The Halo Part 37

It was about six o'clock, and Tommy had gone out with Theo. They would not be back until about eight.

Felicite, too, was out. She was alone. She saw Papillon, who was sitting up, looking at her with a world of sympathy in the c.o.c.k of his ear.

Suddenly Brigit burst into tears, nervous, hysterical, noisy sobbing, as she had done that day in the olive grove at the Villa Arcadie. She had been living under great nervous strain for months, and these breakdowns were of appalling violence. She _could_ not stop crying, and she could not reason and tell herself that he would come back and forgive her.

All she could realise was her hideous misery and sense of desolation.

She was utterly alone, she was hungry, she was cold, she was hopeless.

Presently someone touched her shoulder very gently. It was Felicite.

"What is it, my dear?" the elder woman asked. "What has happened?"

And Brigit, too unstrung to tell the usual conventional lies, simply sobbed on, her whole body shaking with agony.

Madame Joyselle sat patiently by her, stroking her shoulders with a kind hand, murmuring little broken phrases in French, patting her hair.

"_Oui, oui, ma mie--Pauvre pet.i.te, ca te soulagera--Pleures, ma cocotte, pleures!_"

And at last the girl was quiet, and reached for her handkerchief.

"I--I am sorry to have been so idiotic, I don't know why I am such a fool----"

Felicite smoothed back her wet hair and smiled at her.

"Poor child," she answered quietly. "I am so sorry. I have seen it for some time----"

Brigit stared at her.

"Seen--?"

"That you have fallen in love with Victor. It is really too bad of him, the old rascal."

Her gentle face was so undisturbed, so calmly acceptant of the heinous fact that Brigit could do nothing but stare. "I am glad poor Theo does not suspect," went on Felicite, untying the strings of her old-fashioned bonnet, "we must not let him know, _n'est ce pas_?"

"I--I don't see----" stammered the girl, blankly.

"No, he must not know. Nor Victor either, if we can help it. Though he is very vain, and vain men always see. On the whole," she added with a kind of gentle amus.e.m.e.nt, "you have all been absurdly blind but me. And I did not like to warn you."

"This is--very extraordinary," began Brigit, rising. "I don't quite see----"

But Felicite drew her down to her chair again. "That is just it, _ma pauvre pet.i.te_. I did see. I saw his little fancy for you, too. It began the evening of the dragon-skin frock, and it lasted, oh--about a month.

And you never noticed it, poor child. And now you are miserable about him. I am so sorry."

There was such convincing sincerity in her every tone that Brigit could not even pretend to be angry.

"You must think me very silly," she murmured.

But the little woman shook her head, "_Non, non_, it is not silly to love. It is unwise, or wrong, or heavenly, or mad, but silly, _non_. And he is very attractive, _mon homme_." This tribute she added reluctantly, as if from a sense of fairness. "And many have loved him."

Suddenly Brigit's anger flamed up.

"And--I am so insignificant that you are not afraid of me," she cried.

"What if he had _not_ got over it? What if he loved me as much--_more_ than I love him?"

Felicite smiled serenely and sweetly.

"No, I know him. I saw it come--and go. But do not be angry and proud, my dear. I wish only to help you."

And Brigit, touched by her kindness as well as terrified by her own indiscretion, sat down by her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

When Joyselle came in at eight o'clock he went straight to his room to dress. He was still very angry, but his anger was less poignant than his sense of helpless defeat. Brigit's att.i.tude was absolutely incomprehensible to him, and hurt him in an almost unbearable degree.

That she should defy him, grow as angry as he himself, he had already learned was not impossible; but the cruel hardness of her face as she had sent him away had shocked him more than anything in his whole experience.

He was a shrewd man, and his love for her had never blinded him as to her faults; often he had corrected her for unfilial behaviour, for a too sharp word, for selfishness. But the one quality which to a strong and tender man is unendurable in the woman he loves, cruelty, he had never before realised in the girl, and his discovery that it lay in her to hurt him as she had done, had nearly broken his heart.

For hours he had walked rapidly through the streets, seeing no one, avoiding being knocked down by a kind of subconscious attention and alertness of mind, his brain struggling desperately with its problem.

In a few words, all life seemed to him to have reduced itself to the question, "How could she?" As yet he had not got further than this, and it did not occur to him to wonder whether or no her mental att.i.tude was definite or only temporary. "How could she? How could she so rend him?

Of what was her heart made that it could allow her so to wound his?"

When he reached home the incomprehensibility of this problem was fast outweighing his anger, and Felicite, who came in as he stood in the middle of the room brushing his hair, smiled at the misery in his face.

"So she was cruel, the little one?" she asked gently, sitting down and folding her hands in her characteristic way.

"She was--abominable. But how did you know?"

"I found her in tears. You must be gentle with her, my man."

He stared. "Gentle? But she is a demon when she is angry. Tell me to be gentle with an enraged lioness."

Felicite's smile was good to see. "She is not an enraged lioness, Victor. She is--very unhappy, and we must help her."

He went to the dressing-table and put down his brushes. "I am tired, wife," he said quietly; "let us talk of something else. Besides, it is nearly half-past eight."

She nodded.

"Yes. But--Victor, you remember the Polish girl?"

"Franska? Yes."

"Well? And the pantomimiste, and Miss Belton, and Lady Paula----"