The Battle of the Strong Part 30

But all was strangely quiet in her heart and mind. Nothing more that she feared could happen to her; the worst had fallen, and now there came down on her the impermeable calm of the doomed.

Carterette was awed by her face, and saying that she would go at once to Maitresse Aimable, she started towards the door, but as quickly stopped and came back to Guida. With none of the impulse that usually marked her actions, she put her arms round Guida's neck and kissed her, saying with a subdued intensity:

"I'd go through fire and water for you. I want to help you every way I can--me."

Guida did not say a word, but she kissed the hot cheek of the smuggler-pirate's daughter, as in dying one might kiss the face of a friend seen with filmy eyes.

When she had gone Guida drew herself up with a s.h.i.+ver. She was conscious that new senses and instincts were born in her, or were now first awakened to life. They were not yet under control, but she felt them, and in so far as she had power to think, she used them.

Leaving the house and stepping into the Place du Vier Prison, she walked quietly and steadily up the Rue d'Driere. She did not notice that people she met glanced at her curiously, and turned to look after her as she hurried on.

CHAPTER XXVI

It had been a hot, oppressive day, but when, a half-hour later, Guida hastened back from a fruitless visit to the house of the Dean, who was absent in England, a vast black cloud had drawn up from the south-east, dropping a curtain of darkness upon the town. As she neared the doorway of the cottage, a few heavy drops began to fall, and, in spite of her bitter trouble, she quickened her footsteps, fearing that her grandfather had come back, to find the house empty and no light or supper ready.

M. de Mauprat had preceded her by not more than five minutes. His footsteps across the Place du Vier Prison had been unsteady, his head bowed, though more than once he raised it with a sort of effort, as it were in indignation or defiance. He muttered to himself as he opened the door, and he paused in the hall-way as though hesitating to go forward.

After a moment he made a piteous gesture of his hand towards the kitchen, and whispered to himself in a kind of rea.s.surance. Then he entered the room and stood still. All was dark save for the glimmer of the fire.

"Guida! Guida!" he said in a shaking, m.u.f.fled voice. There was no answer. He put by his hat and stick in the corner, and felt his way to the great chair-he seemed to have lost his sight. Finding the familiar, worn arm of the chair, he seated himself with a heavy sigh. His lips moved, and he shook his head now and then, as though in protest against some unspoken thought.

Presently he brought his clinched hand down heavily on the table, and said aloud:

"They lie--they lie! The Connetable lies! Their tongues shall be cut out. ... Ah, my little, little child!... The Connetable dared--he dared--to tell me this evil gossip--of the little one--of my Guida!"

He laughed contemptuously, but it was a crackling, dry laugh, painful in its cheerlessness. He drew his snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and slowly taking a pinch, raised it towards his nose, but the hand paused half-way, as though a new thought arrested it.

In the pause there came the sound of the front door opening, and then footsteps in the hall.

The pinch of snuff fell from the fingers of the old man on to the white stuff of his short-clothes, but as Guida entered the room and stood still a moment, he did not stir in his seat. The thundercloud had come still lower and the room was dark, the coals in the fireplace being now covered with grey ashes.

"Grandpethe! Grandpethe!" Guida said.

He did not answer. His heart was fluttering, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, dry and thick. Now he should know the truth, now he should be sure that they had lied about his little Guida, those slanderers of the Vier Marchi. Yet, too, he had a strange, depressing fear, at variance with his loving faith and belief that in Guida there was no wrong: such belief as has the strong swimmer that he can reach the sh.o.r.e through wave and tide; yet also with strange foreboding, prelude to the cramp that makes powerless, defying youth, strength, and skill. He could not have spoken if it had been to save his own life--or hers.

Getting no answer to her words, Guida went first to the hearth and stirred the fire, the old man sitting rigid in his chair and regarding her with fixed, watchful eyes. Then she found two candles and lighted them, placing them on the mantel, and turning to the cra.s.set hanging by its osier rings from a beam, slowly lighted it. Turning round, she was full in the light of the candles and the shooting flames of the fire.

De Mauprat's eyes had followed her every motion, unconscious of his presence as she was. This--this was not the Guida he had known! This was not his grandchild, this woman with the pale, cold face, and dark, unhappy eyes; this was not the laughing girl who but yesterday was a babe at his knee. This was not--

The truth, which had yet been before his blinded eyes how long! burst upon him. The shock of it snapped the filmy thread of being. As the escaping soul found its wings, spread them, and rose from that dun mora.s.s called Life, the Sieur de Mauprat, giving a long, deep sigh, fell back in his great arm-chair dead, and the silver snuff-box rattled to the floor.

Guida turned round with a sharp cry. Running to him, she lifted up the head that lay over on his shoulder. She felt his pulse, she called to him. Opening his waistcoat, she put her ear to his heart; but it was still--still.

