CHAPTER V
THE RENDEZVOUS BY THE CROSS
Beneath the reserved and somewhat melancholy front which he generally presented to the world, the Count of Fieramondi was of an ardent and affectionate disposition. Rather lacking, perhaps, in resolution and strength of character, he was the more dependent on the regard and help of others, and his fortitude was often unequal to the sacrifices which his dignity and his pride demanded. Yet the very pride which led him into positions that he could not endure made it well-nigh impossible for him to retreat. This disposition, an honourable but not altogether a happy one, serves to explain both the uncompromising attitude which he had assumed in his dispute with his wife, and the misery of heart which had betrayed itself in the poem he read to Captain Dieppe, with its indirect but touching appeal to his friend's sympathy.
Now his resolve was growing weaker as the state of hostilities, his loneliness, the sight of that detestable barricade, became more and more odious to him. He began to make excuses for the Countess—not indeed for all that she had done (for her graver offences were unknown to him), but for what he knew of, for the broken promise and the renewal of acquaintance with Paul de Roustache. He imputed to her a picturesque penitence and imagined her, on her side of the barricade, longing for a pardon she dared not ask and a reconciliation for which she could hardly venture to hope; he went so far as to embody these supposed feelings of hers in a graceful little poem addressed to himself and entitled, "To My Cruel Andrea." In fine the Count was ready to go on his knees if he received proper encouragement. Here his pride had its turn: this encouragement he must have; he would not risk an interview, a second rebuff, a repetition of that insolence of manner with which he had felt himself obliged to charge the Countess or another slamming of the door in his face, such as had offended him so justly and so grievously in those involuntary interviews which had caused him to change his apartments. But now—the thought came to him as the happiest of inspirations—he need expose himself to none of these humiliations. Fortune had provided a better way. Shunning direct approaches with all their dangers, he would use an intermediary. By Heaven's kindness the ideal ambassador was ready to his hand—a man of affairs, accustomed to delicate negotiations, yet (the Count added) honourable, true, faithful, and tender-hearted. "My friend Dieppe will rejoice to serve me," he said to himself with more cheerfulness than he had felt since first the barricade had reared its hated front. He sent his servant to beg the favour of Dieppe's company.
At the moment—which, to be precise, was four o'clock in the afternoon—no invitation could have been more unwelcome to Captain Dieppe. He had received his note from the hands of a ragged urchin as he strolled by the river an hour before: its purport rather excited than alarmed him; but the rendezvous mentioned was so ill-chosen, from his point of view, that it caused him dismay. And he had in vain tried to catch sight of the Countess or find means of communicating with her without arousing suspicion. He had other motives too for shrinking from such expressions of friendliness as he had reason to anticipate from his host. But he did not expect anything so disconcerting as the proposal which the Count actually laid before him when he unwillingly entered his presence.
"Go to her—go to her on your behalf?" he exclaimed in a consternation which luckily passed for a modest distrust of his qualifications for the task. "But, my dear friend, what am I to say?"
"Say that I love her," said the Count in his low, musical tones. "Say that beneath all differences, all estrangements, lies my deep, abiding, unchanging love."
Statements of this sort the Captain preferred to make, when occasion arose, on his own behalf.
"Say that I know I have been hard to her, that I recede from my demand, that I will be content with her simple word that she will not, without my knowledge, hold any communication with the person she knows of."
The Captain now guessed—or at least very shrewdly suspected—the position of affairs. But he showed no signs of understanding.
"Tell her," pursued the Count, laying his hand on Dieppe's shoulder and speaking almost as ardently as though he were addressing his wife herself, "that I never suspected her of more than a little levity, and that I never will or could."
Dieppe found himself speculating how much the Count's love and trust might induce him to include in the phrase "a little levity."
"That she should listen—I will not say to love-making—but even to gallantry, to a hint of admiration, to the least attempt at flirtation, has never entered my head about my Emilia."
The Captain, amid all his distress, marked the name.
"I trust her—I trust her!" cried the Count, raising his hands in an obvious stress of emotion, "as I trust myself, as I would trust my brother, my bosom friend. Yes, my dear friend, as I now trust you yourself. Go to her and say, 'I am Andrea's friend, his trusted friend. I am the messenger of love. Give me your love—'"
"What?" cried the Captain. The words sounded wonderfully attractive.
