The Lane That Had No Turning Part 7

"I shall see that the lady has refreshment," he said. "Will Madame perhaps care for refreshment--and a mirror, before Monsieur has the honour?--Madame has travelled far."

In spite of the anxiety of the moment and the great matters at stake, Madelinette could not but smile. "Thank you," she said, "I hope I'm not so unpresentable."

"A little dust here and there perhaps, Madame," he said, with humble courtesy.

Madelinette was not so heroical as to undervalue the suggestion. Lives perhaps were in the balance, but she was a woman, and who could tell what slight influences might turn the scale!

The servant saw her hesitation. "If Madame will but remain here, I will bring what is necessary," he said, and was gone. In a moment he appeared again with a silver basin, a mirror, and a few necessaries of the toilet.

"I suppose, Madame," said the servant, with fluttered anxiety, to show that he knew who she was, "I suppose you have had sometimes to make rough shifts, even in palaces."

She gave him a gold piece. It cheered her in the moment to think that in this forbidding house, on a forbidding mission, to a forbidding man, she had one friend. She made a hasty toilet, and but for the great paleness of her cheeks, no traces remained of the three days' travel with their hardship and anxiety. Presently, as the servant ushered her into the presence of George Fournel, even the paleness was warmed a little by the excitement of the moment.

Fournel was standing with his back to the door, looking out into the moonlit night. As she entered he quickly drew the curtains of the windows and turned towards his visitor, a curious, hard, disdainful look in his face. In his hands he held a paper which she knew only too well.

"Madame," he said, and bowed. Then he motioned her to a chair. He took one himself and sat down beside the great oak writing-desk and waited for her to speak--waited with a look which sent the blood from her heart to colour her cheeks and forehead.

She did not speak, however, but looked at him fearlessly. It was impossible for her to humble herself before the latent insolence of his look. It seemed to degrade her out of all consideration. He felt the courage of her defiance, and it moved him. Yet he could but speak in cynical suggestion.

"You had a long, hard, and adventurous journey," he said. He rose suddenly and drew a tray towards him. "Will you not have some refreshment?" he added, in an even voice. "I fear you have not had time to seek it at an inn. Your messenger has but just gone."

It was impossible for him to do justice to himself, or to let his hospitality rest upon its basis of natural courtesy. It was clear that he was moved with acc.u.mulated malice, and he could not hide it.

"Your servant has been hospitable," she said, her voice trembling a little. She plunged at once into the business of her visit.

"Monsieur, that paper you hold--" she stopped for an instant, able to go no further.

"Ah, this--this doc.u.ment you have sent me," he said, opening it with an a.s.sumed carelessness. "Your servant had an accident--I suppose we may call it that privately--as he came. He was fired at--was wounded. You will share with me the hope that the highwayman who stopped him may be brought to justice, though, indeed, your man Tardif left him behind in the dust. Perhaps you came upon him, Madame--hein?"

She steeled herself. Too much was at stake; she could not resent his hateful implications now.

"Tardif was not my messenger, Monsieur, as you know. Tardif was the thief of that doc.u.ment in your hands."

"Yes, this--will!" he said musingly, an evil glitter in his eyes. "Its delivery has been long delayed. Posts and messengers are slow from Pontiac."

"Monsieur will hear what I have to say? You have the will, your rights are in your hands. Is not that enough?"

"It is not enough," he answered, in a grating voice. "Let us be plain then, Madame, and as simple as you please. You concealed this will. Not Tardif but yourself is open to the law."

She shrank under the brutality of his manner, but she ruled herself to outward composure. She was about to reply when he added, with a sneer: "Avarice is a debasing vice--Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house!

Thou shalt not steal!"

"Monsieur," she said calmly, "it would have been easy to destroy the will. Have you not thought of that?"

For a moment he was taken aback, but he said harshly: "If crime were always intelligent, it would have fewer penalties."

She shrank again under the roughness of his words. But she was fighting for an end that was dear to her soul, and she answered:

"It was not lack of intelligence, but a sense of honour--yes, a sense of honour," she insisted, as he threw back his head and laughed. "What do you think might be my reason for concealing the will--if I did conceal it?"

