Dross Part 41

"What I have learnt has been gathered with the greatest care from many sources, and what I now tell you is neither known nor suspected by any other on earth. If you so desire, the knowledge can well remain the property of two persons only."

"My friend," Madame said on the impulse of the kindest heart in the world, "I think your strength lies in the depth of your thought for others."

"The Vicomte was tempted," I went on. "He had in his nature a latent love of money. The same is in many natures, but the majority have never the opportunity of gratifying it. He did what ninety-nine out of a hundred other men would have done--what I think I should have done myself. He yielded. He had at hand a ready tool and the cleverest aid in Charles Miste, who actually carried the money, but for some reason--possibly because he was unable to forge the necessary signatures--could not obtain the cash for the drafts without the Vicomte's a.s.sistance. Unconsciously, I repeatedly prevented their meeting, and thus frustrated the design."

All the while Madame sat and looked down into the valley. Her self-command was infinite, for she must have had a thousand questions to ask.

"It was, I think, my patron's intention to go to the New World with his great wealth and there begin life afresh--this, however, is one of the details that must ever remain incomprehensible. Possibly when the temptation gripped him he ceased to reflect at all--else he must a.s.suredly have recognised all that he was sacrificing for the mere possession of money that he could never live to spend. Men usually pay too high a price for their desires. In order to carry out his scheme he conceived and accomplished--with a strange cunning, which develops, I am told, after crime--a clever ruse."

Madame turned and looked at me for a moment.

"We must think of him, Madame," I explained, "as one suffering from a mental disease; for the love of money in its acute stages is nothing else, lacking, as it a.s.suredly does, common sense. The most singular part of his mental condition was the rapidity and skill with which he turned events to his own advantage, and seized each opportunity for the furtherance of his ends. The Baron Giraud died at the Hotel Clericy--here was a chance. The Vicomte, with a cunning which was surely unnatural--you remember his strange behaviour at that time, how he locked himself in his study for hours together--took therefore the Baron's body from the coffin, dressed it in his own garments, placed in the clothing his own purse, and pocket-book, and cast the body into the Seine. I have had the coffin that we laid in Pere la Chaise exhumed and opened. It contained only old books from the upper shelves in the study in the Rue des Palmiers. The Vicomte must have packed it thus when he took the Baron's body--doubtless with Miste's clever aid--and threw it into the river for us to find and identify."

"Yes," said Madame, slowly, "he was cleverer than any suspected. I knew that."

"The body," I went on, for my tale was nearly done, "which we found at Pa.s.sy and buried at Senneville was undoubtedly that of the Baron Giraud. This, however, is the only detail of my story which I am unable to a.s.sert as a positive fact."

"Of the rest you have no doubt?" Madame asked, slowly. And I shook my head.

"Is it not possible," she suggested, with that quiet sureness of judgment which, I think, is rarely given to women, "that Miste is alone responsible and the criminal? Of course, I cannot explain the Baron Giraud's disappearance--but it is surely possible that Miste may have murdered the Vicomte and thrown his body into the Seine."

"No, Madame, there has been no murder done."

"You are sure?"

"I have, since the war, seen the Vicomte alive and well."

Chapter XXIX

At La Pauline

"Le plus lent a promettre est toujours le plus fidele a tenir."

The tale was thus told to her whom it most concerned, clearly and without reservation. The details are, however, known to the patient reader, and call for no recapitulation here. When Madame de Clericy heard the end of it--namely, the sad fate of the unfortunate _Principe Amadeo_ and all, save two, on board that steamer--she sat in silence for some moments, and indeed made no comment at any other time.

a.s.suredly none was needed, nor could any human words add to or detract from that infallible Divine judgment which had so ruled our lives.

For when one who is dear to us has forfeited our love by one of those great and sorrowful alterations of the mind, scarce amounting to madness, and yet near akin to it, which, alas! are frequently enough brought about by temptation or an insufficient self control--surely, then, it is only Heaven's kindness that takes from us the erring one and leaves but a brief memory of his fall. Has not a great writer said that a dead sorrow is better than a living one?

