Robert Orange Part 39

"Yes, _a l'outrance_."

"This being the case, let me tell you a few of my ideas. You find life very hard. I find it altogether amusing. I don't love a woman the less when I cease to honour her. I don't honour a man the less when I detest him. If you should kill me, M. de Hausee, it will be the most respectable occurrence in my immortality. But if I should kill you, it will be the vile conclusion of an exemplary career."

"Your conversation is most entertaining, Monsieur. I am, unhappily, in no mood to listen to it. May I ask you to meet me to-morrow with your second at three o'clock at Calais? We can then go on to Dunkerque and settle this difference."

"I am perfectly agreeable."

They arranged a few more details and parted. The interview, which took place in French, is not easily reproduced in English. Orange wrote one account of the scene, and Castrillon confided another to Prince d'Alchingen, and the above is probably as nearly as possible a faithful description of what actually pa.s.sed.

Robert left Hadley Lodge, and plunged through the darkness toward London. He reached Vigo Street about seven o'clock in the morning. It was Sunday, and the streets were silent. He let himself into the house with a latch-key, and groped his way up the creaking unlit staircase. On entering his room, the draught between the open window and the door set all his papers whirling from his writing-table, and, by a strange accident, dislodged his crucifix from its nail. It fell to the ground, and when he picked it up, the small Figure was broken. This accident seemed an ill omen, but he put it from his thoughts, and scrawled a hasty letter to Charles Aumerle, asking him to be his second. This he delivered himself at Aumerle's chambers in St. James's Place, saying that he would call for an answer at nine. But Aumerle, ever fond of adventures, was at Vigo Street at half-past eight.

"If you are bent upon it," said he, "I will do everything in my power to see it through. I think you are quite right. Every one will say the same."

The two left for Calais by the first boat that morning. Castrillon, and Isidore, and a young Frenchman, M. de Lamoignon, were on board also. At Calais the two seconds conferred, and the duel was arranged to take place in a field near Dunkerque on the following morning. On the following morning, the four men met. The combatants were placed at fifteen paces from each other. They fired simultaneously and Castrillon fell--mortally wounded.

CHAPTER XXIX

Brigit returned on Monday to Pensee at Curzon Street. It was the anniversary of Lord Fitz Rewes's death. The two women went to Catesby, where they visited his grave together, prayed together, and, in the quiet evening, sat by the library fire.

"This is a great contrast for you after all the excitement on Sat.u.r.day night," said Pensee. "You are full of surprises, Brigit. Few young girls, having made such a brilliant success, would care to spend their time with poor, dull women like me. They would naturally wish to enjoy the triumph."

Brigit's eyes filled with tears.

"I know what you mean, _cher coeur_," she answered, "but there are no triumphs for any artist. We suffer and we work--sometimes we are able to please. But we suffer and work because we must; whereas we please by the merest accident."

"That is true, no doubt. One might as well speak of a successful saint as a successful artist. Every saint is not canonized, and every artist is not praised. But surely appreciation is a help."

"Yes, dearest; and I am grateful for it. And it gives encouragement to one's friends!"

"Let us suppose that they had not cared for your acting, dear child.

What then?"

"I should have known that it was my vocation just the same. Don't believe that I shan't have my full share of doubts and struggles. This little first step makes me the more anxious about my next."

The older woman looked at her, and sighed deeply.

"You are too young to know life so well! I am sure you have suffered more severely than any of us--who say more and cry more. Your face has changed a good deal in the last day or two. In one way, it isn't so pretty as it was."

"No one can look quite so plain as I can look, Pensee," she answered, laughing.

"Let me finish what I had in my mind! You are not so pretty--not so much like a picture. But when I see you now, I don't think about your features at all. I watch your expressions--they suggest the whole world to me--all the things I have thought and felt. Rachel's face is like that. I am sure now that you were meant to be an actress. I have been very stupid. How I wish I understood you better, and could be more of a friend. I don't understand Robert entirely. Do you?"

"Yes, I understand him."

"I wonder how you came to love each other. I suppose it happened for the best. But it seems such a pity"--she paused and then repeated the words--"it seems such a pity that all doesn't come right--in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way."

"It has come right, dear," said Brigit; "perfectly right."

"You try to think so."

"I know it. His father sinned, and my father sinned. We were born for unhappiness. Unhappiness and misgivings are in our very blood."

"But how unjust!"

"No, dearest, on the contrary, it is strict justice. The laws of the universe are immutable. You might as well ask that fire should only burn sometimes--that it may be water, or air, or earth to suit sentimental occasions."