"The answer seems obvious. Why does the wild a.s.s forage with a strange herd, or the pig put his feet in the trough? Not for his neighbour's gain, Madame, not in a thousand years."

"Monsieur, I have never been spoken to so coa.r.s.ely. I am a blacksmith's daughter, and I have heard rough men talk in my day, but I have never heard a man--of my own race at least--so rude to a woman. But I am here not for my own sake; I will not go till I have said and done all I have come to say and do. Will you listen to me, Monsieur?"

"I have made my charges--answer them. Disprove this theft"--he held up the will--"of concealment, and enjoyment of property not your own, and then ask of me that politeness which makes so beautiful stable and forge at Pontiac."

"Monsieur, you cannot think that the will was concealed for profit, for the value of the Seigneury of Pontiac. I can earn two such seigneuries in one year, Monsieur."

"Nevertheless you do not."

"For the same reason that I did not bring or send that will to you when I found it, Monsieur. And for that same reason I have come to ask you not to take advantage of that will."

He was about to interpose angrily, but she continued: "Whatever the rental may be that you in justice feel should be put upon the Seigneury, I will pay--from the hour my husband entered on the property, its heir as he believed. Put such rental on the property, do not disturb Monsieur Racine in his position as it is, and I will double that rental."

"Do not think, Madame, that I am as avaricious as you."

"Is it avaricious to offer double the worth of the rental?"

"There is the t.i.tle and distinction. You married a mad n.o.body; you wish to retain an honour that belongs to me."

"I am asking it for my husband's sake, not my own, believe me, Monsieur."

"And what do you expect me to do for his sake, Madame?"

"What humanity would suggest. Ah, I know what you would say: he tried to kill you; he made you fight him. But, Monsieur, he has repented of that.

He is ill, he is--crippled, he cherishes the Seigneury beyond its worth a thousand times."

"He cherishes it at my expense. So, you must not disturb the man who robs you of house and land, and tries to murder you, lest he should be disturbed and not sleep o' nights. Come, Madame, that is too thin."

"He might kill you, but he would not rob you, Monsieur. Do you think that if he knew that will existed, he would be now at the Seigneury, or I here? I know you hate Louis Racine."

"With ample reason."

"You hate him more because he defeated you than because he once tried to kill you. Oh, I do not know the rights or wrongs of that great case at law; I only know that Louis Racine was not the judge or jury, but the avocat only, whose duty it was to do as he did. That he did it the more gladly because he was a Frenchman and you an Englishman, is not his fault or yours either. Louis Racine's people came here two hundred years ago, yours not sixty years ago. You, the great business man, have had practical power which gave you riches. You have sacrificed all for power. Louis Racine has only genius, and no practical power."

"A dangerous fanatic and dreamer," he interjected. "A dreamer, if you will, with no practical power, for he never thought of himself, and 'practical power' is usually all self. He dreamed--he gave his heart and soul up for ideas. Englishmen do not understand that. Do you not know--you do know--that, had he chosen, he might have been rich too, for his brains would have been of great use to men of practical power like yourself."

She paused; Fournel did not answer, but sat as though reading the will intently.

"Was it strange that he should dream of a French sovereign state here, where his people came and first possessed the land? Can you wonder that this dreamer, when the Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, felt as if a new life were opened up to him, and saw a way to some of his ambitions.

They were sad, mistaken ambitions, doomed to failure, but they were also his very heart, which he would empty out gladly for an idea. The Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, and I married him."

"Evidently bent upon wrecking the chances of a great career,"

interrupted Fournel over the paper.

"But no; I also cared more for ideas than for the sordid things of life.

It is in our blood, you see" she was talking with less restraint now, for she saw he was listening, despite a.s.sumed indifference--"and Pontiac was dearer to me than all else in the world. Louis Racine belonged there. You--what sort of place would you, an Englishman, have occupied at the Seigneury of Pontiac! What kind--"