"Secondly, you must never try to see me, except when I give you leave."
"I won"t try, I will only long," said the Captain.
"Thirdly, you must ask no questions."
"It is too soon to ask the only one which I would n"t pledge myself at your bidding never to ask."
"To whom," inquired the lady, "do you conceive yourself to be speaking, Captain Dieppe?" But the look that accompanied the rebuke was not very severe.
"Tell me what I must do," implored the Captain.
She looked at him very kindly, partly because he was a handsome fellow, partly because it was her way; and she said with the prettiest, simplest air, as though she were making the most ordinary request and never thought of a refusal:
"Will you give me fifty thousand francs?"
"I would give you a million thousand--but I have only fifty."
"It would be your all, then! Oh, I should n"t like to--"
"You misunderstand me, madame. I have fifty francs, not fifty thousand."
"Oh!" said she, frowning. Then she laughed a little; then, to Dieppe"s indescribable agony, her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered.
She put her hand up to her eyes; Dieppe heard a sob.
"For G.o.d"s sake--" he whispered.
"Oh, I can"t help it," she said, and she sobbed again; but now she did not try to hide her face. She looked up in the Captain"s, conquering her sobs, but unable to restrain her tears. "It"s not my fault, and it is so hard on me," she wailed. Then she suddenly jumped back, crying, "Oh, what were you going to do?" and regarding the Captain with reproachful alarm.
"I don"t know," said Dieppe in some confusion, as he straightened himself again. "I could n"t help it; you aroused my sympathy," he explained--for what the explanation might be worth.
"You won"t be able to help me," she murmured, "unless--unless--"
"What?"
"Well, unless you "re able to help it, you know."
"I will think," promised Dieppe, "of my friend the Count."
"Of the--? Oh yes, of course." There never was such a face for changes--she was smiling now. "Yes, think of your friend the Count, that will be capital. Oh, but we "re wasting time!"
"On the contrary, madame," the Captain a.s.sured her with overwhelming sincerity.
"Yes, we are. And we "re not safe here. Suppose the Count saw us!"
"Why, yes, that would be--"
"That would be fatal," said she decisively, and the Captain did not feel himself in a position to contradict her. He contented himself with taking her hand again and pressing it softly. Certainly she made a man feel very sympathetic.
"But I must see you again--"
"Indeed I trust so, madame."
"On business."
"Call it what you will, so that--"
"Not here. Do you know the village? No? Well, listen. If you go through the village, past the inn and up the hill, you will come to a Cross by the roadside. Strike off from that across the gra.s.s, again uphill. When you reach the top you will find a hollow, and in it a shepherd"s hut--deserted. Meet me there at dusk to-morrow, about six, and I will tell you how to help me."
"I will be there," said the Captain.
The lady held out both her hands--small, white, ungloved, and unringed.
The Captain"s eyes rested a moment on the finger that should have worn the golden band which united her to his friend the Count. It was not there; she had sent it back--with the marriage contract. With a sigh, strangely blended of pain and pleasure, he bent and kissed her hands.
She drew them away quickly, gave a nervous little laugh, and ran off.
The Captain watched her till she disappeared round the corner of the barricade, and then with another deep sigh betook himself to his own quarters.
The cat did not mew in the pa.s.sage that night. None the less Captain Dieppe"s slumbers were broken and disturbed.
