Many of the village folk were still lounging in the street and the clatter of the horses’ heels brought out more to gape and stare in wonderment as we clattered past. We were nearing the end of the place when I caught sight of a church with a mean-looking presbytery by the side.
I checked my horse, rode to it, and asked for Father Michel. A tall white-haired priest came out; kind-faced, with remarkable eyes almost black, under black brows. A man to trust certainly.
“You are Father Michel?”
For answer he turned his searching eyes upon me, paused and said: “You will be Burgwan?”
“Yes. And you know why I come.”
“On the contrary, I was in the act of coming to you.”
“Is she here?” I did not know how to speak of Mademoiselle; but he understood instantly. He patted my horse’s neck and looked up with sympathy in his manner and glance.
“You will let me speak with you?”
“Is she here?” I repeated.
“She wished me to see you. We arranged that she should go and that I should give you her messages. You will come into my house?”
“No, I cannot wait. She is gone to Samac. I shall ride after her. I must see her.”
“You are suffering,” he said, with that soothing comfort-offering air which is the priceless possession of many women and some good men. “You will let me give you her messages?”
“I cannot wait,” I said again; and yet I lingered.
“Will it ease your own pain to make her suffer?” The question made me wince; and I shirked the answer to it.
“She has gone to Samac?”
“Yes, she has driven to Samac. There is plenty of time for you to listen to me and then to overtake her before she can leave there.”
“She was to come to me,” I said, with a glance of doubt at this. It might be another ruse. He saw the doubt instantly.
“You may believe me. I do not wish to detain you if you prefer to go, and should not stoop to a trick.” He stepped back and waved his hand as if to signify I was free to go, and added: “It is only for her sake.”
He knew the strength such a plea would have for me.
“I must see her. I will.”
He threw up his hands with a gesture of pain.
I half wheeled my horse round to start and then checked him.
“Why did she go in this way?”
Again he turned those wonderful eyes of his upon me, and answered slowly:
“If you do not know I must not tell you. She has gone out of your life altogether—altogether. It is her own doing; her own will and wish and doing. Let her go.”
“I will not,” I exclaimed almost fiercely.
“Have patience and the strength of a man, Burgwan. You have acted nobly to her, offering your life in her defence. She cannot repay you. She knows that, and I know it. Add chivalry to your courage, and spare her.”
“She told me to wait for her—in that letter, I mean; and yet before it was in my hands, she had gone away.”
“The sweetest pleasure in life as well as the noblest quality in man is self-denial, Burgwan; and in your case it is real prudence and wisdom as well.”
“But she bade me wait for her,” I repeated.
“Not in Poabja, Burgwan. She bade me get from you your name and the means of communicating with you if ever——”
“Then it was a mere trick of words,” I cried with angry unreason. “I shall follow her;” and without waiting for him to reply I rode off quickly. I think I was afraid to trust myself longer with him; afraid lest he should prevail with me; afraid lest the fierce consuming desire to look once more upon her face should be chilled by the appeals to my better nature which he knew how to make so shrewdly.
Already he had made me conscious of the stubborn selfishness of my purpose; and as I galloped along, I sought to stifle the feeling with specious palliation and anger. She had no right to treat me in this way. I had done nothing and said nothing to deserve it. She had run away under the cover of a mere trick and ruse. And so on.
But I could not shake off the impression of the priest’s words, “Will it ease your own pain to make her suffer?” The question haunted me. I could find no answer to it in my own thoughts, just as I had found none in speaking with him. Out of it came the chilling conviction that the part I was playing was the part of the coward.
I was forcing myself upon her in face of her remonstrance and pleading. “Her own will and wish and doing.” What was I but a coward to try and force her. The very air took up the cry of coward; and the rhythm of my horse’s hoofs seemed to echo it at every throbbing stride.
But I knitted my brows and set my teeth and held on. I must see her again. I would. It was my passion that urged me. I would see her, let the world cry shame upon me for my cowardice. And I dug my heels into my horse’s flanks in my distraction and rushed along up hill and down alike at a mad, reckless speed.
Fast as I rode, however, I could not outpace that thought of cowardice. It gained upon me, little by little; now to be flung aside in anger, only to return to chill me until I hated the thing I was doing and had to put forth every effort of my selfish desire to prevent myself checking the horse and turning back to seek some other means to my end.
If it was really to cause her suffering, after what she had gone through, how dared I go on? What would she think of me? She had trusted to me in all that time of peril with the implicit trust of a child. Thank God I had been able to stand between her and her danger, and we had come through it together to safety. And now I was so madly selfish that I could not be man enough to spare her from this pain.
