defence of his own unspeakably lacerated pride.

And Lucienne . . . O God, Lucienne! image of all that was pure and untouched! . . . Yet even now he blamed her little. She was so young. She did not know. Hers was innocency wronged, lured into an attachment which was surely no more than a young girl’s fancy, a passing light entanglement from which he must protect her, which he must make her forget. Had she not written in her distress, pleading to be shielded from it—for so, in memory, he read her letter now. She would forget. . . . But Louis! That was different. It might be that it was with him, too, a passing affair, like so many others. The supposition seemed rather to aggravate than to lessen his guilt. And there was much to support the idea. How, if he really cared for her, could he have been so light-hearted these last few days since he parted from her? Damn him! he was equally a scoundrel either way!

The Marquis raised himself and sat up, brushing the hair off his forehead with a sudden gesture. He had at that moment a very distinct vision of a certain copse at Chantemerle where there was a clearing, convenient and remote. There, among the saplings his father had planted, he saw himself and Louis facing each other, sword in hand. . . .

But the solacing dream of steel was gone as quickly as it had come, and Gilbert flung himself down again, engulfed once more in the full tide of his anguish—an anguish all the bitterer, though he did not know it, for the self-condemnation which he had recently been meting out to himself.

* * * * * *

Between five and six in the afternoon he again heard the voice of his hostess and went down.

“You can see your cousin,” said Madame Geffroi, with the air of one acceding to a pressing request, “since it appears that that is his relationship. He has been asking for you. And since they have been to search the house”—Gilbert gave an exclamation—“and gone away satisfied, it is quite safe. Come.”

“Searched the house!” said Gilbert, stupefied. “But they have not been near me.”

“I did not say they searched the house,” corrected the lady tartly. “I said they came to do so. They did not remain.”

“Oh!” was all Château-Foix found to say, wondering how the representatives of the nation had been routed, but not in the least doubting the fact.

“Don’t talk too much!” Madame Geffroi warned him, as she opened the bedroom door and pushed Gilbert in alone.

The late afternoon sun was striking through the closed shutters in thin shafts full of dancing motes, yet the room seemed dark, and the Marquis stood a moment dazzled by the contrast.

“Come here,” said Louis in a weak little voice from the bed. “Mon Dieu, how glad I am to see you!”

Grown accustomed to the atmospheric effects, Gilbert stood looking down on this new Louis as he lay flat on his back—for in the short time since his mishap he seemed unaccountably altered.

“Sit down,” went on the Vicomte, “and tell me what you have been doing while I have been in the hands of this tyrannical lady.”

The Marquis complied. After all, it was quite easy to talk to him. “I have been doing . . . absolutely nothing, but staying in the loft awaiting developments. And, by the way, the good woman tells me that she has had a domiciliary visit.”

Louis went off into a fit of rather feeble laughter. “It is quite true. . . . But she routed them with great slaughter. It must have been extraordinarily funny.”

“They did not come into the house, then?”

“No, I believe not. But she had made preparations to receive them. Conceive what she thought of passing me off for?” He began to laugh again. “Do you remember, Gilbert, my joking the other night about you and this dame, and saying that she would probably hide you in her bedroom? My utterances must have had a spice of prophecy about them. It was about three o’clock, I believe, when these individuals came; I was still dozing, when the tyrant entered hastily, and said with great directness, ‘They are coming to look for you, my fine young man. I do not fancy that they will set foot inside the house, but, if they do, remember that you are my niece Annette, ill of a fever.’ I protested against the libel on Mademoiselle Annette, whose chin, I am sure, does not stand in need of a razor, but what could I do?”

“And what happened?” asked Château-Foix.

“Nothing, fortunately—or unfortunately,” said Louis, sighing rather regretfully. “I was not called upon to play this beau rôle to an audience. But the good lady took some pains with the staging. She arranged the bedclothes over me in some way that nearly suffocated me, and took away my clothes, which were hanging upon a chair, substituting, I believe, some of her own. I was too modest to look at them. I fancy that they are gone now, and, moreover, that my own have not come back, so that I can’t get up.”

“I should imagine,” observed the Marquis drily, “that you could not do that in any case.”

“Well, perhaps not,” conceded the invalid. “But, Gilbert, we must be getting on. Couldn’t you—couldn’t you leave me to follow?”

“That is not very likely, is it?” asked his cousin. “I thought we settled that before. You had better not talk any more and exhaust yourself. To-morrow will be time enough to talk of getting up, and as this visit is over I presume we are the safer for it. How is your shoulder, by the way?”

