Montlivet Part 37

"And now regretted it?"

"I am only quoting Starling. Monsieur, would you like to see your wife?"

I rose. "Yes. Will you send word and see if I may?"

Dubisson bowed and left me with a speed that gave me a wry smile. The laughter-loving lieutenant hated embarra.s.sment as he did fast-days, and I had given him a bad hour.

He was back before I thought it possible.

"She will see you at once in the commandant's waiting-room." He looked at me oddly.

"Your wife is a queenly woman, monsieur."

The lights shone uncertainly in the commandant's waiting-room. It was the room where I had met the English captive. From a defiant boy to a court lady! It was a long road, and I was conscious of all the steps that had gone to make it. I went to the woman in silk who waited by the door. She stood erect and silent, but her eyes shone softly through a haze, and when I bent to kiss her hand I found that she was quivering from feet to hair.

"Monsieur!" she whispered unsteadily, "monsieur!" Then I felt her light touch. "G.o.d is good. I have prayed for your safety night and day. Ah--but your shoulder! They did not tell me. Are you wounded, monsieur?"

I was cold as a clod. She had forgiven Starling. She had walked with him. I answered the usual thing mechanically. "My shoulder,--it is a scratch, madame." I kept my lips on her hand, and with the feeling her touch brought me I could not contain my bitterness. "Madame, you wear rich raiment. Does that mean that you and Lord Starling are again friends?"

She drew away. "Monsieur, should we not be friends?"

"Have you forgiven Lord Starling, madame?"

She looked at me with wistful quiet. In her strange gown she seemed saddened, matured. And she answered me gravely. "Monsieur, please understand. My cousin and I---- Why, we traveled side by side in the Iroquois canoes. He served me, was careful of me; he--he has suffered for me, monsieur. I was hard to him for a long time,--a longer time than I like to remember. But I could not but listen to his explanation. And, whatever he did, he is, after all, my cousin, and he regrets deeply all that happened. As to this gown,--it is one I wore in Boston. My cousin brought it in his canoe and left it here at the garrison when he went west. Monsieur"----

"Yes, madame."

"Monsieur, I was wrong when I suspected my cousin. I have an unkind nature in many ways. He came here to find me,--for that alone. He honors you greatly for all you have done for me. I hope that you will give him opportunity to thank you as he wishes."

I thought of Starling's great voice, his air of power. "I hope to meet your cousin," I replied.

It was a churlish return, and she had been gentle. The chill that fell between us was of my making. I knew that with every second of silence I was putting myself more deeply in the wrong. But I had to ask one thing more.

"Madame, they tell me here that you say that you regret our marriage,--that I forced you to bear my name. Have you said that?"

I could not be blind to the hurt in her face. "Monsieur, how can you ask?"

And then I was shamed. I knelt again to her hand. "Only to prove in open words that Lord Starling lied. Did you think I doubted? No, madame, no woman of our house has ever had finer pride or a truer instinct. Believe me, I see that. But so the story flies. Madame, all eyes are on us. We must define the situation in some manner as regards the world. May I talk to you of this?"

The hand under my lips grew warm. "Monsieur, we are to wait. When we reach Montreal"----

"But, madame! These intervening months! It will be late autumn before we return to Montreal."

She drew in her breath. "Late autumn! Monsieur, what are your plans?

You forget that I know nothing. And tell me of your escape."

I rose and looked down at her. "We have both escaped," I said, and because emotion was smiting me my voice was hard. "Let us not talk of it. I see that you are here, and I thank G.o.d. But I cannot yet bring myself to ask what you have been through. I cannot face the horror of it for you. I beg you to understand."

But it was I who did not understand when she drew away. "As you will,"

she agreed, and there was pride in her great eyes, but there was a wound as well. "Yet why," she went on, "should a knowledge of human tragedy harden a woman? It strengthens a man. But enough. Monsieur, have you heard--the lady of the miniature is at Montreal?"

I was slow, for I was wondering how I had vexed her. "You never saw the miniature," I parried. "How can you connect a name with it, madame?"

She looked at me calmly. I hated her silk gown that shone like a breastplate between us. She brushed away my evasion.

"It is well known that you carried Madame Bertheau's miniature. You were an ardent suitor, monsieur."

Yes, I had been an ardent suitor. I remembered it with amaze. My tongue had not been clogged and middle-aged, in those blithe days, and yet those days were only two years gone. With this woman even Pierre had better speech at his command.

"Madame, who told you this?"

"Monsieur, the tale is common property in Paris."

"May I ask who told you, madame?"

"My cousin, monsieur."

"I thought so."

She looked at me fairly, almost sadly, as if she begged to read my mind. "Monsieur, why should you regret my knowing? It is to your credit that you admire Madame Bertheau. They tell me that she is a woman formed for love, beautiful, childlike, untouched by knowledge of crime or hardship. Monsieur, forgive me. Are you willing---- May I see the miniature?"

The transition in my thought was so abrupt that I clapped my hand to my pocket as if it were still there.

"It--I am not carrying the miniature."

"Did--did the Indians take it from you?"

I stepped nearer. "Madame de Montlivet, what right have I to be carrying another woman's miniature? I shall write the fact of my marriage to Madame Bertheau, and the matter will be closed. No, the Indians did not take the miniature. I buried it in the woods."

"Monsieur, that was not necessary!"

"I thought that it was, madame."

She stood with a chair between us. "Monsieur," she said, with her eyes down, "I wish that I had known. It was not necessary. Did you bury the miniature when you married me?"

I put the chair aside and stood over her. "No, madame, I did not bury the miniature the day we were married. Do you remember the night of the storm, the night when you asked me if I could save you from your cousin? I rose early the next morning and digged a grave for the picture. It is buried deep,--with all that I once thought that it implied. If I confess now that it implied little you must find excuses for me. I--my heart was in the camp in those days. The rest was pastime. I have left pastimes behind, madame."

She would not look at me, yet I felt her change. The flitting, indescribable air of elation that marked her from all women in the world came back. She was again the woman of the forest, the woman who had waked with a song and looked with unhurried pulse into the face of danger. I breathed hard and bent to her, but she kept her eyes away.

"The fair little French face," she murmured. "You should not have put it in the cold earth. You were needlessly cruel, monsieur."

I bent lower. "I was not cruel. I gave her a giant sepulchre. That is over. But I--I shall have another miniature. I know a skilled man in Paris. Some time--some time I mean to have your portrait in your Indian blouse; in your skin blouse with the sun in your hair." My free hand suddenly crept to her shoulder, "May I have it? May I have it, madame?"

I cannot remember. Often as I have tried, I can never quite remember.

I am not sure that I heard her whisper. But I think that I did. She quivered under my touch, but she did not draw away, and so we stood for a moment, while my hand wandered where it had gone in dreams and rested on her hair. "Mary!" I whispered, and once more we let the silence lie like a pledge between us.

But in the moment of silence I heard again what I had forgotten,--the roar of the camp outside. It seemed louder than it had been, and it claimed my thought. I checked my breath to listen, holding the woman's hand in mine. And while we listened, Cadillac's loud step and cheerful voice came down the pa.s.sage. The woman drew her hand away, and I let her go. I let her go as if I were ashamed. I have cursed myself for that ever since.

Cadillac stopped. "Are you there, Montlivet?" he called. "When you are at leisure, come to my room." I heard his step retreat.