The Battle of the Strong Part 35

Ranulph did not speak. He stood still and rigid, looking with eyes that scarcely saw.

"I had not intended telling any one until the time should come"--once more her hand reached out and tremblingly stroked the head of the child--"but your faith has forced it from me. I couldn't let you go from me now, ignorant of the truth, you whose trust is beyond telling.

Ranulph, I want you to know that I am at least no worse than you thought me."

The look in his face was one of triumph, mingled with despair, hatred, and purpose--hatred of Philip d'Avranche, and purpose concerning him. He gloried now in knowing that Guida might take her place among the honest women of this world,--as the world terms honesty,--but he had received the death-blow to his every hope. He had lost her altogether, he who had watched and waited; who had served and followed, in season and out of season; who had been the faithful friend, keeping his eye fixed only upon her happiness; who had given all; who had poured out his heart like water, and his life like wine before her.

At first he only grasped the fact that Philip d'Avranche was the husband of the woman he loved, and that she had been abandoned. Then sudden remembrance stunned him: Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, had another wife. He remembered--it had been burned into his brain the day he saw it first in the Gazette de Jersey--that he had married the Comtesse Chantavoine, niece of the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, upon the very day, and but an hour before, the old Duc de Bercy suddenly died. It flashed across his mind now what he had felt then. He had always believed that Philip had wronged Guida; and long ago he would have gone in search of him--gone to try the strength of his arm against this cowardly marauder, as he held him--but his father's ill-health had kept him where he was, and Philip was at sea upon the nation's business. So the years had gone on until now.

His brain soon cleared. All that he had ever thought upon the matter now crystallised itself into the very truth of the affair. Philip had married Guida secretly; but his new future had opened up to him all at once, and he had married again--a crime, but a crime which in high places sometimes goes unpunished. How monstrous it was that such vile wickedness should be delivered against this woman before him, in whom beauty, goodness, power were commingled! She was the real Princess Philip d'Avranche, and this child of hers--now he understood why she allowed Guilbert to speak no patois.

They scarcely knew how long they stood silent, she with her hand stroking the child's golden hair, he white and dazed, looking, looking at her and the child, as the thing resolved itself to him. At last, in a voice which neither he nor she could quite recognise as his own, he said:

"Of course you live now only for Guilbert."

How she thanked him in her heart for the things he had left unsaid, those things which clear-eyed and great-minded folk, high or humble, always understand. There was no selfish lamenting, no reproaches, none of the futile ba.n.a.lities of the lover who fails to see that it is no crime for a woman not to love him. The thing he had said was the thing she most cared to hear.

"Only for that, Ranulph," she answered.

"When will you claim the child's rights?"

She shook her head sadly. "I do not know," she answered with hesitation.

"I will tell you all about it."

Then she told him of the lost register of St. Michael's, and about the Reverend Lorenzo Dow, but she said nothing as to why she had kept silence. She felt that, man though he was, he might divine something of the truth. In any case he knew that Philip had deserted her.

After a moment he said: "I'll find Mr. Dow if he is alive, and the register too. Then the boy shall have his rights."

"No, Ranulph," she answered firmly, "it shall be in my own time. I must keep the child with me. I know not when I shall speak; I am biding my day. Once I thought I never should speak, but then I did not see all, did not wholly see my duty towards Guilbert. It is so hard to find what is wise and just."

"When the proofs are found your child shall have his rights," he said with grim insistence.

"I would never let him go from me," she answered, and, leaning over, she impulsively clasped the little Guilbert in her arms.

"There'll be no need for Guilbert to go from you," he rejoined, "for when your rights come to you, Philip d'Avranche will not be living."

"Will not be living!" she said in amazement. She did not understand.

"I mean to kill him," he answered sternly.

She started, and the light of anger leaped into her eyes. "You mean to kill Philip d'Avranche--you, Maitre Ranulph Delagarde!" she exclaimed.

"Whom has he wronged? Myself and my child only--his wife and his child.

