THE IRREPARABLE
Ronnay de Maurel had been absent nearly a year from his home. He had joined the Emperor in Poland, and despite his game leg, he had fought at Jena and Auerstadt, at Eylau and at Friedland.
When the two Emperors met upon the bridge at Tilsit and decided on the terms of peace, de Maurel, created Marshal of France on the field of Auerstadt, returned quietly to La Vieuville in time, he hoped, to close the eyes of old Gaston and to hear his last dying words. He had been home just three days. The day after his arrival he sent back the military representatives who had looked after his factories for him during his absence, and quietly took up once more the reins of government, which an unendurable heart-ache had caused to drop temporarily out of his hands. He laid aside his fine uniform and once more took up his blouse and his woollen cap. Old Gaston was too feeble to note the subtle change which had come over his nephew during twelve months of rough campaigning among the snows and the marshes of Poland; he did not perceive how passing seldom Ronnay ever spoke now, or how he sat late into the night staring straight out before him with a yearning gaze in his dark, deep-set eyes. He had passed through Paris on his way home and brought back a number of books with him—he who before this had never troubled about one in his life—and when his eyes ached from staring into vacancy, he would open one of these books, and drawing the lamp closer to him, he would rest his elbow on the table and shade his face with his hand and become so absorbed, that the grey dawn would oft find him still sitting in the invalid's room, with the book open in front of him—unless he had pushed it aside and sat with his head buried in his hands.
On the day of his arrival he had, with the help of Madame Lapin, reorganized the La Vieuville household on a more comfortable basis. But little could be done in the way of comforts for the dying man; he was past noticing if his room was aired or his food brought to him at regular intervals. The village doctor visited him from time to time, but there was nothing to be done now. The machinery of life was worn out; for over a year now it had threatened to break down altogether—an iron constitution and an invincible will to live until the beloved nephew came home once more, had alone kept the enfeebled heart to its work.
To Ronnay de Maurel the aspect of La Vieuville seemed infinitely dreary; the thought of the factories and the foundries singularly uninspiring. What mattered it that he had come home—a great deal older, a little more crippled, more impatient and more indifferent? Old Gaston could not now last more than a few days, and the representatives of the War Office had seen to it that the output of guns and of munitions did not fall too far short of the Emperor's needs. Why should a man come home—a man who had courted death in an hundred desperate fights—a man who had nothing to live for, no one to care for, no one who would rejoice when he returned or who would weep if he fell ... when countless precious sons and brothers and lovers and husbands were left to rot unburied on the ice-covered plains of Poland, and countless mothers and widows mourned, broken-hearted, at their loss?
But it was not his way to let things drift. Peace had, of a truth, been signed at Tilsit, but it was not like to be a lasting peace. The European Powers had once and for all decided that France was not to remain in bondage to the Emperor whom she worshipped. He was in everybody else's way, he must be swept aside in order to make room for the effete and incompetent Bourbons, who were hanging on to the coat-tails of England and Austria and Russia, with a view to reaping the chestnuts which others had pulled out of the fire for them. De Maurel was one of those who would have preferred their idolized Emperor to sit at home after this last campaign, to enjoy the fruit of his victories and to prove to the world that France, when she divested herself of the old régime, had gained a benefactor, even though she had had to pass through fire and water, through crime and ignominy, ere she got him. But to know Napoleon intimately, as did the privileged few, was to realize that measureless ambition which was destined to hurl him, not only down from the giddy heights of triumph and of victory whereon his glorious achievements of the last two campaigns had established him, but also from his secure place within the heart of his people, a place which he would only reconquer when his mortal remains were brought back to France after the years of conflict and of misery which were to come.
That all was not well at the factories de Maurel did not fail to perceive within four-and-twenty hours of his return. The military overseers had done their duty—the output of munitions, if not lavish, had been adequate, and there had been no open rebellion among the workers. But in the first tour of inspection which the master made of his demesnes he realized how more than surly was the temper of former malcontents now and how sorely had the loyalty of the honest workmen been tried.