Louis made a little grimace by way of reply. “You do not look over flourishing yourself, my good Gilbert,” he said, scanning him from the pillow. “I should say that you did not sleep well last night.”

“No, I did not,” answered the Marquis in a fairly natural tone.

Louis murmured that he was sorry, and there was a pause, Gilbert feeling that he had nothing more to say. Glancing at his cousin he saw that he was lying with his eyes shut, and also that he looked rather spent. He got up, and Louis immediately opened his eyes.

“Are you going? . . . There is one thing that I wanted to ask you—did I talk any nonsense when I was off my head up in that place?”

Gilbert felt a second’s spasm at his heart. It had not occurred to him that Louis would ask such a question. . . . His answer should be the first step along the road which he had mapped out for immediate travelling.

“I don’t know what you mean by nonsense,” he said, fidgeting with a spoon on the table. “You were a trifle delirious, of course. Ah, I see what you mean. No, you were much too rambling for me to learn any secrets.” He felt that to carry off his part with conviction he must look his cousin in the face at this point, and did so. Was it fancy that Louis had turned whiter than he already was? He could not pause to consider, but went on with a geniality which astonished and disgusted himself: “My dear boy, you can be easy on that score. You did not tell me anything . . . which I did not know before.”

“That’s a relief,” said Louis in a jocular tone, but so faintly that Château-Foix was aware in an instant of the strain that he had been through, and saw, indeed, the next moment, that he had fainted in good earnest.

The Marquis looked down at him for a minute with a smile which was not very pleasant, then he went to the door and called for Madame Geffroi. Amid the torrent of reproaches and lamentations which ensued he made his escape.

And as he went back an abhorrent thought leapt suddenly into his mind, out of nowhere—not so much a thought as a picture—of the inn-kitchen at Pézé, and of Louis throwing himself between him and the man who “had a knife.” It had vivid colouring, and was only a little blurred in outline. If it were a true image he owed his life to the kinsman who had betrayed him. It was the last intolerable drop in the cup.

* * * * * *

“Dear Madame,” said Louis politely but firmly, “if you do not cause my cousin to come here, I shall have to go out to find him!”

He was sitting, partially dressed, in an armchair by the open window, with a flowered shawl over his shoulders. Not far from him his hostess and nurse, her hands on her hips, stood regarding him.

“That is easy to say,” she remarked. “But there is a key to the door.”

“And a vine, I observe, outside the window,” retorted her captive, craning his neck to make sure. “Directly your back is turned I shall go down it. And since you have deprived me of the use of one arm I shall most probably break the other.”

“What use is it to bring your cousin? tell me that,” demanded Madame Geffroi stubbornly. “And what happened the last time that he was here? tell me that also!”

“That was two days ago,” returned the Vicomte, “and I was tired. It shall not happen again, I promise you. . . . Madame, do not be so stony-hearted!”

“What do you want to see him for?”

Louis looked at her for a moment quizzically. “I don’t want to see him at all,” he said. “It will merely mean making arrangements for leaving you, and you cannot think that I desire to make those, can you, Madame? But consider, this cousin of mine has an adoring mother who is anxiously awaiting him at this very moment—not to speak of a whole tenantry to whom he is a sort of deity. You would not have me set my own poor happiness, which undoubtedly consists in remaining where I am, against maternal affection and feudal feeling!”

Madame Geffroi sniffed. “Huh! And is there no one who expects _you_ back with anxiety, my young man?”

Two patches of colour flared for an instant in Saint-Ermay’s pale cheeks as he responded: “Alas, no, Madame, nobody.—I am wrong; there is an old man who will be very glad to see me. But come now——”

“As if you were fit to think of going away,” grumbled his jailor. “You shall see your cousin to-morrow.”

Louis shook his head. “Like all your sex, you must be convinced, I see, by ocular demonstration. How can you say that I am not fit for anything?” He got up suddenly from the chair, and the shawl which adorned his shoulders slipped to the ground, revealing the fact that his left arm was not only supported in a sling but was bound to his side, a precaution of his nurse’s to prevent his using his shoulder. He advanced laughing on her, a slim boyish figure in shirt and breeches. “I swear I’ll kiss you if you don’t fetch my cousin!” said he.

Madame Geffroi put up her hands with a squeal, and backed rapidly from the reach of the one effective arm. “You are a graceless young scamp!” she said from the door, but she was laughing too. “You shall have your cousin, then!”