“I cannot thank you; I can only remember,” she had written. And here was I bent upon blotting the memory with this slur of my own crude, brutal selfishness. Was this what she would look for in her comrade? Was it what she had the right to expect? How would the act look when she came afterwards to remember?
Unwittingly I checked my horse. I was a coward now of another kind. I was afraid to satisfy my own desire; afraid to mar the memory she would have of our comradeship; afraid to meet the look of reproach I knew would be in her eyes at the sight of me.
My horse, glad enough to ease his speed, fell into a walking pace, and I let the reins drop on his neck as I hung my head in sheer dejection. Karasch came to my side in astonishment then.
“Is anything the matter, Burgwan?”
“Nothing that you can help, Karasch.”
“We are going to Samac, are we not?”
“I don’t know—and don’t care. Don’t worry me with your questions.”
“Mademoiselle has been taken there, hasn’t she? Are you not going to her help?”
“She has gone there of her own will and wish. She is quite safe; you need have no fears for her.”
“How do you know she is safe?”
“The priest!” he exclaimed, with scant respect. “I should like to know it for myself and trust my own eyes.”
I started and instinctively gathered up the reins again. What if she was not safe after all. Could the whole thing at Poabja be just a trick to get her from me?
I laughed suddenly; so suddenly that Karasch started and looked at me in surprise and some alarm.
“May I see the devil if I see a reason for laughing.”
But I did. I was laughing at the effect his words had had on me—at the tempting pretext they offered for continuing the journey. I could pretend that I was in doubt about her safety, and that that was the reason for my riding after her. I played with the thought; and then laughed again.
“Don’t be a fool, Karasch. She is quite safe, I tell you.”
“Have you ridden out thus far then at a wild gallop in order to see how dusty the roads are?”
“I suppose that’s about how it looks,” I laughed.
“That blow on your head has hurt you more than we thought.”
“No, it isn’t my head this time,” I said drily.
“Your leg, you mean? Or did they do anything to you at Poabja?”
“Yes, it all happened at Poabja, Karasch. I must go back there and see that priest again;” and I pulled my horse up and turned him. I would have given much to have taken Karasch’s view and have ridden on, but the thought of Mademoiselle’s eyes stopped me. Even if I persuaded myself, I could not tell the lie to her.
Karasch sat facing me stolidly.
“You are ill, Burgwan, or it wouldn’t be like this with you. Go back to Poabja and I’ll seek you there.”
“What do you mean? Where are you going?”
“To Samac. I will not desert her.”
The grim irony of this was too much for me and I smiled. Here was I, consumed with intense longing to go to her and compelled to hold myself back with a curb of iron—and to Karasch my act seemed no more than paltry cowardice and desertion. My smile seemed to anger him.
“You have not been so free with your laughter till now,” he said, curtly, “and I see no cause for it.”
“If I laugh it is not for joy, Karasch; but you don’t understand. Do as you say. Go on to Samac and bring me any news you may find there.”
“You are right. I don’t understand. But you had better ride on with me. If you are really ill, we are nearer to Samac than Poabja; and if there is news you ought to know, it may mean a grievous waste of time to have to ride back to Poabja.”
How aptly the plea fitted with my desires. It was true, too. She might, after all, have need of me. There was just the chance that matters had been misrepresented. It could do no harm for me to be in Samac. I need not see her even if I went there.
Karasch watched me closely as I sat letting these thoughts and others of the kind influence me; and he believed that he was persuading me and bringing me back to my right mind.
“I shall be very little use without you, Burgwan, if there is really more trouble. We ought to make sure. We should be cowards to desert her now.”
“I wonder which way the real coward would decide to go, Karasch. For the life of me I don’t know;” but I wheeled my horse round again and we rode on toward Samac.
After all I was not now going to see her, I said to myself. I would just make sure, as Karasch had suggested, that all was well with her, and then hide myself until she had left. That was how I shut the door and turned the key against those uncomfortable words of the priest about chivalry and self-denial. After all it was perfectly consistent with chivalry to assure myself of her safety to the last minute, and yet keep away; while as for self-denial that would be all the greater if I did not see her when close to her at Samac than if I remained five miles off at Poabja.
Yet in my heart I knew perfectly well I was going to see her. I was going to play the coward and to force myself upon her at the risk of causing her pain; aye, even with the prospect of losing her esteem.
I did not ride so fast now, and thus Karasch could talk. He wanted to talk about her; what we should do when we reached Samac. But I could not stand that, and each time he began I mumbled some incoherent reply and struck my heels into my horse to get away from him; and at last he gave up the attempt.