Complaints and grumblings had not been listened to now for over a year; the rough admonitions of a sympathetic taskmaster had given place to peremptory commands from military disciplinarians and to threats of condign punishment at the slightest sign of discontent. It would take many weeks of untiring patience and firmness to re-establish the happy concord which reigned in the foundries and armament works a year ago. As for the powder factories, de Maurel was compelled to reserve judgment as to where real grievances began and slackness and covert rebellion ended. Leroux, suave and obsequious, at once aroused his distrust, but the War Office representatives, when they left, had given the man an excellent character, both for trustworthiness and for industry, and de Maurel was not the man to act on mere intuition.
Intuition had played him such a damnable trick a while ago when he would have staked his soul on the loyalty of a pair of blue eyes!
Mathurin certainly struck a note of warning, but he found his master so unapproachable, that he dared not say much, and old Gaston had long since been too feeble to see anything that was going on.
Of Madame la Marquise up at La Frontenay he could glean but little information. M. le Marquis had been absent a great deal during the year with M. de Courson, and Mademoiselle Fernande had remained with her aunt during the absence of M. le Marquis; but neither she nor Madame had done more than pay the one visit to the foundries as the orders of the War Office authorities were very peremptory on that point. The ladies were seldom seen outside the limits of the château; they had dismissed all the servants whom Vardenne had engaged for them locally, and replaced them gradually by importations of their own.
It was generally understood in the district that Mademoiselle de Courson was now formally affianced to M. le Marquis de Mortain.
It was on the day following the council of war at La Frontenay that Ronnay de Maurel started out soon after dawn for one of his favourite tramps across the moors and through the woods. Before he went away last July he had left very strict orders that no one should henceforth be allowed to wander in the La Frontenay woods. The explanation was given that valuable game was being preserved there, and one of old Gaston's last efforts at administering his nephew's property was to establish in accordance with Ronnay's express instructions, a veritable army of keepers in the district, with discretionary powers to warn every trespasser off the forbidden grounds.
De Maurel, therefore, when he started off on that exquisite June morning to re-visit the place where he had suffered the most terrible mental torture which heart of man could endure, felt confident that he would remain secure from intrusion; that, above all, he need not fear a rencontre which would inevitably reopen the burning wound which time had not even begun to heal.
To him, now that a year of hard work and hard fighting had passed over that awful day of misery and of shame, it seemed as if time had stood still; as if it had been but a few hours ago that he had started out—just as he did now—on that walk beneath the early morning sunshine, which had ended in such an appalling disaster—in the total wreckage of his life, of his newly-awakened youth, of every newly-risen hope of home and of happiness. Then, as now, the dew still lay upon the carpet of moss, the mountain-ash and the elder were in full bloom, and the mating birds had finished building their nests. Then, as now, the swallows circled swiftly overhead, and a lark rose from the ground at his feet and sang its joyful song of thanksgiving to God.
But then the world held for him an exquisite being who was all tenderness and charm, who had lured him with her blue eyes, until he remembered that he, too, was young and he, too, had a right to love and happiness; the woods had held for him a nymph with feet like the petals of flowers, with sun-kissed hair which shone like living gold. A nymph! a creature of grace, of air, of light, whose fragrance was akin to a wilderness of roses, whose laugh was like the song of the lark, and whose arms were white and slender like the lilies! And when she stood before him or lay placid and drowsy in his arms, mysterious voices in the woods had murmured in his ear insidious promises of happiness to come.
He, poor fool, had listened to those voices—sirens' voices, which are wont to lure the unfortunate mariner on life's ocean to his own destruction—to his own misery and undoing; sirens' voices which whispered that the exquisite fairy-like form which lay like a nestling bird in his arms would one day be his for always—that she would always snuggle up, just like this, against his shoulder; that he would one day cull a kiss from those perfect lips, that he would one day have the right to hold her and keep her and to guard her for always against every ill.
