Chapter Twenty.
The River.
There was a minute of dumb horror; then Félicie would have broken into lamentation before the messenger if Claire had not hastily signed to him to go round to the offices. Léon stood, ghastly white; his wife clasped his arm with both hands, and Félicie’s sobs, the only sound, came to her ears as distant as the rush of the river. Léon did not hear them at all. For the moment he was turned into stone, and his heart stood still. He had talked of it, dreaded it, but until this instant the horror of the thing had never really touched him. Arrested! He, Léon de Beaudrillart!
He looked round at his wife, and her eyes met his with brave tenderness. But he wanted words, and he held the letter to her with piteously trembling hands. Every word had already burned itself into her brain. His lips faltered the words: “What does it mean?”
If she could only have told him that it was a dreadful nightmare from which they would presently wake! The clasp on his arm tightened. She whispered:
“Dear, we will meet it together.”
Claire, who in spite of her anger against him, was listening breathlessly for some suggestion, turned away with a groan and rushed up-stairs to her mother’s room. She panted out:
“We must think of a way of saving Léon. Nathalie is helpless, and if something is not done he will be arrested.” In the immediate face of danger Mme. de Beaudrillart’s iron will exerted itself. She was deadly pale, and she clutched the back of a chair; but her voice was unshaken as she put the quick question: “When? To-day?”
“To-morrow.”
“Then we must act. Bring them here.”
They were already on the stairs. Léon came in first, his round face absolutely colourless, his limbs dragging. He tried to smile, but the effort only seemed to contort his features, and, stumbling forward, he sank into a chair, and stretched out the hand which held the letter to his mother. She read it with staring eyes, and when she spoke her voice sounded as if one metal struck another.
“This is no time for crying out, or for tears,” she said. “Monsieur Rodoin has done very well in giving us warning, and he no doubt understands that you must not be arrested. What remains is to decide how to act, and then to act quickly. There has been too much delay already. I suppose the time for money is past—”
“Owing to Nathalie,” murmured Claire.
”—And only flight remains.”
Léon lifted his head and looked at her with feverish eyes.
“You must fly, my son. Apparently there are countries where you will be safe; I do not know which they are, but that can be ascertained. You must start at once, telling no one and going alone, until your wife can safely join you. This is the only way of escaping the worst degradation. Claire, you have a good head; do you not think with me?”
“It is the one thing he can do for us,” said Claire, rigidly.
“Félicie?”
Félicie nodded, but was weeping too much to speak. Léon had buried his head in his hands, and his wife knelt by him, her eyes fixed on Mme. de Beaudrillart’s face.
“You see we are all agreed, Léon,” his mother went on, vanquishing a catch in her voice. “My son, remember what you owe to your name, and act. Where will you go? to Bordeaux or Marseilles? If you could reach America—” Her voice failed, she stood trembling, while her lips formed the words she had not strength to utter. As for Léon, with a mute gesture of despair he turned and hid his face against his wife’s arm. The little dependent action gave her words. She started to her feet, her tall figure swaying, her whole frame one passionate protest.
“You forget me, madame! I am not agreed. I say that he did not do this shameful thing, and that he shall not fly from it as if he were a coward. A De Beaudrillart a coward! Because there is one act of which he is ashamed, you want him to own to what is a hundred times worse! Léon, do not listen to them! For Raoul’s sake, do not listen to them! Dear love, be brave, live it down!” She dropped again by his side, gathering him to her heart, and with quivering lips kissing his hair, his hands. Claire would have answered angrily, but her mother stopped her.
“You have a right to be heard,” she said to the young wife, “and we have, perhaps, all too much forgotten that you suffer too. But let us clearly understand each other. What is it that you suggest? That—that he submits to arrest?” Her voice dropped miserably.
Nathalie made a mute sign of assent.
“Then you think,” Mme. de Beaudrillart went on, in the same dry and mechanical tones, “that it will be found they have not sufficient evidence to prove what they—have to prove!”
“I do not know,” said the wife, breathing hard. “I do not know. I only know that he must tell the truth.”
His mother’s hands gripped her chair.
“Acknowledge that—that he took the money?”
“Yes. Because it is true.”
A groan burst from Claire’s lips.
“Impossible!” cried Mme. de Beaudrillart, with an agitation she had not yet shown. “Plead guilty!”
Nathalie drove back anguish, recognising that all her strength was needed.
“What would flight plead, madame? That would mean that he was guilty of everything.”
“Yes,” the mother moaned. “His honour is lost. But he would escape the dreadful disgrace of punishment.”
“All his life would be one miserable punishment—too heavy, because unjust. If he comes forward now, and tells the troth when it goes against him, has he not a much better chance of being believed when it is in his favour? There is the letter he wrote to Monsieur de Cadanet. May that not still be found among his papers?”
