The Battle of the Strong Part 29

"Don't get up, ma couzaine," she said, "please no. Sit just there, and I'll sit beside you. Ah, but I have the most wonderfuls!"

Carterette was out of breath. She had hurried here from her home. As she said herself, her two feet weren't in one shoe on the way, and that with her news made her quiver with excitement.

At first, bursting with mystery, she could do no more than sit and look in Guida's face. Carterette was quick of instinct in her way, but yet she had not seen any marked change in her friend during the past few months. She had been so busy thinking of her own particular secret that she was not observant of others. At times she met Ranulph, and then she was uplifted, to be at once cast down again; for she saw that his old cheerfulness was gone, that a sombreness had settled on him. She flattered herself, however, that she could lighten his gravity if she had the right and the good opportunity; the more so that he no longer visited the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison.

This drew her closer to Guida also, for, in truth, Carterette had no loftiness of nature. Like most people, she was selfish enough to hold a person a little dearer for not standing in her own especial light. Long ago she had shrewdly guessed that Guida's interest lay elsewhere than with Ranulph, and a few months back she had fastened upon Philip as the object of her favour. That seemed no weighty matter, for many sailors had made love to Carterette in her time, and knowing it was here to-day and away to-morrow with them, her heart had remained untouched. Why then should she think Guida would take the officer seriously where she herself held the sailor lightly? But at the same time she felt sure that what concerned Philip must interest Guida, she herself always cared to hear the fate of an old admirer, and this was what had brought her to the cottage to-day.

"Guess who's wrote me a letter?" she asked of Guida, who had taken up some sewing, and was now industriously regarding the st.i.tches.

At Carterette's question, Guida looked up and said with a smile, "Some one you like, I see."

Carterette laughed gaily. "Ba su, I should think I did--in a way. But what's his name? Come, guess, Ma'm'selle Dignity."

"Eh ben, the fairy G.o.dmother," answered Guida, trying not to show an interest she felt all too keenly; for nowadays it seemed to her that all news should be about Philip. Besides, she was gaining time and preparing herself for--she knew not what.

"O my grief!" responded the brown-eyed elf, kicking off a red slipper, and thrusting her foot into it again, "never a fairy G.o.dmother had I, unless it's old Manon Moignard the witch:

"'Sas, son, bileton, My grand'methe a-fishing has gone: She'll gather the fins to sc.r.a.pe my jowl, And ride back home on a barnyard fowl!'

"Nannin, ma'm'selle, 'tis plain to be seen you can't guess what a cornfield grows besides red poppies." Laughing in sheer delight at the mystery she was making, she broke off again into a whimsical nursery rhyme:

"'Coquelicot, j'ai mal au de Coquelicot, qu'est qui l'a fait?

Coquelicot, ch'tai mon valet.'"

She kicked off the red slipper again. Flying half-way across the room, it alighted on the table, and a little mud from the heel dropped on the clean scoured surface. With a little moue of mockery, she got slowly up and tiptoed across the floor, like a child afraid of being scolded.

Gathering the dust carefully, and looking demurely askance at Guida the while, she tiptoed over again to the fireplace and threw it into the chimney.

"Naughty Carterette," she said at herself with admiring reproach, as she looked in Guida's mirror, and added, glancing with farcical approval round the room, "and it all shines like peac.o.c.k's feather, too!"

Guida longed to s.n.a.t.c.h the letter from Carterette's hand and read it, but she only said calmly, though the words fluttered in her throat:

"You're as gay as a chaffinch, Garcon Carterette." Garcon Carterette!

Instantly Carterette sobered down. No one save Ranulph ever called her Garcon Carterette. Guida used Ranulph's name for Carterette, knowing that it would change the madcap's mood. Carterette, to hide a sudden flush, stooped and slowly put on her slipper. Then she came back to the veille, and sat down again beside Guida, saying as she did so:

"Yes, I'm gay as a chaffinch--me."

She unfolded the letter slowly, and Guida stopped sewing, but mechanically began to p.r.i.c.k the linen lying on her knee with the point of the needle.