Since then the voices of the sirens had turned to harsh and dismal screeching; the hopes of a year ago had turned to blank despair, and the savour of that triumphal aspiration turned to the dead sea fruit of unconquerable humiliation.
Prussian cannon had disdained the prey which Ronnay de Maurel had offered with crazy recklessness; he had come back laden with honours, a broken-hearted and lonely man; and the birds still sang, the woods were still fragrant, the world of sunshine and of springtide, of flowering trees and full-blown roses mocked at his irretrievable beggary.
And when Fernande de Courson started out that same morning, soon after daybreak, in a random spirit of wandering, and her footsteps led her—unconsciously, perhaps—in the direction of the woods, she, too, had little thought of meeting Ronnay de Maurel again. The hour was so early that not another soul was abroad—so early that not a sound stirred the quietude of valley and of hills save the distant murmuring of the tiny stream which found its resting-place in the silent pool.
It was an hour, too, wherein even the keepers established by old Gaston to patrol the La Frontenay woods usually slackened their vigilance. It was too late for poachers, too early for tramps; Fernande, as she left the meadows behind her, turned into a woodland path unperceived.
For a time she walked on somewhat aimlessly. It was deliciously cool under the trees, and the smell of budding blossom, of wet moss and of pine, acted as a tonic on her overstrung nerves. She wandered on, not allowing herself to think. All through the past few days she had tried not to feel that Ronnay de Maurel had come back; she had tried to forget that he was near, that any day, any moment, if she took her walks abroad she might come face to face with him.
And, in a measure, she had succeeded. She was now Laurent de Mortain's future wife, the follies of a year ago must yield to a sober view of future events. Except for that one brief, if vehement outburst yesterday in the presence of Madame's monstrous callousness, she had succeeded in relegating the man to whom she had done an infinite wrong to the furthermost recesses of her mind. But here, in these woods where every murmur among the trees, every call of bird or fragrance of flower, reminded her of him—in the woods through which she had once passed nestling against his shoulder, secure in the embrace of his strong arms, thoughts of him went hammering through her brain. All the dangers which beset him through Joseph de Puisaye's plan of campaign and Leroux' treachery caused her heart to beat with a nameless horror and fear. At every moment she thought to hear his rugged voice calling her by name, and even now her heart almost stilled its beating as a woodland echo seemed to bring back to her ear that cry of triumph which had rent her very soul: "You love me, Fernande!"
And as she wandered on, she lost count of time, and soon she found that she had lost her way. She had never entered the La Frontenay woods from the direction of the château since first she came to stay there, and she had no idea now which way to turn in order to go back home again. Soon she felt tired and dispirited; she did not know how long she had been wandering, nor how far she had gone.
Then all at once she knew where she was. She had walked a few steps along a moss-covered path, which wound its way right through the thicket, and suddenly there came a break in the coppice, and there before her lay the silent pool, with its mossy banks and clumps of wild iris and of meadowsweet, and the fallen tree-trunk where she had sat that day—a whole year ago.
And as she made her way nearer to the water, she saw Ronnay de Maurel sitting there on the bank; he was leaning against the fallen tree-trunk, his elbow resting upon it and his head supported by his hand.
She would have fled if she could, for at sight of him she had at once realized that to meet him here and now was the last thing in the world that she had wished. She realized that rather than he should see her, rather than she should speak with him, she would have run for miles, fearful only lest he should follow her track. How could she meet him—even to speak the words of contrition which for the past year she had longed to utter one day—how could she meet him whilst up at La Frontenay her own kindred, her own friends, those whom she loved, were planning treachery and murder against him!
