The Indiscretion of the Duchess Part 34

"By your mother," said he, gazing at her eagerly. "And I sent mine--the one I told you--by her. Marie, was it not true?" he cried, dragging himself nearer to her.

"True!" she echoed--and no more.

But it was enough. For an instant he glared at her; then he cried:

"That old fiend has played a trick on me! She has got the necklace!"

And I began to understand the smile that I had seen on Mme. Delha.s.se's face, and her marvelous good humor; and I began to have my opinion concerning her evening stroll to Pontorson. Bontet and Pierre had been matched against more than they thought.

The duke, painfully supported on his hand, drew nearer still to Marie; but she rose to her feet and retreated a pace as he advanced. And he said:

"But you love me, Marie? You would have--"

She interrupted him.

"Above all men I loathe you!" she said, looking on him with shrinking and horror in her face.

His wound was heavy on him--he was shot in the stomach and was bleeding inwardly--and had drawn his features; his pain brought a sweat on his brow, and his arm, trembling, scarce held him. Yet none of these things made the anguish in his eyes as he looked at her.

"This is the man I love," said she in calm relentlessness.

And she put out her hand and took mine, and drew me to her, pa.s.sing her arm through mine. The Duke of Saint-Maclou looked up at us; then he dropped his head, heavily and with a thud on the sand, and so lay till we thought he was dead.

Yet it might be that his life could be saved, and I said to Marie:

"Stay by him, while I run for help."

"I will not stay by him," she said.

"Then do you go," said I. "Stop the first people you meet; or, if you see none, go to the inn. And bid them bring help to carry a wounded man and procure a doctor."

She nodded her head, and, without a glance at him, started running along the sands toward the road. And I, left alone with him, sat down and raised him, as well as I could, turning his face upward again and resting it on my thigh. And I wiped his brow. And, after a time, he opened his eyes.

"Help will be here soon," I said. "She has gone to bring help."

Full ten minutes pa.s.sed slowly; he lay breathing with difficulty, and from time to time I wiped his brow. At last he spoke.

"There's some brandy in my pocket. Give it me," he said.

I found the flask and gave him some of its contents, which kept the life in him for a little longer. And I was glad to feel that he settled himself, as though more comfortably, against me.

"What happened?" he asked very faintly.

And I told him what had happened, as I conceived it--how that Bontet must have given shelter to Pierre, till such time as escape might be possible; but how that, when Bontet discovered that the necklace was in the inn, the two scoundrels, thinking that they might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, had determined to make another attempt to secure the coveted spoil; how, in pursuance of this scheme, Bontet had, as I believed, suppressed the duke's message to his friends at Pontorson, with the intent to attack us, as they had done, on the sands; and I added that he himself knew, better than I, what was likely to have become of the necklace in the hands of Mme. Delha.s.se.

"For my part," I concluded, "I doubt if Madame will be at the inn to welcome us on our return."

"She came to me and told me that Marie would give all I asked, and I gave her the necklace to give to Marie; and believing what she told me, I was anxious not to fight you, for I thought you had nothing to gain by fighting. Yet you angered me, so I resolved to fight."

He seemed to have strength for nothing more; yet at the end, before life left him, one strange last change came over him. Both his rough pa.s.sion and the terrible abas.e.m.e.nt of defeat seemed to leave him, and his face became again the face of a well-bred, self-controlled man. There was a helpless effort at a shrug of his shoulders, a scornful slight smile on his lips, and a look of recognition, almost of friendliness, almost of humor, in his eyes, as he said to me, who still held his head:

"_Mon Dieu_, but I've made a mess of it, Mr. Aycon!"

And I do not know that anyone could better this epitaph which the Duke of Saint-Maclou composed for himself in the last words he spoke this side the grave.

CHAPTER XXI.

A Pa.s.sing Carriage.

