Chapter XXXIV: Surgery: the Probe

“Your silence, full and near,
Folded my agony;
Till it seemed the ruined way to clear
Luminously.

“Words are all harsh to hear,
A look too much may see,
But your silence, beautiful, austere,
Was God to me.” —LILIAN STREET.

That the Marquis’ missive ever reached Le Fougerais was no small wonder, for his messenger rode thither like a madman. It happened that the priest met him in the hall when he returned next morning, spattered from head to foot with the plentiful mud of the bad roads, haggard and unsmiling—he who always had a smile for his good friend.

“Where is Gilbert?” he enquired abruptly, without greeting of any kind. “In the library? Thank you.”

He went in, leaving the door ajar, and M. des Graves heard him say in a voice quite unknown to him: “I have done your errand. I am ready to do any others with which you think you can trust me.”

“Thank you,” said Gilbert; “I am much obliged to you. There will no doubt be others.”

Louis came straight out and went up to his room, and his face, as he passed the priest, was the face of a man in hell.

What did it mean? Surely only one thing. Gilbert had discovered the truth—had perhaps imagined more than the truth. That explosion which the priest had dreaded in November, and whose non-occurrence had so bewildered him, was come at last. But now he was better prepared to meet it.

The Curé went, not to the library, but to his own room, and there, unlocking a drawer, he took out and re-read a long letter with an English postmark. Even as he touched it he experienced again the overwhelming feeling of relief which had enveloped him when first he read it, a week ago. Things were bad enough, but Louis was not, thank God, what he had been almost forced into believing him. As for Lucienne. . . . “Poor child! poor child!” he said once or twice. Then he put the letter away, and sat a long time thinking. His face was very stern.

At supper that evening both the young men made pitiable and unconcerted attempts to behave as though nothing had happened. Gilbert’s were crowned with a certain success. Neither of them said a word to the other.

And next morning after his Mass, in the privacy of his own room, M. des Graves again took out Lucienne’s letter. His coffee and rolls lay almost untouched at his elbow. Again he put the letter away, and fell to pacing up and down on the track which he was beginning to wear on the Marquise’s carpet. As he walked, he reflected on the girl whose pitiful confession he was beginning to know by heart, and on the mysterious ways of that providence which had set her in a position which she was not strong enough to fill. She was sweet, she was good, but she was not strong. And now he saw that Lucienne, not in herself remarkable, had come to be a kind of symbol in the lives of the two men who loved her; that the idea of her stood for more than she in her own person could ever be. Stranger still, it was the man who had trespassed in loving her at all who was the better for it; of the other he could not say that. For that Louis had gained nothing of ennoblement by his renunciation, necessary and just though it had been, the priest did not believe. But Gilbert—on what unrighteous path was his righteous claim impelling him? He thought of the bitter, determined line of his mouth last night; of the haunting anger and despair in the Vicomte’s eyes. Something must be done. But since he must proceed with the utmost caution, and since he was still in the dark as to the amount of Gilbert’s knowledge, he resolved on a course for him very unusual, and not a little repugnant.

He rang. “Ask Monsieur le Vicomte, if he is up, whether he will be so good as to come and speak to me.”

Louis was up; indeed, he looked as if he had had but little sleep. “You sent for me?” he asked, with an obvious surprise, as he came in.

“Yes; I want to have a talk with you. Sit down there, if you will.” The priest waited until Louis had taken a chair and then sat down himself. “I want to ask you,” he said without preamble, “what is wrong between you and Gilbert?”

A spasm passed over Louis’ face. “I can’t tell you that,” he answered hoarsely.

“My son,” said the priest impressively, “it will really be best for all of us if you tell me the exact truth. Most of it I know already. Since the beginning of last November I have known that you loved Lucienne; for the last week I have known that Lucienne loves you. I know of your fatal acknowledgment of your passion; I know, too, thank God, how you have tried to undo the wrong you have done. I want to know now how far Gilbert is cognisant of all this.”

Louis got up from his chair. “Ask him then,” he said, with dilated nostrils. Then he laughed, not pleasantly. “And better, ask him _how_ he knows it. He is able to inform you more graphically than I. Shall I tell him to come up?”

“No,” replied the priest, without moving—unmoved, too, by his most unwonted rudeness. “No, I am asking you. My son, you must know that I am aware you have quarrelled.”

“Quarrelled!” exclaimed the Vicomte with another little laugh. “Oh no, Father—Gilbert is too magnanimous to quarrel! He has not quarrelled with me. He has merely said things to me . . . intolerable, not to be borne from any man alive . . . and refused to answer for them. That is not quarrelling, is it?”

And M. des Graves saw that Louis, that hater of emotion and of scenes, was quivering with passion. He began to have a pretty clear impression of what had taken place at the river. He got up and approached him. “Louis, this situation cannot go on.”

The Vicomte looked him full in the face. “Gilbert could end it—if he would.”

“How?”

“By a very simple means, involving nothing more than a couple of swords. But he refuses to fight me.”

“Ah!” said the older man quietly. And, despite his sympathy, he let the gleam of steel be seen in his own hand. “And so you think, Louis, that _you_ are the aggrieved party?”

The unexpected attack for an instant staggered the furious young man. He swallowed down something that might have been an oath ere he answered curtly “I do. I have every right to think so. But I will not trouble you with my reasons. They are not worth your attention.” And he turned to go.

“Louis . . . Louis!” said M. des Graves in a voice of such pain and tenderness that the Vicomte stopped.

“It is no use, Father,” he replied wildly. “Nothing is any use; it is no use my having tried to behave with some show of honour—Gilbert says that I have none . . . perhaps he is right . . . if you say so, too . . . I had better go. . . .” But instead of going he sank slowly down on the nearest chair, and his head went down on his arms along the back of it.

The priest stood there and looked sorrowfully down at the bowed head. For a long moment there was intense silence, into which only the clock on the mantelpiece intruded. At last he spoke. “I want to help you, Louis; I think you know that.”

Louis lifted a pale, dangerous face. “I don’t know anything,” he said with extraordinary intensity. “I have no feelings about anybody in the world—except Gilbert. And I hate him. . . . Let me go!”

The priest stood aside. “You can go, Louis. . . . Twenty years of comradeship and two days hatred. . . . Perhaps you can see better than I how it will end. God have mercy on all of us!”

The Vicomte flashed out. “But he hates me, too! He must have hated me for months. All the time he knew, curse him . . . all the time that I thought I had hidden it . . . all the time that he was away in Brittany. . . .” And the stream broke its bounds at last, and all that he had suffered, all that he had foregone, his love, his struggle, his victory won for Gilbert’s sake, came pouring out, tinged with the passionate resentment which made Gilbert’s very name difficult to utter.

The priest made no effort to stem an outburst for which indeed he was thankful, and which left Louis spent and shaken, so that he threw himself down at last on the window-seat and looked out of the window. M. des Graves, who had stood without moving during the storm, began to pace slowly up and down in his accustomed fashion, to give the young man time to recover himself. At last he came and sat down beside him.

“Do you want me to say anything to you, Louis?”

Slowly, very slowly, the set profile turned towards him. A gleam of humour flickered for a moment in the angry grey eyes. “I have said a good deal to you,” was all Saint-Ermay’s answer, but he leaned his head back against the window-frame as though he were waiting.