But unfortunately now there was no time to run away; already he had seen her, and before she could stir from the spot, he had struggled to his feet and was coming towards her. Even then she would have given worlds to be able to go, but she could not. For one thing, he walked more haltingly than he had ever done before—and then he looked older, less sure of himself, more forlorn and solitary. He dragged his wounded leg more markedly—more as he used to do in the olden days when he was overtired, and all her womanly tenderness and pity went out to him, because of that indefinable air of helplessness which his lameness momentarily gave him. Not only did Fernande de Courson not beat a hasty retreat, but when he paused, irresolute and timid, it was she who came a step or two nearer to him.
"I am afraid that I am trespassing," she said tentatively, for, of a truth, she felt suddenly frightened—frightened at his look—a look of bitter resentment, she thought, of hate perhaps as absolute as she had felt for him in days gone by.
"Nay, it is I," he retorted dryly, "who have no right to be here, seeing that it is evidently Mademoiselle de Courson's favourite walk. By your leave, I will vacate the field. The keepers should have warned me. Had they done so, I would not have come."
He bowed in his usual awkward style and made as if to go, but with a word Fernande called him back. For a moment or two he hesitated. No doubt he, too, had as great a desire to run away as she had; but the girl now—with one of those contradictory impulses which are peculiar to sensitive temperaments—felt an unconquerable wish to speak with him ... if only for the purpose of challenging him to those words of reproach which he had spared her on that day when Laurent's cruel scorn and her own callousness had struck him as with a physical blow.
"M. de Maurel," she cried, moved by that sudden impulse.
"At your commands, Mademoiselle," he replied.
"I ... I ... believe me I had no thought of meeting you here ... or of intruding upon your privacy ... but now that we have met, I beg of you that you will let me tell you...."
She paused, feeling that a hot flush had risen to her cheeks and that her words sounded both halting and cold. And yet he had made no movement to stop her. It had never been his way to interrupt. For good or ill, he always listened to the end of whatever anyone chose to say. He had listened to the end, when Laurent, with a few harsh words, had shattered the shrine wherein he had set his fondest illusions; he stood quite still now, ready to listen to everything she might wish to say. But somehow it was just his attitude of quiet expectancy which stemmed the flow of her words. It was only when she had been silent for some few seconds and apparently was not going to speak again, that he interposed calmly:
"Is there any necessity for you, Mademoiselle, to tell me anything? Surely not, seeing that it distresses you. Will you, on the other hand, permit me to offer you my well-meant congratulations on your approaching marriage with my brother?"
Already Fernande had recovered some measure of self-control. Her dignity was on the qui vive. Apparently he meant to meet every advance on her part with frigid enmity. The look of resentment in his eyes had deepened, and to Fernande's keen senses it seemed as if they held no small measure of scorn as well.
"I thank you," she said coolly. "It was ma tante's intention to send you an announcement of our fiançailles, but we only heard yesterday with any certainty that you had returned."
"There is no occasion for my mother to trouble herself about such trifling conventions with me," he retorted. "I feel so sure that she hath no desire to claim the slightest kinship with a de Maurel that any formalities of the kind which she seems to contemplate would be a mere farce."
"You are very irreconcilable, M. de Maurel," said Fernande coldly, "and are making your mother and Laurent suffer for the thoughtlessness which I committed a year ago, and of which I would like you to believe that I have since bitterly repented."
"I have no recollection of any thoughtlessness on your part, Mademoiselle ... certainly of none which should cause you any regret."
"Your actions belie your words," she rejoined quietly. "If, as you say, you have not only forgiven but forgotten the foolishness of a year ago, then why have you kept aloof from your mother ... from us all? You were wont to be a constant visitor at Courson, your mother and Laurent have enjoyed your hospitality for the past twelve months. Yet you have not been nigh La Frontenay, and 'tis three days since your return."
"My uncle Gaston is dying," he said curtly; "he and the works have claimed my attention."
"Does that mean, then, that you will come?" she asked, "one day soon when you are not so engaged?"
