Chapter XXXIII: At the Ford

“You let him try to give
The story of our love and ignorance,
And the brief madness and the long despair—
You let him plead all this, because your code
Of honour bids you hear before you strike.”

—BROWNING, _A Blot in the Scutcheon_.

The Vicomte de Saint-Ermay whistled softly as he went down to the river next morning. This, the last of the month, was one of those warm, sunny days in February when the spring seems so much nearer than it really is, and one forgets that March winds have yet to sweep between. But the young grass was already thrusting aside the dead leaves. The rough path which Louis was pursuing through the thicket brought him at last to the little ford, where the bright water lapped a level shore; on the other side the bank rose gently to wooded heights. The Vicomte stopped, for it was a spot beloved of his childhood, where both he and Gilbert had known the dear delight of wading over when the stream was swollen and foothold difficult. For a moment he stood still, marvelling at the heat, and then flung himself yawning on the grass against a log, to lie there thinking vaguely how charming M. des Graves could be when he chose, and wondering why he had so chosen last night, alone with him in the library.

The stream rippled past; in the thicket a thrush broke into song. How little the place had changed; even the unstable water seemed to swirl about in exactly the same spots as of old. He heard steps coming through the copse.

“Hallo!” he said, looking up. “Isn’t it hot? Do you remember this place? I was once carried down by the stream as far as the bend . . . What years ago! I forget if you ever fell in.”

Gilbert stood there in the sunlight and said nothing. And as he looked at the young man lying idly stretched on the grass, his hands behind his head, the last spasm of yesterday’s deadly rage took him by the throat, and for a moment there danced before his eyes the black specks of a physical faintness. The spasm passed, and left him more coldly master of himself than he had ever been in his life.

He walked over until he was within two or three feet of his cousin. “I have something that I want to ask you,” he said, in a cool, conversational tone. “Since my return from Brittany I have received several letters from Lucienne. She has changed perceptibly; she evidently is not happy. Can you account for this in any way?”

Louis gave a start. “I?” he exclaimed, looking up. “How should I?”

The Marquis sat down on the stump of a tree near him. “Because,” he said very calmly, “you are the last member of the family who saw much of her before she left France. Besides, I happen to know that you are the person best able to explain it to me. It has taken me a long while to ask you this question, but now that I have asked it I mean to have an answer.”

He could not, had he sought with the most diabolical ingenuity, have given his query a more entangling form. But Louis looked very straight at him, his mouth suddenly set.

“I have not a notion what you mean,” he replied; “and I certainly cannot account for any change in her.”

“Yes,” observed Gilbert in a meditative tone, “I expected you to do that. You could not very well do anything else. Unfortunately I know that it is not true.”

A red flush swept over the Vicomte’s face and ebbed away as suddenly, leaving him white to the lips, and for the moment speechless. He was so obviously trying hastily to recall some way in which Gilbert might have known his denial to be false that Château-Foix half contemptuously spared him the trouble.

“On the 7th of July last year,” he said, “you said something which has left me with the knowledge, ever since, that you were the person to explain. Tell me what happened in Paris!”

Saint-Ermay pulled himself up on to the log behind him. “Tell me what happened on the 7th of July!” he retorted.

“It was the night that you were delirious in the loft at Pézé.”

“Then I did——” broke out Louis, clenching his hands. “And you . . . all this time. . . .”

Gilbert took no notice, but went on in the same even tone. “Tell me what happened in Paris. You have done what is required, in the way of denial at least, of a man of honour.” His lip curled for a second. “Besides, I am going to marry her. Yes,” he repeated with intense meaning, “I am going to marry her, whatever has happened.”

He had found the key to make Louis speak.

“Good God!” exclaimed the Vicomte, “you don’t think——”

The Marquis did not move a muscle. “I don’t know,” he said.

Saint-Ermay sprang to his feet. “You can’t think it, Gilbert! I will give you my word of honour—I will swear it by anything you please. If you refuse to believe me it is your own doing. . . . My God, you _must_ believe me!”

Still with his horrible and judicial calm Gilbert surveyed his cousin, shaken so violently from his ordinary nonchalance. At last he said slowly: “Yes, in this instance I will believe you.”

“Then, as God sees me,” said Louis solemnly, “you have not the slightest shadow of a foundation for your suspicion. If I were dying at this moment I could not say otherwise. I am no better than other men—I have never pretended to it—but _that_ . . . how could you think it for a moment!”

Gilbert’s long breath of relief was audible, but it was improbable that the Vicomte heard it, for he had sunk down again upon the log and buried his face in his hands.