CHAPTER IV
THE INN IN THE VILLAGE
While confessing that her want of insight into Paul de Roustache"s true character was inconceivably stupid, the Countess of Fieramondi maintained that her other mistakes (that was the word she chose--indiscretions she rejected as too severe) were extremely venial, and indeed, under all the circ.u.mstances, quite natural. It was true that she had promised to hold no communication with Paul after that affair of the Baroness von Englebaden"s diamond necklace, in which his part was certainly peculiar, though hardly so d.a.m.natory as Andrea chose to a.s.sume. It was true that, when one is supposed to be at Mentone for one"s health one should not leave one"s courier there (in order to receive letters) and reside instead with one"s maid at Monte Carlo; true, further, that it is unwise to gamble heavily, to lose largely, to confide the misfortune to a man of Paul"s equivocal position and reputation, to borrow twenty thousand francs of him, to lose or spend all, save what served to return home with, and finally to acknowledge the transaction and the obligation both very cordially by word of mouth and (much worse) in letters which were--well, rather effusively grateful. There was nothing absolutely criminal in all this, unless the broken promise must be stigmatised as such; and of that Andrea had heard: he was aware that she had renewed acquaintance with M. de Roustache. The rest of the circ.u.mstances were so fatal in that they made it impossible for her to atone for this first lapse. In fine, Count Andrea, not content now to rely on her dishonoured honour, but willing to trust to her strong religious feelings, had demanded of her an oath that she would hold no further communication of any sort, kind, or nature with Paul de Roustache. The oath was a terrible oath--to be sworn on a relic which had belonged to the Cardinal and was most sacred in the eyes of the Fieramondi. And with Paul in possession of those letters and not in possession of his twenty thousand francs, the Countess felt herself hardly a free agent. For if she did not communicate with Paul, to a certainty Paul would communicate with Andrea. If that happened she would die; while if she broke the oath she would never dare to die. In this dilemma the Countess could do nothing but declare--first, that she had met Paul accidentally (which so far as the first meeting went was true enough), secondly, that she would not live with a man who did not trust her; and, thirdly, that to ask an oath of her was a cruel and wicked mockery from a man whose views on the question of the Temporal Power proclaimed him to be little, it at all, better than an infidel. The Count was very icy and very polite. The Countess withdrew to the right wing; receiving the Count"s a.s.surance that the erection of the barricade would not be disagreeable to him, she had it built--and sat down behind it (so to speak) awaiting in sorrow, dread, and loneliness the terrible moment of Paul de Roustache"s summons. And (to make one more confession on her behalf) her secret and real reason for ordering that nightly illumination, which annoyed the Count so sorely, lay in the hope of making the same gentleman think, when he did arrive, that she entertained a houseful of guests, and was therefore well protected by her friends. Otherwise he would try to force an interview under cover of night.
These briefly indicated facts of the case, so appalling to the unhappy Countess, were on the other hand eminently satisfactory to M. Paul de Roustache. To be plain, they meant money, either from the Countess or from the Count. To Paul"s mind they seemed to mean--well, say, fifty thousand francs--that twenty of his returned, and thirty as a solatium for the trifling with his affections of which he proposed to maintain that the Countess had been guilty. The Baroness von Englebaden"s diamonds had gone the way and served the purposes to which family diamonds seem at some time or other to be predestined: and Paul was very hard up. The Countess must be very frightened, the Count was very proud. The situation was certainly worth fifty thousand francs to Paul de Roustache. Sitting outside the inn, smoking his cigar, on the morning after his encounter in the garden, he thought over all this; and he was glad that he had not let his anger at the Count"s insolence run away with his discretion, the insolence would make his revenge all the sweeter when he put his hand, either directly or indirectly, into the Count"s pocket and exacted compensation to the tune of fifty thousand francs.
Buried in these thoughts--in the course of which it is interesting to observe that he did not realise his own iniquity--he failed to notice that Monsieur Guillaume had sat down beside him and, like himself, was gazing across the valley towards the Castle. He started to find the old fellow at his elbow; he started still more when he was addressed by his name. "You know my name?" he exclaimed, with more perturbation than a stranger"s knowledge of that fact about him should excite in an honest man.
"It"s my business to know people."
"I don"t know you."
"That also is my business," smiled M. Guillaume. "But in this case we will not be too business-like. I will waive my advantage, M. de Roustache."
"You called yourself Guillaume," said Paul with a suspicious glance.
"I was inviting you to intimacy. My name is Guillaume--Guillaume Sevier, at your service."
"Sevier? The--?"
"Precisely. Don"t be uneasy. My business is not with you." He touched his arm. "Your reasons for a midnight walk are nothing to me; young men take these fancies, and--well, the innkeeper says the Countess is handsome. But I am bound to admit that his description of the Count by no means tallies with the appearance of the gentleman who talked with you last night."
"Who talked with me! You were--?"
"I was there--behind a bush a little way down the hill."
"Upon my word, sir--"