I knew that I was going to ride straight up to the railway depot where I should find her; but I would not admit this even to myself yet, and certainly would not put it into plain words.
Presently he chose another topic.
“Have you thought about that Austrian Government officer, Burgwan?” he asked, with some evidence of uneasiness.
“Yes, a good deal.”
“What are you going to do about it? He can’t be left where we tied him up.”
“Would you like to go and find him?” I asked, with a grin. It pleased me to tease him in the mood I was in.
“No, by the God of the living, not for a fortune.”
“Shall we leave him to die then?” I put the question angrily, as if rebuking him for callousness.
“You’d better go yourself,” he growled.
“It would be murder to leave him. There will be a big reward offered for his murderers.”
“No one knows about it,” he growled again, uneasily.
“Oh, yes. Petrov does. He spoke of it in Poabja to me.”
“The blight of hell blind him for a cursed pig,” he exclaimed with sudden savageness.
“There’s not much chance of that before he can say what he knows, Karasch. I mean to leave the country.”
He started so violently that he checked his horse, and when he rode up again he looked at me searchingly.
“Are you trying me?” he asked, half fiercely half in doubt.
“No, that’s for the judge to do.”
He chewed this answer for a while in gloomy silence; then he uttered one of his quaint oaths into his black beard, and his face cleared.
“There was a time when I should have thought you ready to do even that and worse. I don’t now.”
That beat me. “Then if I can’t fool you I may as well say what I mean to do,” I said. “Petrov knows the point where we met last night; and I shall send back to the priest at Poabja enough money to pay for a search party being sent out under Petrov’s guidance to find the officer. I marked the spot where we left him and can describe it clearly enough.”
“And the men at the camp?”
“I shall send money for them to be cared for.”
“There’ll be a pretty mess of trouble when that officer once gives tongue—a hue and cry will be raised for us.”
“It will have to be a loud one to reach us. We shall be far enough away by that time.”
He pondered this answer in his deliberate way when puzzled; and then lifted his head and looked across at me.
“We?” he asked.
“Didn’t I say I should be out of the country?”
“Yes, you did; but—” he shook his head, doubtingly.
“Did you think I should leave you behind, Karasch?”
“I couldn’t know,” he said; and urging his horse he added: “Shall we get on? There’s Samac in sight.”
He rode ahead of me without another word until we were just at the entrance to the town, when he stopped and waited for me. His face was pale and set. He had been thinking earnestly, and was unusually disturbed and nervous.
“You’re a man, Burgwan, right to the heart. I can’t say how glad I am you beat me in that fight; and I’d never been beaten before.”
“It’s all right, Karasch; don’t say any more;” and I stretched out my hand to him. He took it and held it as he answered almost emotionally:
“You’re a better man than I am every way, by the living God. I’m only a dog beside you, but I’ll serve you like a dog, if you’ll let me.” His earnestness amounted to passion now.
“Not like a dog, Karasch; not even like our good Chris; but like a man and a friend.”
“I’m not fit to be your friend; I’m only a peasant when I’m nothing worse; but I’ll be your man, God send the chance to prove it. And now you lead and I follow.” He let my hand drop and fell behind and nothing would induce him to ride farther at my side.
I was deeply touched by his earnestness. I had had many men offer themselves to me before—a man with such wealth as I possessed always will have. But this man was moved by no thought of personal advantage. It was to Burgwan, the man, he pledged himself, not to the millionaire; and I prized the offer for that reason alone.
But this act in falling behind and leaving me to take the lead just at that juncture was not without its embarrassment. It made the pretence of having followed his lead to Samac the more difficult to keep up; and I rode through the town in no little doubt and hesitation what to do.
Inclination drew me straight to the station, and Mademoiselle; while that pricking consciousness that was doing a cowardly thing warned me away.
But love and doggedness triumphed. I had come too far to retreat; and now that I was so near to her I lacked the pluck to keep away from her.
I did what I had felt I should do. I rode straight to the station and, giving my horse into Karasch’s charge, I entered it to look for her.
She was there, sitting in the miserable waiting-room, dejected and sorrowful, and bending over Chris as he squatted on his haunches beside her, with his great head in her lap.
He recognised my step and with a whimper of pleasure, started up and rushed to me, fawning upon me with such delight that I had to check him.
But Mademoiselle turned pale as she saw me, her hands clasped quickly and tightly together, her lips parted and her brow drew together in a frown of dismay or pain.
Then I put the dog aside and went to her.