When I saw that the Duke of Saint-Maclou was dead, I laid him down on the sands, straightening him into a seemly posture; and I closed his eyes and spread his handkerchief over his face. Then I began to walk up and down with folded arms, pondering over the life and fate of the man and the strange link between us which the influence of two women had forged. And I recognized also that an hour ago the greater likelihood had been that I should be where he lay, and he be looking down on me. _Dis aliter visum._ His own sin had stretched him there, and I lived to muse on the wreck--on the "mess" as he said in self-mockery--that he had made of his life. Yet, as I had felt when I talked to him before, so I felt now, that his had been the hand to open my eyes, and from his mighty but base love I had learned a love as strong and, as I could in all honesty say, more pure.

The sun was quite gone now, the roll of the tide was nearer, and water gleamed between us and the Mount. But we were beyond its utmost rise, save at a spring tide, and I waited long, too engrossed in my thoughts to be impatient for Marie's return. I did not even cross the wall to see how Bontet fared under the blow I had given him--whether he were dead, or lay still stunned, or had found life enough to crawl away. In truth, I cared not then.

Presently across the sands, through the growing gloom, I saw a group approaching me. Marie I knew by her figure and gait and saw more plainly, for she walked a little in front as though she were setting the example of haste. The rest followed together; and, looking past them, I could just discern a carriage which had been driven some way on to the sands. One of the strangers wore top-boots and the livery of a servant. As they approached, he fell back, and the remaining two--a man and a woman on his arm--came more clearly into view. Marie reached me some twenty yards ahead of them.

"I met no one till I was at the inn," she said, "and then this carriage was driving by; and I told them that a gentleman lay hurt on the sands, and they came to help you to carry him up."

I nodded and walked forward to meet them; for by now I knew the man, yes, and the woman, though she wore a veil. And it was too late to stop their approach. Uncovering my head, I stepped up to them, and they stopped in surprise at seeing me. For the pair were Gustave de Berensac and the d.u.c.h.ess. He had gone, as he told me afterward, to see the d.u.c.h.ess, and they had spent the afternoon in a drive, and she was going to set him down at his friend's quarters in Pontorson, when Marie met them, and not knowing them nor they her (though Gustave had once, two years before, heard her sing) had brought them on this errand.

The little d.u.c.h.ess threw up her veil. Her face was pale, her lips quivered, and her eyes asked a trembling question. At the sight of me I think she knew at once what the truth was: it needed but the sight of me to let light in on the seemingly obscure story which Marie had told, of a duel planned, and then interrupted by a treacherous a.s.sault and attempted robbery. With my hand I signed to the d.u.c.h.ess to stop; but she did not stop, but walked past me, merely asking:

"Is he badly hurt?"

I caught her by the arm and held her.

"Yes," said I, "badly;" and I felt her eyes fixed on mine.

Then she said, gently and calmly:

"Then he is dead?"

"Yes, he is dead," I answered, and loosed her arm.

Gustave de Berensac had not spoken: and he now came silently to my side, and he and I followed a pace or two behind the d.u.c.h.ess. The servant had halted ten or fifteen yards away. Marie had reached where the duke lay and stood now close by him, her arms at her side and her head bowed. The d.u.c.h.ess walked up to her husband and, kneeling beside him, lifted the handkerchief from his face. The expression wherewith he had spoken his epitaph--the summary of his life--was set on his face, so that he seemed still to smile in bitter amus.e.m.e.nt. And the little d.u.c.h.ess looked long on the face that smiled in contempt on life and death alike. No tears came in her eyes and the quiver had left her lips. She gazed at him calmly, trying perhaps to read the riddle of his smile. And all the while Marie Delha.s.se looked down from under drooping lids.

I stepped up to the d.u.c.h.ess' side. She saw me coming and turned her eyes to mine.

"He looked just like that when he asked me to marry him," she said, with the simple gravity of a child whose usual merriment is sobered by something that it cannot understand.

I doubted not that he had. Life, marriage, death--so he had faced them all, with scorn and weariness and acquiescence--all, save that one pa.s.sion which bore him beyond himself.

The d.u.c.h.ess spread the handkerchief again over the dead man's face, and rose to her feet. And she looked across the dead body of the duke at Marie Delha.s.se. I knew not what she would say, for she must have guessed by now who the girl was that had brought her to the place. Suddenly the question came in a tone of curiosity, without resentment, yet tinctured with a delicate scorn, as though spoken across a gulf of difference:

"Did you really care for him at all?"