"I don't like to see you so sensible--it's--it's _unlikely_."

Brigit smiled at the word--a favourite one with Pensee when persons and events differed from the serene, unreasoned fiction which she called her experience.

"How can you call anything unlikely?" asked the girl. "I ought never to have been born at all, and Life has made no provision for me. She is boisterous and homely--like a housekeeper at an inn. She doesn't know me, and she has prepared no room for me. But I may rest on the staircase--that's under shelter at least."

"What whimsical ideas, darling!"

"Ah, to feel as I feel, you must have had my parents. You mustn't suppose that I woke up one morning and saw the reason for all my troubles. The reason did not come as though it were the sun s.h.i.+ning into the room. Oh, no! I found no answer for a long, long time. But I feel it now. My father could not take me into his world, and my mother's world--_I_ could not take. They wished to know that I was protected, so they found some one who knew the story, and knew both worlds. I was grateful, because I didn't understand. And when I understood I was still grateful, but I couldn't accept the terms. My marriage was not so terrible as many marriages. Yet it was terrible enough. Don't let us talk of it, Pensee. It is hopeless to quarrel with logic. Science is calm--as calm as the hills."

"And Robert?" said the older woman. "What about Robert?"

"His father was a Dominican. The Church will have her own again. Be quite sure of that!

_'Thy justice is like the great mountains.

Thy judgments are a great deep.'_

In G.o.d's way, all will come right. Every debt must be paid."

Although they had arranged to journey back to London the following day, the woods and gardens looked so fair, the peace of that house was so great, that they lingered there till Wednesday. Brigit was unusually silent. She sat for hours at the library window looking across the Channel toward France, her countenance drawn and white, all its loveliness departed.

Once she spoke--

"I know that Robert is in sorrow."

"Are you anxious? Shall I write?" asked Pensee, secretly troubled also.

"No, I am not anxious. There is sorrow, but I am not anxious."

Her room adjoined Pensee's, and, in the night, Pensee, sleepless, heard her walking to and fro, with even steps, till sunrise. When they met in the morning, Brigit seemed to have aged by ten years. Her youth returned, but the character of her face had altered for ever. She was never called pretty again. It was said that she varied and depended wholly on her moods. She could make herself anything, but nature had given her little more than a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth--indifferent good. Lady Fitz Rewes was appalled at the transformation. Remembering stories of the last dreadful touches of consumption, she feared for the girl's health. "She will die before long," she thought. But death can occur more than once in one life. The pa.s.sing away of every strong emotion means a burial and a grave, a change, and a resurrection. The tearful, dusty, fiery, airy process must be endured seventy times seven and more, and more again--from everlasting to everlasting. And the cause is nothing, the motives are nothing, the great, great affliction and the child's little woe pa.s.s alike through the Process--for the Process belongs to the eternal law, whereas the rest is of the heart's capacity.

The way to the city--through the beautiful south of England, beautiful at all seasons of the year and sad also at all seasons--brought something which resembled calm to both their minds. Dwellings closely packed together destroy, or disturb, the finer vision of the grandeur, sternness, and depth of life. At Catesby, the solitude and the waves exercised their power over the spirit, diverting it from trivial speculations to awe and wonder. There, where the unseen could move freely and the invisible manifest itself on the perpetual rocks, the towering trees, the still green fields, and the vast acres of the sea, one could hear the dreaming prophet proclaim the burden of the Lord; and the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill-stones and the light of the candle mattered not. But the kingdom of all the worlds--the worlds and habitations not made with hands--rose up as the real theatre of man's destiny and the fit measure of his achievements.

It is that sense of the eternity of consequences--and that sense only--which can satisfy the human heart. Time is too short, this planet is too small, and this mortal body is too weak for the surging thoughts, the unintelligible desires of the soul. Nothing less than infinity can hallow emotions: their pa.s.singness--which seems the rule in the fever and turmoil of city life--is not their abatement but their degradation.

Change they must, but perish utterly they may not.

The women travellers, as the lights of the capital grew more numerous, and the roar of the traffic louder and more constant, drew back within themselves, a.s.suming, unconsciously, the outward bearing--fatigued, sceptical, and self-distrustful--of the town-bred. When they reached Curzon Street, the two heaps of letters, the telegrams and cards on the hall-table symbolised crudely enough the practical side of daily affairs. One name--an unknown one--among the many engraved on the white sc.r.a.ps caught Brigit's attention at once:

_The Rev. J. M. Foster._