I rose to my feet and stood for a moment in the doorway of the summerhouse, intending to leave Madame with her dead grief. But as I crossed the threshold her quiet voice arrested me.

"Mon ami!" she said, and, as I paused without looking round, presently went on--well pleased, perhaps, that I should not see her face.

"One mistake you make in the kindness of your heart, for you are a stern man with a soft heart, as many English are--you grieve too much for me. Of course, it is a sorrow--but it is not the great sorrow. You understand?"

"I think so."

"That came to me many years ago, and was not connected with the Vicomte de Clericy, but with one who had no t.i.tle beyond that of gentleman--and I think there is none higher. It is an old story, and one that is too often enacted in France, where convenience is placed before happiness and money above affection. My life has been, well--happy. Lucille has made it so. And I have an aim in existence which is in itself a happiness--to make Lucille's life a happy one, to ensure her that which I have missed, and to avoid a mistake made by generation after generation of women--namely, to believe that love comes to us after marriage. It never does so, my friend--never.

Tolerance may come, or, at the best, affection--which is making an ornament of bra.s.s and setting it up where there should be gold--or nothing."

I stood, half turning my back to Madame, looking down into the valley--not caring to meet the quiet eyes that had looked straight into my heart long ago in the room called the boudoir of the house in the Rue des Palmiers, and had ever since read the thoughts and desires which I had hidden from the rest of the world. Madame knew, without any words of mine, that I also had one object in existence, and that the same as hers--namely, that Lucille's life should be a happy one.

"There is no task so difficult," said Madame, half talking, as I thought, to herself, "unless it be undertaken by the one man who can do it without an effort--no task so difficult as that of making a woman happy. Even her mother cannot be sure of the wisdom of interference. I always remember some words of your friend, John Turner, 'When in doubt, do nothing,' and he is a wise man, I think."

The Vicomtesse was an economist of words, and explained herself no further. We remained for some moments in silence, and it was she who at length broke it.

"Thank you," she said, "for all your thought and care in verifying the details of the story you have told me."

"I might have kept it from you, Madame," answered I, "and thus spared you some sorrow. Perhaps you had been happier in ignorance."

"I think, my dear friend, I am better knowing it. Shall we tell Lucille?"

I turned and looked at Madame, whose manner bespoke my attention.

There was more in the words than a single question--indeed, I thought there were many questions.

"That shall be as you decide."

"I ask your opinion, mon ami?"

"I am not in favour of keeping any secrets from Mademoiselle."

For a time Madame seemed lost in thought.

"If you go to the chateau," she said at length, taking up her lace-work as she spoke, "you will find Lucille either in the garden or the chapel, where she daily tends the flowers. Tell her anything--you please."

I left Madame and walked slowly across the garden. Lucille was not among the gay flower-borders. I pa.s.sed by the old sun-dial and into the shade of the trees that stood by the moat, where the frogs chattered incessantly in the cool shadows. I never hear the sound now but something stirs in my breast, which is not regret nor yet entire happiness, but that strange blending of the two which is far above the mere earthly understanding of the latter state.

In the shadow of the cypress trees I approached the chapel quietly, of which the door and windows were alike thrown open. Standing in the cool shadow of the porch I saw that Lucille was not busy with the flowers, but having completed her task, knelt for a moment before the altar, raising to heaven a face surely as pure as that of any angel there.

I sat down in the porch to wait.

Presently Lucille rose from her knees and turning came towards me. I thought, as I always did on seeing her after an absence short or long, that I had never really loved her until that moment.

I looked for some expression of surprise in her eyes, but it seemed that she must have known who had entered before she turned. Instead I saw in her face a strange new tenderness that set my heart beating.

She gave me her hand with a gesture of shyness that was likewise unknown to me.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked, sharply.

"I was wondering what your thought was as you came towards me, Mademoiselle."

"Ah!" she answered, with a shake of the head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ME VOILa, IF YOU WANT ME"]

"It could not have been that you were glad to see me here? Yet, one would almost have thought--"