"Well," said Carterette deliberately, "this letter's from a pend'loque of a fellow--at least, we used to call him that--though if you come to think, he was always polite as mended porringer. Often he hadn't two sous to rub against each other. And--and not enough b.u.t.tons for his clothes."

Guida smiled. She guessed whom Carterette meant. "Has Monsieur Detricand more b.u.t.tons now?" she asked with a little whimsical lift of the eyebrows.

"Ah bidemme, yes, and gold too, all over him--like that!" She made a quick sweeping gesture which would seem to make Detricand a very spangle of b.u.t.tons. "Come, what do you think--he's a general now.

"A general!" Instantly Guida thought of Philip and a kind of envy shot into her heart that this idler Detricand should mount so high in a few months--a man whose past had held nothing to warrant such success. "A general--where?" she asked.

"In the Vendee army, fighting for the new King of France--you know the rebels cut off the last King's head."

At another time Guida's heart would have throbbed with elation, for the romance of that Vendee union of aristocrat and peasant fired her imagination; but she only said in the tongue of the people: "Ma fuifre, yes, I know!"

Carterette was delighted to thus dole out her news, and get due reward of astonishment. "And he's another name," she added. "At least it's not another, he always had it, but he didn't call himself by it. Pardi, he's more than the Chevalier; he's the Comte Detricand de Tournay--ah, then, believe me if you choose, there it is!"

She pointed to the signature of the letter, and with a gush of eloquence explained how it all was about Detricand the vaurien and Detricand the Comte de Tournay.

"Good riddance to Monsieur Savary dit Detricand, and good welcome to the Comte de Tournay," answered Guida, trying hard to humour Carterette, that she should sooner hear the news yet withheld. "And what follows after?"

Carterette was half sorry that her great moment had come. She wished she could have linked out the suspense longer. But she let herself be comforted by the antic.i.p.ated effect of her "wonderfuls."

"I'll tell you what comes after--ah, but see then what a news I have for you! You know that Monsieur d'Avranche--well, what do you think has come to him?"

Guida felt as if a monstrous hand had her heart in its grasp, crushing it. Presentiment seized her. Carterette was busy running over the pages of the letter, and did not notice her colourless face. She had no thought that Guida had any vital interest in Philip, and ruthlessly, though unconsciously, she began to torture the young wife as few are tortured in this world.

She read aloud Detricand's description of his visit to the Castle of Bercy, and of the meeting with Philip. "'See what comes of a name!'"

wrote Detricand. "'Here was a poor prisoner whose ancestor, hundreds of years ago, may or mayn't have been a relative of the d'Avranches of Clermont, when a disappointed duke, with an eye open for heirs, takes a fancy to the good-looking face of the poor prisoner, and voila! you have him whisked off to a palace, fed on milk and honey, and adopted into the family. Then a pedigree is nicely grown on a summer day, and this fine young Jersey adventurer is found to be a green branch from the old root; and there's a great blare of trumpets, and the States of the duchy are called together to make this English officer a prince--and that's the Thousand and One Nights in Arabia, Ma'm'selle Carterette.'"

Guida was sitting rigid and still. In the slight pause Carterette made, a hundred confused torturing thoughts swam through her mind and presently floated into the succeeding sentences of the letter:

"'As for me, I'm like Rabot's mare, I haven't time to laugh at my own foolishness. I'm either up to my knees in gra.s.s or clay fighting Revolutionists, or I'm riding hard day and night till I'm round-backed like a wood-louse, to make up for all the good time I so badly lost in your little island. You wouldn't have expected that, my friend with the tongue that stings, would you? But then, Ma'm'selle of the red slippers, one is never b.u.t.ted save by a dishorned cow--as your father used to say."'

Carterette paused again, saying in an aside: "That is M'sieu' all over, all so gay. But who knows? For he says, too, that the other day a-fighting Fontenay, five thousand of his men come across a cavalry as they run to take the guns that eat them up like cabbages, and they drop on their knees, and he drops with them, and they all pray to G.o.d to help them, while the cannon b.a.l.l.s whiz-whiz over their heads. And G.o.d did hear them, for they fell down flat when the guns was fired and the cannon b.a.l.l.s never touched 'em."

During this interlude, Guida, sick with anxiety, could scarcely sit still. She began sewing again, though her fingers trembled so she could hardly make a st.i.tch. But Carterette, the little egoist, did not notice her agitation; her own flurry dimmed her sight.

She began reading again. The first few words had little or no significance for Guida, but presently she was held as by the fascination of a serpent.

"'And Ma'm'selle Carterette, what do you think this young captain, now Prince Philip d'Avranche, heir to the t.i.tle of Bercy--what do you think he is next to do? Even to marry a countess of great family the old Duke has chosen for him; so that the name of d'Avranche may not die out in the land. And that is the way that love begins.... Wherefore, I want you to write and tell me--'"

What he wanted Carterette to tell him Guida never heard, though it concerned herself, for she gave a moan like a dumb animal in agony, and sat rigid and blanched, the needle she had been using embedded in her finger to the bone, but not a motion, not a sign of animation in face or figure.

All at once, some conception of the truth burst upon the affrighted Carterette. The real truth she imagined as little as had Detricand.

But now when she saw the blanched face, the filmy eyes and stark look, the finger pierced by the needle, she knew that a human heart had been pierced too, with a pain worse than death--truly it was worse, for she had seen death, and she had never seen anything like this in its dire misery and horror. She caught the needle quickly from the finger, wrapped her kerchief round the wound, threw away the sewing from Guida's lap, and running an arm about her waist, made as if to lay a hot cheek against the cold brow of her friend. Suddenly, however, with a new and painful knowledge piercing her intelligence, and a face as white and scared as Guida's own, she ran to the dresser, caught up a hanap, and brought some water. Guida still sat as though life had fled, and the body, arrested in its activity, would presently collapse.

Carterette, with all her seeming lightsomeness, had sense and self-possession. She tenderly put the water to Guida's lips, with comforting words, though her own brain was in a whirl, and dark forebodings flashed through her mind.

"Ah, man gui, man pethe!" she said in the homely patois. "There, drink, drink, dear, dear couzaine." Guida's lips opened, and she drank slowly, putting her hand to her heart with a gesture of pain. Carterette put down the hanap and caught her hands. "Come, come, these cold hands--pergui, but we must stop that! They are so cold." She rubbed them hard. "The poor child of heaven--what has come over you? Speak to me...

ah, but see, everything will come all right by and by! G.o.d is good.

Nothing's as bad as what it seems. There was never a grey wind but there's a greyer. Nanningia, take it not so to heart, my couzaine; thou shalt have love enough in the world.... Ah, grand doux d'la vie, but I could kill him!" she added under her breath, and she rubbed Guida's hands still, and looked frankly, generously into her eyes.

Yet, try as she would in that supreme moment, Carterette could not feel all she once felt concerning Guida. There is something humiliating in even an undeserved injury, something which, to the human eye, lessens the worthiness of its victim. To this hour Carterette had looked upon her friend as a being far above her own companionship. All in a moment, in this new office of comforter the relative status was altered. The plane on which Guida had moved was lowered. Pity, while it deepened Carterette's tenderness, lessened the gap between them.

Perhaps something of this pa.s.sed through Guida's mind, and the deep pride and courage of her nature came to her a.s.sistance. She withdrew her hands and mechanically smoothed back her hair, then, as Carterette sat watching her, folded up the sewing and put it in the work-basket hanging on the wall.

There was something unnatural in her governance of herself now. She seemed as if doing things in a dream, but she did them accurately and with apparent purpose. She looked at the clock, then went to the fire to light it, for it was almost time to get her grandfather's tea. She did not seem conscious of the presence of Carterette, who still sat on the veille, not knowing quite what to do. At last, as the flame flashed up in the chimney, she came over to her friend, and said:

"Carterette, I am going to the Dean's. Will you run and ask Maitresse Aimable to come here to me soon?" Her voice had the steadiness of despair--that steadiness coming to those upon whose nerves has fallen a great numbness, upon whose sensibilities has settled a cloud that stills them as the thick mist stills the ripples on the waters of a fen.

All the glamour of Guida's youth had dropped away. She had deemed life good, and behold, it was not good; she had thought her dayspring was on high, and happiness had burnt into darkness like quick-consuming flax.