Then, as he made no reply, she added more insistently: "Your mother and Laurent bore no part whatever in the wrong which I alone committed. M. de Maurel, why should you remain at enmity with them?"
"At enmity, Mademoiselle?—am I at enmity with my mother or with my brother? Surely not."
"Why not go to see them? Why not come to see us all as you used to do?"
"Chiefly, I think," he replied roughly, "because up at La Frontenay no one has any desire to see me. My brother and I have nothing in common—my mother and I still less. You, Mademoiselle Fernande, proved to me a year ago what an utterly ridiculous boor I was, fit only to be jeered at and made game of. Now a bear is not usually a good plaything for women; he is apt to snarl and render himself odious by his antics. He is far better out of the way, believe me."
"You are ungenerous, M. de Maurel. God knows how bitterly I have regretted my folly! I had no thought of seeing you here, 'tis true, but now, despite your harshness, I am glad that we have met. Words of sorrow and of repentance which refused me service a year ago have seared my heart ever since. I could not speak then, I was too much overcome by shame and by remorse. But I entreat you to believe that not a day has gone by during the past twelve months that I did not in my heart pray for your forgiveness. I was very young then, very thoughtless and very inexperienced. I knew nothing of men, nor was I vain enough to gauge the amount of mischief that thoughtless coquetry on my part would wreak. M. de Maurel, for the hurt I caused you that day I do sincerely beg your forgiveness. Before then ma tante and Laurent had reason to believe that in you they had found a friend. I entreat you, do not add to my remorse by venting on them your resentment which should be for me alone."
Her voice broke in a short sob. Her blue eyes were filled with tears. Overhead the sun had hidden its radiance behind a bank of clouds, and all around the woods appeared grey and desolate, and from the pool there came the melancholy croaking of frogs and the call of wood-pigeons was wafted through the trees.
"The bear must dance again, eh?" rejoined de Maurel harshly. "He may prove dangerous if he slips his chain. I wonder what it is that does go on inside La Frontenay that all this mise en scène should have been resorted to once more in order to hoodwink me?"
Fernande drew back as if she had been struck. A hot flush rose to the very roots of her hair; it seemed to her as if an unseen and aggressive hand had thrown a veil right over her head, and then dealt her a heavy blow between the eyes. Everything around her suddenly appeared blurred and a strange sense of cold crept into her limbs.
"I don't understand," she stammered.
"Ah! but I think you do, Mademoiselle Fernande," he retorted. "A year ago it was thought necessary to enchain the Maurel bear so that he might dance to Royalist pipings; for this he was lured and cajoled and fed with treacle and honeyed words. The foolish, awkward creature began to dance; he was ready to see nothing save a pair of blue eyes that looked as limpid as a mountain stream, to hear nothing save the piping of a voice as clear and guileless as that of a lark. Unfortunately the jealous ravings of a puppy wakened the clumsy brute from his trance ... wakened him too soon, it seems, but so roughly that, feeling dazed and shaken, he preferred to crawl away out of sight rather than remain a butt for mockery and ridicule. Now he has come back and may prove dangerous again—what? Bah! the same old methods can easily be tried again, the same honeyed words spoken, the same blue eyes raised tantalizingly to his. Too late, Mademoiselle Fernande!" he added, with a laugh which sounded strident and harsh as it echoed through the woods. "The bear has awakened from his winter sleep, he is not like to be caught napping again."
"M. de Maurel," protested Fernande, "you are not only ungenerous now, but wilfully cruel and unchivalrous; and, of a truth, your harshness now hath killed every feeling of remorse which I have felt. You have, of a truth, the right to hate me, the right to hate us all; but I spoke to you in all sincerity, and my humility and repentance should at least have saved me from insult."
"Sincerity!" he exclaimed, "sincerity from a Courson! Ah! Mademoiselle Fernande, you said just now that I was at enmity with my brother Laurent. By my faith, I will remain for ever his debtor. But for his interference on that memorable day meseems that Madame my mother would have succeeded in staging once again the tragedy which had already once been enacted at La Frontenay, when a de Maurel took a de Courson for bride, and the final curtain rang down upon his broken heart."
