CHAPTER NINETEEN
Yellow Dog Papillon lay asleep on the Chesterfield in Joyselle's room. He was dreaming an enchanting dream about a particularly aromatic bone that he found in a dust-bin—a ham-bone slashed by a careless hand and cast away before all meat had been removed from it—a bone for which any dog would have risked much.
So it was tiresome to be awakened by a sound of low voices.
Opening one eye warily Yellow Dog Papillon looked up and saw something he had of late seen several times, his beloved master standing by the Girl Who Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat.
The girl had water in her eyes, too.
"I am very sorry, Victor," she was saying, "but I cannot, and will not. I can't see why you should care."
"But I do care. You know that I have always hated it. And Tommy told me himself that she let him go with the express purpose of making up with you. It is your duty to go back."
She drew away from him.
"I cannot."
"You mean you will not."
"Exactly; I will not."
Yellow Dog did not understand all of this dialogue, but he knew his master's face as well as his voice, and because he liked the Girl Who Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat, he would have liked to advise her to lay down her arms at once. "No good opposing him when his eyes are like that," he said to himself; "if it was me, I'd just sit up and beg and make him laugh."
But Brigit would not condescend to sit up and beg.
"There's no use in discussing it," she said very coldly, "for I will not go back."
Joyselle watched her in silence for a long time. "Not even if I entreat you?" he asked in a gentle voice.
Her lips tightened, for tenderness with coercion behind it had no delusions for her.
"Not even if you entreat me. I have told you that I dislike my mother and I do not wish to see her. I will not tell you why, and that, at least, you ought to approve of."
"It is horrible for a daughter to say that she does not like her mother——"
"It is horrible for me not to like her, but I can't help it. And it is not horrible for me to tell—anything to you."
But his face did not soften. "I wish you to go to Kingsmead, Brigit."
"I will not go to Kingsmead, Victor."
"Then," his anger now finally blazed up, "I can say only—good-bye."
Her face was as white and as hard as his own, and being a woman she could even laugh.
"Adieu, donc—Beau-père!"
"What do you mean by that? You will not—surely you cannot mean that you will——"
"But I do!" He himself had suggested a revenge to her. "If you and I quarrel, I will most certainly not marry your son."
For a moment the father in him dominated the mere man, and his eloquence was great as he reproached her.
"No—no, I am not cruel," she answered cruelly, her anger reinforced by a wave of jealousy anent Théo, "but as I do not love him, why should I marry him? And this kind of thing had far better cease. After all, you care for him far more than you care for me."
"Grand Dieu!"
"Yes, of course you do," she went on in the tone of gentle, unimpassioned reason that women sometimes use in violent anger, to the utter amazement and undoing of their male opponents. "And moreover, I daresay if I really loved you as much as I thought I did, I should be unable to refuse to do what you wish about my mother."
Joyselle's face was very white.
"What do you mean? Do you mean that your love for me was a mere caprice, and that—it has gone?"
His agony was unconcealed, and as she gazed she smiled, for her own torture was nearly unbearable.
"I shouldn't like to say it was only a caprice——" She hesitated, and he sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
Suddenly he rose and seizing her arm roughly, gave her another cue, which she remorselessly and instantly took.
"There is someone else," he cried, utterly forgetting that the very day before she had loved him madly, "you love some other man. Tell me who it is!"
And with the extraordinary fortitude common to fanatics and furious women, she smiled and answered:
"Perhaps! Tout passe, mon cher."
It was a cheap and melodramatic bit of acting, and any unprejudiced onlooker must have seen the agony in her face, but Joyselle was blinded by his own pain and fled from the room without another word.
She heard a door slam and knew that he had gone out. And the world came to an end for her.
It was about six o'clock, and Tommy had gone out with Théo. They would not be back until about eight.
Félicité, too, was out. She was alone. She saw Papillon, who was sitting up, looking at her with a world of sympathy in the cock of his ear.
Suddenly Brigit burst into tears, nervous, hysterical, noisy sobbing, as she had done that day in the olive grove at the Villa Arcadie. She had been living under great nervous strain for months, and these breakdowns were of appalling violence. She could not stop crying, and she could not reason and tell herself that he would come back and forgive her.
All she could realise was her hideous misery and sense of desolation. She was utterly alone, she was hungry, she was cold, she was hopeless.
Presently someone touched her shoulder very gently. It was Félicité.
"What is it, my dear?" the elder woman asked. "What has happened?"
And Brigit, too unstrung to tell the usual conventional lies, simply sobbed on, her whole body shaking with agony.
Madame Joyselle sat patiently by her, stroking her shoulders with a kind hand, murmuring little broken phrases in French, patting her hair.
"Oui, oui, ma mie—Pauvre petite, ça te soulagera—Pleures, ma cocotte, pleures!"
And at last the girl was quiet, and reached for her handkerchief.
"I—I am sorry to have been so idiotic, I don't know why I am such a fool——"
Félicité smoothed back her wet hair and smiled at her.
"Poor child," she answered quietly. "I am so sorry. I have seen it for some time——"
Brigit stared at her.
"Seen—?"
"That you have fallen in love with Victor. It is really too bad of him, the old rascal."
Her gentle face was so undisturbed, so calmly acceptant of the heinous fact that Brigit could do nothing but stare. "I am glad poor Théo does not suspect," went on Félicité, untying the strings of her old-fashioned bonnet, "we must not let him know, n'est ce pas?"
"I—I don't see——" stammered the girl, blankly.
"No, he must not know. Nor Victor either, if we can help it. Though he is very vain, and vain men always see. On the whole," she added with a kind of gentle amusement, "you have all been absurdly blind but me. And I did not like to warn you."
"This is—very extraordinary," began Brigit, rising. "I don't quite see——"
But Félicité drew her down to her chair again. "That is just it, ma pauvre petite. I did see. I saw his little fancy for you, too. It began the evening of the dragon-skin frock, and it lasted, oh—about a month. And you never noticed it, poor child. And now you are miserable about him. I am so sorry."
There was such convincing sincerity in her every tone that Brigit could not even pretend to be angry.
"You must think me very silly," she murmured.
But the little woman shook her head, "Non, non, it is not silly to love. It is unwise, or wrong, or heavenly, or mad, but silly, non. And he is very attractive, mon homme." This tribute she added reluctantly, as if from a sense of fairness. "And many have loved him."
Suddenly Brigit's anger flamed up.
"And—I am so insignificant that you are not afraid of me," she cried. "What if he had not got over it? What if he loved me as much—more than I love him?"
Félicité smiled serenely and sweetly.
"No, I know him. I saw it come—and go. But do not be angry and proud, my dear. I wish only to help you."
And Brigit, touched by her kindness as well as terrified by her own indiscretion, sat down by her.