With one hand he clasped her arm; with the other, in a superb gesture, he indicated the sunlit world outside.
"Let us drain together," cried he, "the loveliness of Perigueux to its dregs!"
Greatly daring, she followed him. It was a rapturous escapade--the first adventure of her life. She turned her comely face to him and he saw smiles round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side choke-full of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured gla.s.s and shadows and the heavy smell of incense.
Her hand was on his arm when they entered the flagged courtyard of an ancient palace, a stately medley of the centuries, with wrought ironwork in the balconies, tourelles, oriels, exquisite Renaissance ornaments on architraves, and a great central Gothic doorway, with great window-openings above, through which was visible the stone staircase of honour leading to the upper floors. In a corner stood a mediaeval well, the sides curiously carved. One side of the courtyard blazed in sunshine, the other lay cool and grey in shadow. Not a human form or voice troubled the serenity of the spot. On a stone bench against the shady wall Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat down to rest.
"_Voila!_" said Aristide. "Here one can suck in all the past like an omelette. They had the feeling for beauty, those old fellows."
"I have wasted twenty years of my life," said Mrs. Ducksmith, with a sigh. "Why didn"t I meet someone like you when I was young? Ah, you don"t know what my life has been, Mr. Pujol."
"Why not Aristide when we are alone? Why not, Henriette?"
He too had the sense of adventure, and his eyes were more than usually compelling and his voice more seductive. For some reason or other, undivined by Aristide--over-excitement of nerves, perhaps--she burst into tears.
"_Henriette! Henriette, ne pleurez pas._"
His arm crept round her--he knew not how; her head sank on his shoulder, she knew not why--faithlessness to her lord was as far from her thoughts as murder or arson; but for one poor little moment in a lifetime it is good to weep on someone"s shoulder and to have someone"s sympathetic arm around one"s waist.
"_Pauvre pet.i.te femme!_ And is it love she is pining for?"
She sobbed; he lifted her chin with his free hand--and what less could mortal apostle do?--he kissed her on her wet cheek.
A bellow like that of an angry bull caused them to start asunder. They looked up, and there was Mr. Ducksmith within a few yards of them, his face aflame, his rabbit"s eyes on fire with rage. He advanced, shook his fists in their faces.
"I"ve caught you! At last, after twenty years, I"ve caught you!"
"Monsieur," cried Aristide, starting up, "allow me to explain."
He swept Aristide aside like an intercepting willow-branch, and poured forth a torrent of furious speech upon his wife.
"I have hated you for twenty years. Day by day I have hated you more.
I"ve watched you, watched you, watched you! But, you sly jade, you"ve been too clever for me till now. Yes; I followed you from the hotel. I dogged you. I foresaw what would happen. Now the end has come. I"ve hated you for twenty years--ever since you first betrayed me----"
Mrs. Ducksmith, who had sat with overwhelmed head in her hands, started bolt upright, and looked at him like one thunderstruck.
"I betrayed you?" she gasped, in bewilderment. "My G.o.d! When? How? What do you mean?"
He laughed--for the first time since Aristide had known him--but it was a ghastly laugh, that made the jowls of his cheeks spread horribly to his ears; and again he flooded the calm, stately courtyard with the raging violence of words. The veneer of easy life fell from him. He became the low-born, petty tradesman, using the language of the hands of his jam factory. No, he had never told her. He had awaited his chance. Now he had found it. He called her names....
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I"VE CAUGHT YOU! AT LAST, AFTER TWENTY YEARS, I"VE CAUGHT YOU!"]
Aristide interposed, his Southern being athrob with the insults heaped upon the woman.
"Say that again, monsieur," he shouted, "and I will take you up in my arms like a sheep and throw you down that well."
The two men glared at one another, Aristide standing bent, with crooked fingers, ready to spring at the other"s throat. The woman threw herself between them.
"For Heaven"s sake," she cried, "listen to me! I have done no wrong. I have done no wrong now--I never did you wrong, so help me G.o.d!"
Mr. Ducksmith laughed again, and his laugh re-echoed round the quiet walls and up the vast staircase of honour.
"You"d be a fool not to say it. But now I"ve done with you. Here, you, sir. Take her away--do what you like with her; I"ll divorce her. I"ll give you a thousand pounds never to see her again."
"_Goujat! Triple goujat!_" cried Aristide, more incensed than ever at this final insult.
Mrs. Ducksmith, deadly white, swayed sideways, and Aristide caught her in his arms and dragged her to the stone bench. The fat, heavy man looked at them for a second, laughed again, and sped through the _porte-cochere_. Mrs. Ducksmith quickly recovered from her fainting attack, and gently pushed the solicitous Aristide away.
"Merciful Heaven!" she murmured. "What is to become of me?"
The last person to answer the question was Aristide. For once in his adventurous life resource failed him. He stared at the woman for whom he cared not the snap of a finger, and who, he knew, cared not the snap of a finger for him, aghast at the havoc he had wrought. If he had set out to arouse emotion in these two sluggish b.r.e.a.s.t.s he had done so with a vengeance. He had thought he was amusing himself with a toy cannon, and he had fired a charge of dynamite.