"A broken heart!" she retorted hotly, "you! Nay, every word that you utter hath proved to me the foolishness of my remorse. Your heart hath been full only of outraged vanity and of unreasoning resentment, the while I wept countless tears of sorrow and of regret."
"Regret for what, Mademoiselle?" he exclaimed roughly. "What, I pray you, had you to regret? You say that you wept countless tears—what for? Had you to mourn the only illusion of your life? Had you to mourn the loss of every hope which for days and nights had haunted you with its sweet, insistent call? Had you to weep because the one being in this mean and sordid world whom you thought pure and true—almost holy—suddenly appeared before you false and cruel—double-tongued and insidious, a commonplace siren set to lay a trap for men? Had you to weep because the being whom you had learned to worship had with wanton frolic and a mocking smile plucked out your heart-strings and left you forlorn and desolate, a prey to ignominy and to lifelong regret? And had you to weep tears of bitter humiliation in the knowledge that those who hated and despised you were laughing their fill at your folly? Oh! I, too, Mademoiselle Fernande, was young then ... I, too, was inexperienced ... I was a dolt and a fool—but what wrong, in God's name, had I done you that you should treat me so?"
Silently Fernande had listened, her hand grasping a clump of branches of young chestnut, else mayhap she would have fallen. That feeling of a veil enveloping her head was still with her; there was a buzzing in her ear through which his harsh voice came with a sound like hammering upon the portals of her brain. The agony and misery which rang out from his words found their echo in her own heart. Indeed, many a time in the past year had she felt pitifully sorry for the man whom she had wronged with such unpardonable thoughtlessness, but never before had she felt as she did now; never before had she realized the full extent of the misery which she had caused.
His voice broke into a heartrending sob. He covered his face with his hands with a gesture of such racking pain, that she would have given her very life at this moment for the right to comfort him.
"M. de Maurel," she said gently, and, indeed, now her voice was softer than that of a cooing dove, "God alone knows how deeply your words have hurt me; and I go away to-day feeling that you have made me atone for all that I made you suffer. Indeed, indeed, I had no thought a year ago that my senseless coquetry could arouse in a noble-hearted man like you, feelings which I so little deserved. Whatever you may think, however, I did not lie to you when I told you that for the past year, not one day has gone by without a thought of burning remorse in my mind for what I had done. I did not lie when I sued for your forgiveness. This I do swear to you by every memory that clusters round this glade, by every memory that speaks to you as well as to me in the rustle of the leaf-laden trees and in the murmurings of the woods; I swear it by the unforgettable hour when we both heard the gentle cooing of the wood-pigeons, and my hand rested in yours in complete amity. As for the future, 'tis not likely that we shall ever meet again. I hope to leave La Frontenay very soon—to-day if I can. May I therefore beg you in all earnestness to take up the threads of friendship with your mother—there where my own foolishness caused them to snap? Go to her, M. de Maurel ... go to-day if you can. Do not forget that she is your mother.... Do not let her forget that you are her son. God be with you and guard you! And whatever may happen in the future, will you at least try to bear in mind that Fernande de Courson would gladly give her life to heal the wound which she hath inflicted. Time will inevitably do that," she added with a choked little sigh, "and in the years to come you will mayhap think less bitterly of me."
Then she turned and, like a deer, she vanished in the thicket. Ronnay's hands fell from his face. For a long while he remained there gazing on the spot where she had stood. Through the murmurings of the wood he still could hear the echo of her silvery voice, and it seemed to him that her pale face, with the tear-filled eyes, still peeped at him from between the branches of the coppice, and that the perfume of her white gown and of her golden hair still filled the air with their intoxicating fragrance.
Then with a heavy sigh he, too, turned and went his way.