(13)
And meanwhile the Vicomtesse de la Rocheterie had come to the end of her patience.
The relations of Avoye and Aymar for the last five or six years, as with a shrug of the shoulders she would admit, had been frankly beyond her comprehension. Mid-eighteenth century in her outlook as she was to the marrow, she had often told herself that in her young days such a situation as continued year after year at Sessignes would have been impossible; no Frenchman who prided himself upon being a galant homme would have endured it for more than a month or two. The cold Northern strain in his blood, inherited from his and Avoye's paternal great-grandmother, presumably accounted for, though it hardly excused, Aymar's patience. A man might have a mistress, and he might have a wife, but for a young man to live for years under the same roof with the woman he loved, who was neither, really struck Mme de la Rocheterie at times as improper.
But now the arrangement, which one would have thought just about to issue in a more satisfactory relation, had received a shrewd blow of some kind. Of the hand that had dealt it there could be no doubt; it only remained to discover the weapon which had been used. To this end she had just summoned her granddaughter to her boudoir, and as she sat there, beautifully attired as usual, there was that in her air which told the girl at once what the subject of the interview was likely to be.
There was indeed not time for doubt. Mme de la Rocheterie, motioning her to a chair, said coldly:
"I should like to know, Avoye, for what reason you have driven Aymar out of his own house?"
The fact that the phrase embodied her own self-reproach did not prevent Avoye from resenting it. Her colour rose. She could not possibly give the reason. . . . At that moment, with an almost sickening leap of the heart, she saw on the little table at her grandmother's elbow an opened letter in Aymar's handwriting.
"It is true that Aymar and I have had a . . . a disagreement," she admitted, her eyes fixed on the letter. "But I assure you, Grand'mère that I had not the slightest idea that he was going to leave the house like this, and I . . . I hope he is coming back."
Her grandmother's very rings seemed to flash hostility at her as she stretched out her hand and deliberately dropped the letter into the little fire which, despite the summer weather, burnt on the hearth beside her. "No, he is not," she replied curtly, "and therefore I think I have a right to know why you are, as I say, keeping him out of his own house just when he most needs a home and the care he can get there."
The thrust told. Avoye dropped her head. "I never meant to drive him away," she repeated.
"Nonsense," said Mme de la Rocheterie. "Do not pretend that you are ignorant of what you are doing where Aymar is concerned. You know only too well! Ever since your marriage you have been his evil genius—ever since you left your husband I have had to stand by and watch you slowly ruining his life. All I could do to enable me to bear the sight was to tell myself that a day would possibly come when you could repair the suffering you had caused him. That day has come . . . and how do you act? You choose the moment when he is ill, in straits of some kind—do you think I am so blind as not to know that?—to turn on him and——"
"Please stop!" said Avoye, trembling a little. "There is no need for you to say that again. I will leave Sessignes myself—at once—and then Aymar can come back."
Mme de la Rocheterie gave a short laugh. "As if that would put matters right! You know that he is besotted over you! If he comes back and finds you gone, I shall only have another scene . . . and I am getting too old for scenes. . . . But, for all that, ma fille, you are mistaken in thinking that you can play fast and loose with him like this!"
"Please tell me where he is?" asked Avoye humbly.
"There was no address. He is moving about, he says . . . on affairs. He is well fitted in health for that just now, is he not?—I ask once more, Avoye, on what grounds you drove him away?"
"I told you, Grand'mère, that we had a disagreement, which I regret very much."
"Is that an answer to my question?"
"I cannot answer it more explicitly."
"Perhaps then you will be kind enough to enlighten me as to why this mysterious quarrel coincided with his return from captivity."
"But, Grand'mère, it did not! It . . . it came about suddenly, only the day he left, and it was . . . my fault."
"Indeed!" remarked the Vicomtesse. "And you are now penitent! Nevertheless, I do not believe you. I had observed you for days before that—not at all the happy lovers I expected to see. Tell me, has Aymar taken any steps yet about the dispensation for your marriage?—Answer me, has he?"
"No."
"Why not, pray?"
But Avoye could not, without betraying Aymar, reveal that the abstention was entirely on his side. She did not answer.
"You did not find him so attractive when he was unsuccessful, I suppose?" suggested Mme de la Rocheterie.
"You have no right to say that, Grand'mère!" retorted the girl, firing up. "It is false!"
"How, then, did you prevent so constant a lover from taking that necessary step?"
"I did not prevent him." The words escaped her against her will.
"You expect me to believe that Aymar himself was willing to relegate his marriage to I know not what epoch? He knows how long those matters take." She looked keenly at her granddaughter and again receiving no answer, said: "Then you must have shown him pretty plainly what your feelings were about it."
"I did," said Avoye, goaded, "but they were not what you think."
"You mean to tell me that you did not deter him?"
"I said I would marry him to-morrow if he had the dispensation."
"Oho!" said her grandmother. "So much warmth—after so much scrupulosity! And in the face of that, Aymar—Aymar—still hung back!"
"He had his reasons," said Avoye, very low. "I did not endorse them."
"So you say. If I am to believe that I must know what they were."
But Avoye shook her head obstinately.
"Perhaps he had discovered that he was not your only admirer? Aymar is somewhat exclusive."
"You can think that if you like," replied her granddaughter scornfully.
"Or that you were jealous—of Eulalie, for example?"
Avoye gave a little laugh. Yet she was unable to avoid reddening at the name, a fact which by no means escaped Mme de la Rocheterie, who said, watching her closely: "It certainly was curious that he should ride off in that extraordinary fashion the very day she left."