"'Give me your love to carry back to him.'"
"Oh, exactly," murmured the Captain, relapsing into altruistic gloom.
"Then all will be forgiven between us. Only our love will be remembered. And you, my friend, will have the happiness of seeing us reunited, and of knowing that two grateful hearts thank you. I can imagine no greater joy."
"It would certainly be—er—intensely gratifying," murmured Dieppe.
"You would remember it all your life. It is not a thing a man gets the chance of doing often."
"No," agreed the Captain; but he thought to himself, "Deuce take it, he talks as if he were doing me a favour!"
"My friend, you look sad; you don't seem—"
"Oh, yes, I do—yes, I am," interrupted the Captain, hastily assuming, or trying to assume, a cheerful expression. "But—"
"I understand—I understand. You doubt yourself?"
"That's it," assented the Captain very truthfully.
"Your tact, your discretion, your knowledge of women?" (Dieppe had never in his life doubted any of these things; but he let the accusation pass.) "Don't be afraid. Emilia will like you. I know that Emilia will like you. And you will like her. I know it."
"You think so?" No intonation could have expressed greater doubt.
"I am certain of it; and when two people like one another, all goes easily."
"Well, not always," said the Captain, whose position made him less optimistic.
The Count felt in his waistcoat-pocket. Dieppe sat looking down towards the floor with a frown on his face. He raised his eyes to find the Count holding out his hand towards him; in the open palm of it lay a wedding-ring.
"Take it back to her," said the Count.
"Really had n't you better do that yourself?" expostulated the Captain, who felt himself hard driven by fate.
"No," said the Count, firmly. "I leave it all to you. Put it on her finger and say, 'This is the pledge of love—of love renewed—of Andrea's undying love for you.'" He thrust the symbol of bliss into Captain Dieppe's most reluctant hand. The Captain sat and looked at it in a horrified fascination.
"You will do it for me?" urged the Count. "You can't refuse! Ah, my friend, if my sorrow does n't move you, think of hers. She is alone there in that wing of the house—even her cousin, who was with her, was obliged to leave her three days ago. There she sits, thinking of her faults, poor child, in solitude! Alas, it is only too likely in tears! I can't bear to think of her in tears."
The Captain quite understood that feeling; he had seen her in them.
"You will help us? Your noble nature will force you to it!"
After a moment's hesitation, pardonable surely in weak humanity, Dieppe put the Countess's wedding-ring in his pocket, rose to his feet, and with a firm unfaltering face held out his hand to his friend and host.
"I can refuse you nothing," he said, in most genuine emotion. "I will do what you ask. May it bring happiness to—to—to all of us!" He wrung the Count's hand with a grip that spoke of settled purpose. "You shall hear how I fare very soon," he said, as he made for the door.
The Count nodded hopefully, and, when he was left alone, set to work on a little lyric of joy, with which to welcome the return of his forgiven and forgiving spouse.
But it was hard on Captain Dieppe; the strictest moralist may admit that without endangering his principles. Say the Captain had been blameworthy; still his punishment was heavy—heavy and most woefully prompt. His better nature, his finer feelings, his instincts of honour and loyalty, might indeed respond to the demand made on them by the mission with which his friend entrusted him. But the demand was heavy, the call grievous. Where he had pictured joy, there remained now only renunciation; he had dreamed of conquest; there could be none, save the hardest and least grateful, the conquest of himself. Firm the Captain might be, but sad he must be. He could still serve the Countess (was not Paul de Roustache still dangerous?), but he could look for no reward. Small wonder that the meeting, whose risks and difficulty had made it seem before only the sweeter, now lost all its delight, and became the hardest of ordeals, the most severe and grim of duties.
If this was the Captain's mood, that of the lady whom he was to meet could be hardly more cheerful. If conscience seemed to trouble her less, and unhappy love not to occupy her mind as it governed his, the external difficulties of her position occasioned her greater distress and brought her near despair. Paul de Roustache's letter had been handed to her by her servant, with a smile half reproachful, half mocking, she had seized it, torn it open, and read it. She understood its meaning; she saw that the dreaded crisis had indeed come; and she was powerless to deal with it, or to avert the catastrophe it threatened. She sat before it now, very near to doing just what Count Andrea hated to think of and Captain Dieppe could not endure to see; and as she read and re-read the hateful thing she moaned softly to herself:
"Oh, how could I be so silly! How could I put myself in such a position? How could I consent to anything of the sort? I don't know what 'll happen. I have n't got fifty thousand francs! Oh, Emilia, how could you do it? I don't know what to do! And I 'm all alone—alone to face this fearful trouble!" Indeed the Count, led no doubt by the penetrating sympathy of love, seemed to have divined her feelings with a wonderful accuracy.