He questioned her almost stupidly--for a man in the comic mask does not readily attune himself to tragedy. She answered with the desolate frankness of a lost soul. And then the whole meaning--or the lack of meaning--of their inanimate lives was revealed to him. Absolute estrangement had followed the birth of their child nearly twenty years ago. The child had died after a few weeks. Since then he saw--and the generous blood of his heart froze as the vision came to him--that the vulgar, half-sentient, rabbit-eyed bloodhound of a man had nursed an unexpressed, dull, implacable resentment against the woman. It did not matter that the man"s suspicion was vain. To Aristide the woman"s blank amazement at the preposterous charge was proof enough; to the man the thing was real. For nearly twenty years the man had suffered the cancer to eat away his vitals, and he had watched and watched his blameless wife, until now, at last, he had caught her in this folly. No wonder he could not rest at home; no wonder he was driven, Io-wise, on and on, although he hated travel and all its discomforts, knew no word of a foreign language, knew no sc.r.a.p of history, had no sense of beauty, was utterly ignorant, as every single one of our expensively State-educated English lower cla.s.ses is, of everything that matters on G.o.d"s earth; no wonder that, in the unfamiliarity of foreign lands, feeling as helpless as a ballet-dancer in a cavalry charge, he looked to Cook, or Lunn, or the Agence Pujol to carry him through his uninspired pilgrimage. For twenty years he had shown no sign of joy or sorrow or anger, scarcely even of pleasure or annoyance. A tortoise could not have been more unemotional. The unsuspected volcano had slumbered. To-day came disastrous eruption. And what was a mere laughing, crying child of a man like Aristide Pujol in front of a Ducksmith volcano?
"What is to become of me?" wailed Mrs. Ducksmith again.
"_Ma foi!_" said Aristide, with a shrug of his shoulders. "What"s going to become of anyone? Who can foretell what will happen in a minute"s time? _Tiens!_" he added, kindly laying his hand on the sobbing woman"s shoulder. "Be comforted, my poor Henriette. Just as nothing in this world is as good as we hope, so nothing is as bad as we fear. _Voyons!_ All is not lost yet. We must return to the hotel."
She weepingly acquiesced. They walked through the quiet streets like children whose truancy had been discovered and who were creeping back to condign punishment at school. When they reached the hotel, Mrs.
Ducksmith went straight up to the woman"s haven, her bedroom.
Aristide tugged at his Vand.y.k.e beard in dire perplexity. The situation was too pregnant with tragedy for him to run away and leave the pair to deal with it as best they could. But what was he to do? He sat down in the vestibule and tried to think. The landlord, an unstoppable gramophone of garrulity, entering by the street-door and bearing down upon him, put him to flight. He, too, sought his bedroom, a cool apartment with a balcony outside the French window. On this balcony, which stretched along the whole range of first-floor bedrooms, he stood for a while, pondering deeply. Then, in an absent way, he overstepped the limit of his own room-frontage. A queer sound startled him. He paused, glanced through the open window, and there he saw a sight which for the moment paralyzed him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THERE HE SAW A SIGHT WHICH FOR THE MOMENT PARALYZED HIM]
Recovering command of his muscles, he tiptoed his way back. He remembered now that the three rooms adjoined. Next to his was Mr.
Ducksmith"s, and then came Mrs. Ducksmith"s. It was Mr. Ducksmith whom he had seen. Suddenly his dark face became luminous with laughter, his eyes glowed, he threw his hat in the air and danced with glee about the room. Having thus worked off the first intoxication of his idea, he flung his few articles of attire and toilet necessaries into his bag, strapped it, and darted, in his dragon-fly way, into the corridor and tapped softly at Mrs. Ducksmith"s door. She opened it. He put his finger to his lips.
"Madame," he whispered, bringing to bear on her all the mocking magnetism of his eyes, "if you value your happiness you will do exactly what I tell you. You will obey me implicitly. You must not ask questions. Pack your trunks at once. In ten minutes" time the porter will come for them."
She looked at him with a scared face. "But what am I going to do?"
"You are going to revenge yourself on your husband."
"But I don"t want to," she replied, piteously.
"I do," said he. "Begin, _chere madame_. Every moment is precious."
In a state of stupefied terror the poor woman obeyed him. He saw her start seriously on her task and then went downstairs, where he held a violent and gesticulatory conversation with the landlord and with a man in a green baize ap.r.o.n summoned from some dim lair of the hotel. After that he lit a cigarette and smoked feverishly, walking up and down the pavement. In ten minutes" time his luggage with that of Mrs. Ducksmith was placed upon the cab. Mrs. Ducksmith appeared trembling and tear-stained in the vestibule.
The man in the green baize ap.r.o.n knocked at Mr. Ducksmith"s door and entered the room.
"I have come for the baggage of monsieur," said he.
"Baggage? What baggage?" asked Mr. Ducksmith, sitting up.
"I have descended the baggage of Monsieur Pujol," said the porter in his stumbling English, "and of madame, and put them in a cab, and I naturally thought monsieur was going away, too."