"Do you really think, Grand'mère, that he rode after her?"
"No, I am not such a fool," admitted the Vicomtesse. "Unless, indeed, he wished to question her more closely."
"Question her? Why should he?" For she was obliged to say something.
"Because I have been thinking over Eulalie's remarks that evening," answered her grandmother coolly, "and I am convinced that she was not making them innocently. And since his return, Aymar's demeanour has been such——Yes, there is something behind this talk of treachery and mistaken judgment. You will kindly tell me, Avoye, what it is!"
"Why did you not ask Eulalie?" said the girl, her eyes on the ground.
The Vicomtesse waved the question aside. "What story is going about connecting Aymar unfavourably with his defeat?"
No answer.
"Is it some calumny based on his actual absence from the fight?"
"No."
"Or that he is—as I have suspected—shielding the person responsible for the ambush, the person who, I suppose, sent the necessary information to the Bonapartists?"
Avoye shook her head.
"What is it, then? Have I not a right to know?"
Yes, she had, she had! Was she a woman who needed to be "spared" any more than she, Avoye, herself? Mme de Villecresne lifted her head.
"People are saying that it was Aymar himself who sent the information."
Mme de la Rocheterie drew a long breath. Her hands clenched themselves on the arms of her chair, her eyes sparkled. Instead of being withered by the blow, she actually looked younger, rising to meet it. She laughed.
"As 'people' were about it, they might have invented a more likely slander. This one is somewhat ludicrously wanting in plausibility. Aymar betray his cherished Eperviers! But I thank you for telling me, since the imbecility of human nature has always delighted me."
She stooped to replace a piece of wood fallen from the fire, and, raising herself rather suddenly, caught sight of Avoye's expression. Her own changed with startling rapidity.
"Avoye! Is it possible! . . . Am I to take you for one of the imbeciles?"
"Of course, he sent it as a ruse," murmured Avoye out of her stiffened lips.
Mme de la Rocheterie took no notice.
"You believed it—you believe it!—My God, no wonder Aymar would not stay under the same roof with you! And this is your disagreement, your lovers' tiff, after which you dare to hope he will return to you as if nothing had happened. A La Rocheterie come cringing back to the feet of a woman who could believe him capable of such an infamy! I am glad that he left the house instantly!"
Avoye tried dizzily to think. The fierce, proud old woman, it was clear, would once more pay no heed if she were to repeat the explanation about a ruse. She did not need that explanation for a moment, she who had met the accusation merely with ridicule. Pray God, then, that that was all the impression it would ever make on her! Some atonement, therefore, she herself could offer for the wrong she had done Aymar, by consenting to be sacrificed to that end . . . by holding her tongue and not justifying herself . . . by not saying that it was true, for he had told her so with his own lips . . .
She bowed her head. She made herself, as far as she could, deaf to what her grandmother was saying; she took the lashes in silence, for Aymar's sake—though he could never know . . .
This she heard, after other words:
"I had sent for you to tell you that, unless Aymar could be induced to marry someone else, you would have to marry him, after having kept him dangling all these years, the last of his name. But to demand such a sacrifice of him after this would be infamous! He is free of you at last—I thank God for it!"
It must surely be almost over now. But Avoye raised her head to see her grandmother looking at her with that emotion so terrible to witness in a person of one's own blood—hatred. Drawn and aged enough now, the Vicomtesse said, with astonishing venom, "If only the Fates had not made you that selfish and disastrous creature commonly known as a virtuous woman! Or was it calculated wisdom that has made you refrain from the attempt to sweep Aymar off his feet? You could have done it, I believe, if you had wished, for he has hotter blood than you think—and even in this new century men are still men. . . . But you knew that it was better to keep yourself the unattainable, because a lover may get tired of the attainable.—Yes, if you had been more . . . accommodating . . . he might have been tired of you by now, and have made a marriage worthy of him. And his wife, I fancy, would——"
"Stop, Grand'mère stop!" cried Avoye, trembling from head to foot, and putting out her hands as though to ward off less the insults than the atrocious regret which beat through the old woman's words. "Stop, you cannot know what you are saying!"
It was probable that this was true, though, save for the glitter in her eyes and a slight half-palsied movement of her hands, Mme de la Rocheterie's manner did not suggest loss of self-control. She went on exactly where she had been interrupted:
"His wife, I say, would have displayed more faith in him than you—you, so immaculate and so base-minded! And all these years you have pretended to love him! Why, body and soul, the cheapest girl of the Palais-Royal has a better notion of love than you! Yet you are my granddaughter . . . at least I suppose so! But I shall hope, during the rest of my life, to forget it."
"Oh, I think you have already succeeded!" cried Avoye, almost beside herself. "You who bore my father, to say such things to me! If Aymar were here——" She stopped, suddenly choking.
Her grandmother leant back in her chair with an air of complete victory, and a smile that matched it. "Yes?" she enquired, "if Aymar were here—now—what, then?"
Avoye stared at the pitiless old face and saw completely, nakedly, what her own lack of pity towards her lover had done for herself. The shield between her and that hostility was gone for ever; and till this hour she had not realized how efficaciously it had been her shield. Indeed, there was nothing for her now but the roof of another.
"I shall start for Paris at once," she said, clutching to her the last poor remnants of her composure. "You need not fear, this time, that I shall ever return."
"No, I imagine that I am scarcely in danger of being forced a second time to receive you back," agreed her grandmother, and the smile grew sharper. "—Will you kindly ring the bell for Rose as you go out?"