She glanced up at the clock, it was nearly five. The smile that came on her face was sad and timid; yet it was a smile of hope. "Perhaps he 'll be able to help me," she thought. "He has no money, no—only fifty francs, poor man! But he seems to be brave—oh, yes, he 's brave. And I think he's clever. I 'll go to the meeting-place and take the note. He 's the only chance." She rose and walked to a mirror. She certainly looked a little less woe-begone now, and she examined her appearance with an earnest criticism. The smile grew more hopeful, a little more assured, as she murmured to herself, "I think he 'll help me, if he can, you know; because—well, because—" For an instant she even laughed. "And I rather like him too, you know," she ended by confiding to the mirror. These latter actions and words were not in such complete harmony with Count Andrea's mental picture of the lady on the other side of the barricade.
Betaking herself to the room from which she had first beheld Captain Dieppe's face—not, as the Count would have supposed, as a consequence of any design, but by the purest and most unexpected chance—she arrayed herself in a short skirt and thick boots, and wrapped a cloak round her, for a close, misty rain was already falling, and the moaning of the wind in the trees promised a stormy evening. Then she stole out and made for the gate in the right wall of the gardens. The same old servant who had brought the note was there to let her out.
"You will be gone long, Contessa?" she asked.
"No, Maria, not long. If I am asked for, say I am lying down."
"Who should ask for you? The Count?"
"Not very likely," she replied with a laugh, in which the servant joined. "But if he does, I am absolutely not to be seen, Maria." And with another little laugh she began to skirt the back of the gardens so as to reach the main road, and thus make her way by the village to the Cross on the hill, and the little hut in the hollow behind it.
Almost at the same moment Captain Dieppe, cursing his fortune, his folly, and the weather, with the collar of his coat turned up, his hat crashed hard on his head, and (just in case of accidents) his revolver in his pocket, came out into the garden and began to descend the hill towards where the stepping-stones gave him passage across the river. Thus he also would reach the village, pass through it, and mount the hill to the Cross. His way was shorter and his pace quicker. To be there before the lady would be only polite; it would also give him a few minutes in which to arrange his thoughts and settle what might be the best way to open to her the new—the very new—things that he had to say. In the preoccupation of these he thought little of his later appointment at seven o'clock—although it was in view of this that he had slipped the revolver into his pocket.
Finally, just about the same time also, Guillaume was rehearsing to Paul de Roustache exactly what they were to do and where their respective parts began and terminated. Paul was listening with deep attention, with a curious smile on his face, and with the inner reflection that things in the end might turn out quite differently from what his astute companion supposed would be the case. Moreover—also just in case of accidents—both of these gentlemen, it may be mentioned, had slipped revolvers into their pockets. Such things may be useful when one carries large sums of money to a rendezvous, equally so in case one hopes to carry them back from it. The former was M. Guillaume's condition, the latter that of Paul de Roustache. On the whole there seemed a possibility of interesting incidents occurring by or in the neighbourhood of the Cross on the hillside above the village.
What recked the Count of Fieramondi of that? He was busy composing his lyric in honour of the return of his forgiven and forgiving Countess. Of what was happening he had no thought.
And not less ignorant of these possible incidents was a lady who this same evening stood in the courtyard of the only inn of the little town of Sasellano, where the railway ended, and whence the traveller to the Count of Fieramondi's Castle must take a carriage and post-horses.
The lady demanded horses, protested, raged; most urgent business called her to pursue her journey, she said. But the landlord hesitated and shook his head.
"It 's good twelve miles and against collar almost all the way," he urged.
"I will pay what you like," she cried.
"But see, the rain falls—it has fallen for two hours. The water will be down from the hills, and the stream will be in flood before you reach the ford. Your Excellency had best sleep here to-night. Indeed your Excellency must."
"I won't," said her Excellency flatly.
And at that point—which may be called the direct issue—the dispute must now be left.