“Now tell me,” said Gilbert remorselessly, “exactly what happened.”

In the silence that ensued the thrush broke into louder song.

“I am waiting,” said the Marquis again. “I have believed what you have just told me. And the rest, you will concede, I have a right to know.”

Louis lifted his head. “I suppose you have,” he said slowly, looking straight in front of him at the dancing, singing water. “But there is not very much to tell you. I do not know how it was that Lucienne came to be—how I came to love her, or when it began. These last two years perhaps, if you insist on knowing dates; but it came on me so gradually that I did not know it myself. Then, a year ago last January, not intending to do so, and aware all the time that it was hopeless——”

“What do you mean by hopeless?” demanded the Marquis sharply.

“I mean that I knew quite well that she did not care for me, and never would.”

“Liar!” ejaculated Gilbert under his breath. Aloud he said: “Well, go on. What happened last January year?”

“I lost my head, told her I loved her, and implored her to marry me. I do not want to defend myself, but—though I suppose you will not believe me—it was in a moment of madness. I recognised that almost at once.”

“And then?”

“Need you ask? Lucienne answered—as you can imagine. . . . I was ashamed of myself. I—I asked her pardon, and after that, till your coming to Paris, we had scarcely met. I suppose that since that unfortunate episode in January I have been less to her, if possible, than before, though, if I understood you rightly, she was good enough to take an interest in my fate. . . . Now you know why I did not want to take her to England. That is all. And—as you cannot imagine that it is pleasant for me to tell you this—you must know that you should never have had it out of me at all if it were not for your monstrous suspicions.” And he sent his cousin a look composed enough, and charged with a defiance difficult to gauge.

Unfortunately, in listening to this remarkable mixture of truth and falsehood, with its suggested picture of Lucienne as all loyalty, purity, and coldness, Gilbert was violently conscious of a rival picture—a sensation rather—of the girl as she had stiffened in his arms at the news of the narrator’s arrest. That memory was more vivid at the moment than even the Princess’s letter. He saw the position quite clearly. Louis, with his back to the wall, was fighting desperately, not now for himself, but for Lucienne, and since the only way to clear her was to over-blacken himself, he had taken it unhesitatingly. Curious! he still had some of the instincts of a gentleman.

“Thank you,” said the Marquis as he finished. “And I am to understand that Lucienne does not, never has reciprocated this dishonourable passion?—No, I will not ask you that; it makes no difference. . . . I see it all plainly now,” he continued, getting to his feet. “I am to blame for leaving her near you. I should have known better what you were. But you were my cousin and my friend; we were brought up together; the idea of such treachery never entered my head. The more fool I, no doubt! But you—trusted like a brother, you have acted like a lackey! If you have stopped short of the ultimate betrayal, that is all you have refrained from. There was a moment in Paris—you may as well know it; it was when you were in prison—when . . . something . . . caused me to entertain suspicions of you. But I put them away as unworthy; I was ashamed of myself for harbouring them; I was ashamed of having, for an instant, thought of leaving you to your fate. I need not have reproached myself. Ever since that night at Pézé when my eyes were opened I have been able to put it all together: your treachery, your ingratitude, your callousness— your double treachery . . . were you not trying to seduce Lucienne at the very time that you were making love to that adventuress? You are equally heartless and traitorous; you did not even keep your conquest secret—else why did you fight De Bercy the morning after I came to Paris? . . . God!” he exclaimed, his unnatural self-control slipping for an instant from him, “how I have wished that _I_ had you at the point of my sword!”

Louis was on his feet, white with fury. “You can easily gratify that wish!” he retorted. “I ask nothing better! Here, now—no, curse it, we have no swords. . . .”

“No,” said the Marquis coldly, “it is too late. Our lives are wanted for something else.”

“Even mine?” asked Saint-Ermay with bitter derision. “Well, you can ask for it when the need is past. I shall not forget the unspeakable things you have said to me—safeguarded by the knowledge that we cannot cross swords over them. . . . If I have wronged you, Christ! you have had your revenge!”

His face, perfectly colourless, amply bore out his last words. Neither that, nor the blanched rage which lit it, nor the taunt, moved Château-Foix a jot.

“Ah, do you think so?” he said. “I do not. But, at least, I have had the story from your own lips. Now we know where we stand, and we must put the question aside. For the present it is our duty to go on living here together; but, as it happens, I can offer you a commission to do for me to-day if you choose—to ride over to M. de Verteuil at Le Fougerais with a letter.”

“Thank you,” said Louis, choking. “Dare you trust me?”

“In this matter,” replied the Marquis, unmoved, and turning away, left him there.