A mist, a blackness, came over her own eyes, and without a cry or a word, she slid to the floor unconscious, as the black thunderstorm broke upon the Place du Vier Prison.

The rain was like a curtain let down between the prying, clattering world without and the strange peace within: the old man in his perfect sleep; the young, misused wife in that pa.s.sing oblivion borrowed from death and as tender and compa.s.sionate while it lasts.

As though with merciful indulgence, Fate permitted no one to enter upon the dark scene save a woman in whom was a deep motherhood which had never nourished a child, and to whom this silence and this sorrow gave no terrors. Silence was her constant companion, and for sorrow she had been granted the touch that a.s.suages the sharpness of pain and the love called neighbourly kindness. Maitresse Aimable came.

Unto her it was given to minister here. As the night went by, and the offices had been done for the dead, she took her place by the bedside of the young wife, who lay staring into s.p.a.ce, tearless and still, the life consuming away within her.

In the front room of the cottage, his head buried in his hands, Ranulph Delagarde sat watching beside the body of the Sieur de Mauprat.

CHAPTER XXVII

In the Rue d'Driere, the undertaker and his head apprentice were right merry. But why should they not be? People had to die, quoth the undertaker, and when dead they must be buried. Burying was a trade, and wherefore should not one--discreetly--be cheerful at one's trade? In undertaking there were many miles to trudge with coffins in a week, and the fixed, sad, sympathetic look long custom had stereotyped was wearisome to the face as a cast of plaster-of-paris. Moreover, the undertaker was master of ceremonies at the house of bereavement as well.

He not only arranged the funeral, he sent out the invitations to the "friends of deceased, who are requested to return to the house of the mourners after the obsequies for refreshment." All the preparations for this feast were made by the undertaker--Master of Burials he chose to be called.

Once, after a busy six months, in which a fever had carried off many a Jersiais, the Master of Burials had given a picnic to his apprentices, workmen, and their families. At this buoyant function he had raised his gla.s.s and with playful plaintiveness proposed: "The day we celebrate!"

He was in a no less blithesome mood this day. The head apprentice was reading aloud the accounts for the burials of the month, while the master checked off the items, nodding approval, commenting, correcting or condemning with strange expletives.

"Don't gabble, gabble next one slowlee!" said the Master of Burials, as the second account was laid aside, duly approved. "Eh ben, now let's hear the next--who is it?"

"That Josue Anquetil," answered the apprentice. The Master of Burials rubbed his hands together with a creepy sort of glee. "Ah, that was a clever piece of work! Too little of a length and a width for the box, but let us be thankful--it might have been too short, and it wasn't."

"No danger of that, pardingue!" broke in the apprentice. "The first it belonged to was a foot longer than Josue--he."

"But I made the most of Josue," continued the Master. "The mouth was crooked, but he was clean, clean--I shaved him just in time. And he had good hair for combing to a peaceful look, and he was light to carry--O my good! Go on, what has Josue the centenier to say for himself?"

With a drawling dull indifference, the lank, hatchet-faced servitor of the master servitor of the grave read off the items:

The Relict of Josue Anquetil, Centenier, in account with Etienne Mahye, Master of Burials.

Item: Livres. Sols. Farth. Paid to Gentlemen of Vingtaine, who carried him to his grave.................. 4 4 0 Ditto to me, Etienne Mahye, for proper gloves of silk and cotton................. 1 0 0 Ditto to me, E.

M., for laying of him out and all that appertains............... 0 7 0 Ditto to me, E. M., for coffin............ 4 0 0 Ditto to me, E. M., for divers............ 0 4 0

The Master of Burials interrupted. "Bat'dlagoule, you've forgot blacking for coffin!"

The apprentice made the correction without deigning reply, and then went on

Livres. Sols. Farth.

Ditto to me, E. M., for black for blacking coffin.................................... 0 3 0 Ditto to me, E. M., paid out for supper after obs'quies........................... 3 2 0 Ditto to me, E. M., paid out for wine (3 pots and 1 pt. at a s.h.i.+lling) for ditto..................................... 2 5 6 Ditto to me, E. M., paid out for oil and candle.................................... 0 7 0 Ditto to me, E. M., given to the poor, as fitting station of deceased............... 4 0 0

The apprentice stopped. "That's all," he said.

There was a furious leer on the face of the Master of Burials. So, after all his care, apprentices would never learn to make mistakes on his side. "O my grief, always on the side of the corpse, that can thank n.o.body for naught!" was his snarling comment.

"What about those turnips from Denise Gareau, numskull?" he grunted, in a voice between a sneer and a snort.

The apprentice was unmoved. He sniffed, rubbed his nose with a forefinger, laboriously wrote for a moment, and then added: