(8)
Avoye was standing before the great hearth, her back to him, her face buried in her hands. He stood a moment at the door, looking at her, then he crossed the room towards her. At his step she dropped her hands, and, clasping them hard in front of her, without turning towards him, without even glancing at him, said in an almost inaudible voice:
"Aymar, say that it is not true!"
No, to pile more lies on those the orchard had drawn from him—he could not do it. He had come to that hour which he had sacrificed so much to avert, when he must tell her of her innocent share in his ruin. He set his teeth for a moment as he took out the knife. If only it were destined for his breast and not hers!
"Will you tell me exactly what she said to you?"
Still not looking at him, very briefly, as one half stunned, she told him. The brutal manner in which she had herself been enlightened was clear enough. But Aymar had hardly a thought to spare for Eulalie, her perfidy, her bitter revenge. What mattered was this stricken, pitifully bewildered little Avoye, so pale in her grey gown, who would not look at him while she waited for the denial which he could not give, but only repeated again and again, in a voice that made his heart ache, "Aymar, say it is not true, say it is not true!" and then, "How can it be true? How could you have done it to save me? you did not know that I had been stopped—you said so!"
"I wanted to spare you all I could," he answered very sadly.
"To spare me? Why, what had I done?"
"Nothing—nothing! That was why."
"But I was in no danger—you did not even know that I was detained. And she says that Godfather was mixed up in it—yet you never said a word of it!" And now she was looking at him indeed. "Is it possible that down there in the orchard, when my heart was breaking about you, you took me in your arms and comforted me . . . with lies!"
The hated word stung him a little in the midst of everything else.
"How could I tell you the truth, my darling, when, as you say, your heart was breaking like that? And, although I sent the letter to save you, it was part of a ruse—a plan I had made beforehand. Can't you believe me, Avoye?"
"But it is all so crazy!" she exclaimed. "I in danger of being shot—I to whom they apologized! . . . And Godfather, what was he doing in it? He never came there! And you really thought, you——"
Poor child, poor lamb, so bewildered under the touch of the knife. Oh, to get through this barbarity quickly! "Dearest, I will tell you exactly what happened. But sit down, for pity's sake." He seized and swung forward a little gilt chair. "If only I had never given that woman the chance of springing it on you like this—if only I had guessed that she knew!"
But she recoiled from him. She would none of the chair. She went back as far as the carved stone of the hearth and put a hand to that. And then she faced him. "Be quick, Aymar, be quick! I'm . . . frightened!"
So, standing in front of her, and in front of the proud, indifferent swans of their blazon, he told her shortly the other, the true, complete story. But it had a strange sound in his own ears now.
There was fear indeed in her eyes when he had finished. And when he said, "Do you see, my dear, a little, why I wanted you never to know?" and tried to take her hand, she drew it away and shook her head.
"How can they both be true—that you did it for a military reason, which you told me first, and that you did it to save me because you imagined—imagined—that I was in danger?"
Aymar looked down at her, full of a great pity. "Do you not see," he said again, "the plan was there, ready, and I used it, that was all."
Trembling visibly, and twisting her hands a little, she said, "No; I cannot. I cannot help feeling, which story am I to believe . . . or perhaps you have another?"
"Avoye!" he exclaimed, flushing scarlet.
"I wish you had! I wish you had! How am I to believe, first, that you sent the letter to the Imperialist commander at Arzon as a ruse, and then, that you sent it to Colonel Richard at Saint-Goazec, to save me, who was not in danger! You have told me both of those things. . . . Aymar, Aymar, you seem somebody I have never known! You—you—to do a disgraceful thing . . . to do it for me . . . and then, not daring to tell me, to lie about it!"
For a moment he knew dizziness. They were both drowning in a sea too strong for either of them. Yet surely there must be some raft to which one might cling. The love of years could not fail like this. . . . "Avoye, I swear to you that the two stories are not incompatible! The plan was a ruse—it remained a ruse, even though I used it as I did."
"But how am I to know that you did not make up the whole of what you told me in the orchard? So much of it was untrue—you admit that. What portions of it can I really feel safe in believing?" She suppressed a sob. "Did you ever meet M. de Saint-Etienne and make that plan at all?"
He gave her a look, but in words he did not answer—he could not. Who had the knife now?
"I cannot help hurting you!" cried Avoye desperately. "Do you think that it does not hurt me, too? For you never sent that letter to Arzon—that was a lie—and you did know that I was detained!"
Aymar had found his voice again. "Yes . . . unfortunately!" He turned away for a moment. The waves had grown mountains high; yet there was but one thing he would appeal to. "If you would only try to understand!" he said, facing her again; and he said it very quietly.
She was trembling and very pale; her eyes were full of tears as she answered, "I do understand—I do begin to. I understand now why you have taken no steps to clear yourself. The story that was good enough to dupe me with, in the orchard, is not good enough for the world! Yes, I do understand! You are not, as I had always dreamed, the living embodiment of our motto, the very soul of honour!"
He made a faint gesture. "Then nothing that I can say is of any use."
But she went on in her blind anguish, "If a saint—yes, if our Blessed Lady herself had come to tell me that you could do this . . . and then lie about it to me . . . I would not have believed it, Aymar! I could not. . . . And yet, you have done it!"
"Yes, I have done it!" He looked at her steadily. "And you are not going to try to understand or to pardon?"
"It is not a thing one could ever pardon!" she flashed out. "You have sold your honour!"
With that the blade was full in his own heart, so keen that its stab was partly physical, and involuntarily he put his hand to his side. But he took it instantly away, and gripped the back of the little gilt chair near him. He was the colour of ashes. Yet his head was high.
"No, that I have not done! And there is only one part of it which needs pardon," he said firmly, "and that is, that to save you needless pain, I told you some things which were not true. For what I did I do not ask your pardon."
"You can say that after Pont-aux-Rochers!"
"I can say that after Pont-aux-Rochers. What I deliberately slew, in the hope of saving you, was not my men, but my own . . . instincts. It is not in your power or any one's to pardon me for that sacrifice."
The very look he gave her, at once proud, tender, unyielding and hurt to death, the very yearning of her heart for him, only met that other tide of horrified dismay in fiercer tumult and foam. Avoye de Villecresne burst into tears, and crying incoherently, "I cannot understand you . . . I never shall. . . . This will kill me, I think . . . but I cannot bear to see you . . . as you are now!" turned and went quickly out of the open window, leaving him alone.
And Aymar stood quite still, looking, not after her disappearing figure, but at the old Spanish leather screen, with its embossed border of pomegranates and its faded gold, which had for some minutes been to him the background to her slim body in its narrow gown, her aureole of burnished hair even, in a sense, to her passionate and bewildered voice—looking at it almost as if he did not realize that she was gone. Then he, too, went from the room.