Men have been killed for lesser wrongs, but the right to kill does not belong to you. You speak of killing Philip d'Avranche, and yet you dare to say you are my friend!"

In that moment Ranulph learned more than he had ever guessed of life's subtle distinctions and the workings of a woman's mind; and he knew that she was right. Her father, her grandfather, might have killed Philip d'Avranche--any one but himself, he the man who had but now declared his love for her. Clearly his selfishness had blinded him. Right was on his side, but not the formal codes by which men live. He could not avenge Guida's wrongs upon her husband, for all men knew that he himself had loved her for years.

"Forgive me," he said in a low tone. Then a new thought came to him. "Do you think your not speaking all these years was best for the child?" he asked.

Her lips trembled. "Oh, that thought," she said, "that thought has made me unhappy so often! It comes to me at night as I lie sleepless, and I wonder if my child will grow up and turn against me one day. Yet I did what I thought was right, Ranulph, I did the only thing I could do. I would rather have died than--"

She stopped short. No, not even to this man who knew all could she speak her whole mind; but sometimes the thought came to her with horrifying acuteness: was it possible that she ought to have sunk her own disillusions, misery, and contempt of Philip d'Avranche, for the child's sake? She shuddered even now as the reflection of that possibility came to her--to live with Philip d'Avranche!

Of late she had felt that a crisis was near. She had had premonitions that her fate, good or bad, was closing in upon her; that these days in this lonely spot with her child, with her love for it and its love for her, were numbered; that dreams must soon give way for action, and this devoted peace would be broken, she knew not how.

Stooping, she kissed the little fellow upon the forehead and the eyes, and his two hands came up and clasped both her cheeks.

"Tu m'aimes, maman?" the child asked. She had taught him the pretty question.

"Comme la vie, comme la vie!" she answered with a half sob, and caught up the little one to her bosom. Now she looked towards the window.

Ranulph followed her look, and saw that the shades of night were falling.

"I have far to walk," he said; "I must be going." As he held out his hand to Guida the child leaned over and touched him on the shoulder.

"What is your name, man?" he asked.

He smiled, and, taking the warm little hand in his own, he said: "My name is Ranulph, little gentleman. Ranulph's my name, but you shall call me Ro."

"Good-night, Ro, man," the child answered with a mischievous smile.

The scene brought up another such scene in Guida's life so many years ago. Instinctively she drew back with the child, a look of pain crossing her face. But Ranulph did not see; he was going. At the doorway he turned and said:

"You know you can trust me. Good-bye."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

When Ranulph returned to his little house at St. Aubin's Bay night had fallen. Approaching he saw there was no light in the windows. The blinds were not drawn, and no glimmer of fire came from the chimney.

He hesitated at the door, for he instinctively felt that something must have happened to his father. He was just about to enter, however, when some one came hurriedly round the corner of the house.

"Whist, boy," said a voice; "I've news for you." Ranulph recognised the voice as that of Dormy Jamais. Dormy plucked at his sleeve. "Come with me, boy," said he.

"Come inside if you want to tell me something," answered Ranulph.

"Ah bah, not for me! Stone walls have ears. I'll tell only you and the wind that hears and runs away."

"I must speak to my father first," answered Ranulph.

"Come with me, I've got him safe," Dormy chuckled to himself.

Ranulph's heavy hand dropped on his shoulder. "What's that you're saying--my father with you! What's the matter?"

As though oblivious of Ranulph's hand Dormy went on chuckling.

"Whoever burns me for a fool 'll lose their ashes. Des monz a fous--I have a head! Come with me." Ranulph saw that he must humour the shrewd natural, so he said:

"Et ben, put your four s.h.i.+rts in five bundles and come along." He was a true Jerseyman at heart, and speaking to such as Dormy Jamais he used the homely patois phrases. He knew there was no use hurrying the little man, he would take his own time.

"There's been the devil to pay," said Dormy as he ran towards the sh.o.r.e, his sabots going clac--clac, clac--clac. "There's been the devil to pay in St. Heliers, boy." He spoke scarcely above a whisper.