Louis sauntered back to his chair and flung himself down in it, smiling, but the look of amusement faded rapidly off his face. Madame Geffroi’s question had set his heart aching. More than once in the past, when he had gone down to Chantemerle, Lucienne had been there awaiting him with the rest on the terrace—a child, it is true, much younger, scarcely noticed, and yet the same Lucienne. Those had been happy days; all the happier that they were not poisoned by a passion which had no right to existence, when he was a thoughtless boy and she a child playmate, nothing more. Now she would never wait for him anywhere, for if ever the Fates sent her back to live in security at Chantemerle, the old house could never see him there again. . . . Why had he not gone with her to England as Gilbert had suggested? Why had he acted the virtuous friend at his parting with her the other day? Why, in God’s name, had he of all people taken up that always ridiculous rôle? . . . Since that farewell he had known that she loved him distractedly, but the knowledge, with all that it contained of solace, only served to make his own conduct the more bitter in the mouth. With such a proof of her love as she had then given him, what might their life have been had their lots fallen otherwise—yes, even if he had but plucked his hour when it blossomed to his hand! . . . It was the most sickening folly. He had wrecked his happiness and hers, forsooth, for Gilbert’s—for the cold-blooded Gilbert, who regarded her, most probably, as honoured by her betrothal, and him as a worthless trifler. And he had taken this senseless, unnatural path, in the first place, because Gilbert trusted him. “I wish to the devil he did not!” he muttered fiercely—and knew not that his wish was already granted. “The whole thing is too damnable!” He was kicking angrily at the fallen shawl when Gilbert came in, and could not, or did not try, to conceal his mood, but merely looked up and nodded at his cousin.

“So you are out of bed?” remarked the latter.

“Yes,” said Louis shortly. “I sent for you that we might make plans for to-morrow.”

“For to-morrow! Do you think that you——”

“Confound you!” broke out Louis irritably. “You are as bad as the old lady. I don’t say that I could walk far, but I can certainly ride. It is merely a question of getting horses.”

The Marquis shrugged his shoulders. “I perceive that you are really convalescent,” he observed. “Very well. But we shall have to obtain Madame Geffroi’s assistance; I don’t think it would be wise for one of us to go about them.”

“No, of course not,” agreed Louis. And going to the door he called for his hostess.

Madame Geffroi thought that horses of some kind could be procured, though they would probably not be good ones. But then the travellers would not want to make long stages at first, she added, looking warningly on Louis and almost threateningly on the Marquis. Resigning herself with her accustomed decision to the inevitable, she presumed that if they really meant to start early next morning, she had better take steps about the horses at once, upon which Louis called her an angel, and she left the room shaking her head.

“I hope this good woman will not pay for her kindness,” said Gilbert.

“I trust not,” returned Louis rather absently. “But I can scarcely imagine any one bold enough to call her to account.”

Château-Foix, who was gazing out of the window, turned round and took a good look at him. The bandages visible through his thin and now much-mended shirt, the sling above it, and indeed his whole appearance, thrust again on Gilbert that possibility which he so profoundly wished had never occurred to him.

“How much do you remember of what happened at the Gerbe d’Or?” he asked suddenly.

Louis, who was apparently lost in contemplation of an exceedingly well-shaped leg, looked up in surprise. “What is the Gerbe d’Or? Oh, I recollect. Why, I suppose I remember as much as you do.”

“Then that is not very much,” said his cousin. “Which was the man that stabbed you?”

“Are you vowing vengeance?” asked Louis lazily. “Why, the tall one, of course. The other had no chance; you were taking up too much of his time. My friend had the knife in his waistbelt, I suppose; I never saw him draw it. But, if it is any satisfaction to you, I think you knocked him down yourself afterwards. In fact you must have done, for I certainly didn’t; I was lying on top of their horrible dirty plates.”

“He was behind me, was he not?”

“I don’t know,” said the Vicomte. “Are you going to write an account of this dastardly outrage for the newspapers? because, as an aristocrat, you will not get any sympathy.”

“I am sure he was behind me,” pursued Gilbert. “He was behind me, but you called out to me to turn, and then he stabbed you.”

“Did I? Very likely. After all, you do seem to remember more than I. I am sorry to be such a bad witness, but I really know nothing more about that particular episode.”

Evidently Louis had not the faintest idea that he had any claim on Gilbert’s gratitude, or else, for some reason, he had chosen to forget it. At any rate, there was no more to be got out of him, and Château-Foix abandoned the attempt.

“I shall not stay with you any longer,” said he. “You had better lie down and rest, had you not, if we are to start early to-morrow?”

Louis assented, and bent to pick up the shawl. “I am sorry,” he remarked in a casual tone, “that I was so uncivil just now. It is you who have a better right to be annoyed. You must have been horribly bored these last few days.”

“Oh no,” said the Marquis, “not bored!”