"Yes." She was twisting her handkerchief.
It was this simple act which brightened his memory. He went over to his table. Her gaze, full of trouble and shame, followed him. Yes, there lay the letter; a film of dust covered it. He remembered.
"It was an answer," he said, smiling sadly. He did not quite understand. "It was an answer to my . . ."
"Give it to me, Monsieur; do not read it!" she begged, one hand pressing her heart, the other extended toward him appealingly.
"Not read it?" Her very agitation told him that there was something in the letter worth reading. He calmly tore it open and read the biting words, the scorn and contempt which she had penned that memorable day.
The letter added nothing to the bitterness of his cup, only he was surprised at the quality of her wrath on that day. But what surprised him more was when she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hands, rushed to the fire, and cast the letter into it. She watched it writhe and curl and crisp and vanish. He saw nothing in this action but a n.o.ble regret that she had caused him pain. Nevertheless, all was not clear to him.
Silence.
"Well, Madame?"
"I . . . I have brought you another!" Redder than ever her face flamed. The handkerchief was resolving itself into shreds.
"Another letter?" vaguely.
"No, no! Another . . . another answer!"
How still everything had suddenly grown to him! "Another answer? You have brought me another answer?" Then the wine of life rushed through his veins, and all darkness was gone. "Diane, Diane!" he cried, springing toward her.
"Yes, yes; always call me that! Never call me Gabrielle!"
"And Victor?"
Her hands were against his breast and she was pushing him back. "Oh, it is true that I loved him, as a woman would love a brave and gallant brother." A strand of hair fell athwart her eyes and she brushed it aside.
"But I?--I, whom you have made dance so sorrily?--but I?"
"To-night I saw you . . . I could see you," incoherently, "alone, bereft of the friend you loved and who loved you. . . . I thought of you as you faced them all that day! . . . How calm and brave you were!
. . . You said that some day you would force me to love you. You said I was dishonest. I was, I was! But you could never force me to love you, because . . . because. . . ." With a superb gesture of abandon which swept aside all barriers, all hesitancies, all that hedging convention which compels a woman to be silent, she said: "If you do not immediately tell me that you still love me madly, I shall die of shame!"
"Diane!" He forced her hands from her burning face.
"Yes, yes; I love you, love you with all my soul; all, all! And I have come to you this night in my shame, knowing that you would never have come to me. Wait!" still pressing him back, for he was eager now to make up in this exquisite moment all he had lost. "Oh, I tried to hate you; lied to myself that I wanted nothing but to bring you to your knees and then laugh at you. For each moment I have made you suffer I have suffered an hour. Paul, Paul, can you love me still?"
He knelt, kissing her hands madly. "You are the breath of my life, the coming of morning after a long night of darkness. Love you? With my latest breath!"
"It was my heart you put your heel upon, for I loved you from the moment I saw your miniature. Paul!" She bent her head till her cheek rested upon his hair. "So many days have been wasted, so many days! I have always loved you. Look!" The locket lay in her hand. The face there was his own.
"And you come to me?" It was so difficult to believe. "Ah, but you heard what the vicomte said that day?" a shade of gloom mingling with the gladness on his face.
"I saw only you in the doorway, defending my honor with your life. I tried to tell you then that I loved you, but I could not."
"I am not worthy," he said, rising from his knees.
"I love you!"
"I have been a gamester."
"I love you!" The music in her voice deepened and vibrated. The strings of the harp of life gave forth their fullest sound.
"I have been a roisterer by night. I have looked into the bottom of many an unwise cup."
"Do you not hear me say that I love you? There is no past now, Paul; there is nothing but the future. Once, I promised in a letter that if you found me you might take what I had always denied you, my lips."
He put his arms around her and took from her glowing lips that fairest and most perfect flower which grows in the garden of love: the first kiss.
And there was no shadow between.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
THE ABSOLUTION OF MONSIEUR LE MARQUIS DE PERIGNY
The Chateau Saint Louis shimmered in the November moonlight. It was a castle in dream. Solitude brooded over the pile as a mother broods over an empty cot. High above the citadel the gilded ball of the flagstaff glittered like a warm topaz. Below, the roofs of the warehouses shone like silver under gauze. A crooked black line marked the course of the icy river, and here and there a phantom moon flashed upon it. The quiet beauty of all this was broken by the red harshness of artificial light which gleamed from a single window in the chateau, like a Cyclopean eye. Stillness was within. If any moved about on this floor it was on tiptoe. Death stood at the door and peered into the darkest corners. For the Marquis de Perigny was about to start out upon that journey which has no visible end, which leaves no trail behind: men setting out this way forget the way back, being without desire.
Who shall plumb the depth of the bitterness in this old man"s heart, as he lay among his pillows, his head moving feebly from side to side, his attenuated fingers plucking at the coverlet, his tongue stealing slowly along his cracked and burning lips. Fragments of his life pa.s.sed in ragged panorama. His mind wandered, and again became keen with the old-time cynicism and philosophy, as a coal glows and fades in a fitful wind. In all these weeks he had left his bed but once . . . to find that his son was lost in the woods, a captive, perhaps dead. Too late; he had always been too late. He had turned the forgiving hand away.
And how had he wronged that hand?
"Margot?" he said, speaking to a shadow.
Jehan rose from his chair and approached his master. His withered, leathery face had lost the power to express emotion; but his faded eyes sparkled suspiciously.
"Monsieur?" he said.
"What o"clock is it?" asked the marquis, irritably.
"It is midnight, Monsieur."
"Monsieur le Comte has not come in yet? With his sponging friends, I suppose; drinking and gaming at the Corne d"Abondance." Thus had the marquis spoken in the Roch.e.l.le days. "A sip of wine; I am cold."
Jehan put his arm around the thin shoulders of his master and held the gla.s.s to the trembling lips. A hectic flush superseded the pallor, and the delusion was gone. The coal glowed. "It is you, Jehan? Well, my faithful henchman, you will have to continue the journey alone. My relays have given out. Go back to Perigny in the spring. I shall be buried here."
Jehan shivered. The earth would be very cold here.
"The lad was a prophet. He told me that I should die in bed like this, alone, without one of my blood near me at the end. He spoke of phantoms, too. . . . They are everywhere. And without the consolation of a friendly priest!"
"Monsieur, do you know me?"
"Why, yes, Jehan."
"Brother Jacques and Monsieur le Comte returned this day from the wilderness. I have seen them."
The marquis"s hands became still. "Pride has filled my path with black pits. Jehan, after all, was it a dream?"
"What, Monsieur?"