Her heart was throbbing, and, holding him in her clasp, it was almost beyond her powers to speak calmly. Mme. de Beaudrillart’s self-control began to forsake her, and all unconsciously the sight of her son clinging to his wife impelled her into opposition. She cried out:
“But suppose they will not believe! Suppose he is—” She choked at the word “convicted.”
Nathalie felt her husband shiver, and pressed her lips on his hair.
“He will bear it,” she breathed.
“No, no,” cried his mother, starting up, “this is asking too much! You are no judge. You cannot tell what he, what we all, would suffer. Léon, speak! Flight is your only hope. Do not listen to your wife.”
At this appeal he raised himself, and stared vacantly round the room. His eyes lit on Félicie, and a haggard smile crossed his face.
“You had better not weep so much, Félicie; you will have no eyes left for your embroideries.”
She broke into more poignant sobs, and cried out:
“Mamma, must he go? Could we not hide him here somewhere?”
“In perpetuity,” he muttered. “Nathalie is right, mother, in one thing, for flight would only condemn me, and I could not bear it. I should not be spared a single humiliation. Besides, in these days one must be unknown to hide successfully, and all that I should gain would be the being dragged back in ignominy.”
Nathalie’s eyes were fixed anxiously upon him, her lips trembled, her shoulders contracted; it was as if she were trying to send strength from her soul to his, in his weak striving against fate.
“I believe I know what I shall do,” he went on, in a mechanically dull voice; then suddenly starting up, clasped his hands across his burning eyes, his face ghastly pale. His words came out slowly, shortly. “Yes, do not fear, mother. I know what to do. Have a little patience. I shall think of our honour, believe me.” Then he reeled, and his wife caught his arm. She was as white as he, but all her trembling had gone.
“Hush, Léon,” she said, firmly; “the shock has unnerved you so much that you do not know what you think or say. Whatever is done, even if you do go away as your mother wishes you, it could not be yet, for you could not reach the railway until dark; and you must have food. And if you stay, there is no use acting as though all were lost. Let him go to our room, madame, and come again to you later on. Come, dear love.”
Mme. de Beaudrillart made no opposition, for her strength had failed her. With a face of anguish she watched them out of the door, and fell back in her chair, scarcely conscious. Félicie, still sobbing, busied herself about her mother, and ran to fetch a handful of leaves from her stores, with which to make a tisane. Claire, dry-eyed and tense, stood with her eyes fixed on the photograph of her father, which always rested on a small easel near her mother’s chair.
“How unhappy we were when he died!” she said in a low voice, “and how much better it would have been if we had all died with him! I can never forgive Léon!”
Mme. de Beaudrillart did not speak—she could not. With her not only pride but love was smitten low—so low that her usual emotions had lost their leaders, and wandered objectless. Despair seized her whichever way she looked, and, like Claire, she, too, wished for death.
Léon submitted without resistance to his wife’s leading, clinging to her, indeed, as they passed along the passages to her room. The window leading into the stone balcony was open, and the whole air seemed to vibrate with the hoarse croaking of frogs from the pond beyond the kitchen-garden. Nathalie quietly closed it, and rang the bell. She stood at the door, and gave the astonished Rose-Marie directions to bring coffee at once, and, when it came, took it from her without allowing the girl to enter. Then she knelt by her husband, and coaxed him as if he were a child. He shuddered: “I cannot!”
“Dear, only to please me. It will do your head so much good.”
“There is a millwheel in my head. You see they are all falling away from me, so that even my mother will never be able to forgive.”
“Do you know,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully, “I believe we are all making too much of it. What will you say if it comes to nothing, and the jury are clever enough to take the sensible view of the case? Why should this man make the charge when Monsieur de Cadanet is dead? You will see that will tell against him.”
He groaned.
“And if worst comes to the worst, your friends will know that you have told the truth, dear; they will not think evil of you. And you will have us—your mother and sisters, and Raoul, and me. Do not we count for anything? Do not—”
He lifted his face and looked at her, and all her loving words stopped midway in her throat, and made a lump there. If she could have thought of herself she would have cried out to him to take away his eyes and their anguish, for if Léon’s soul had been wanting before, it had come to him now, and gazed at her; and it needs an angel or a devil to bear the sight of a human soul wrung with misery. Curiously enough, she felt all the time that if she had known about the world and its ways, her husband would have listened to her more readily. What she said to comfort him he set down to ignorance. One of his old companions with a jest and a laugh might have had a stronger influence than she with a bleeding heart. But this only made her try the more. She knew enough of Léon to be assured that silence would not soothe; she must talk, argue, entreat, go over the same ground again and again, appeal to his sentiment for them all, and this with a horrid fear deep within her to which she dared not allude, and scarcely dared to think of. He was not going to attempt to fly; so much she gathered. But that there was some rising purpose in his mind which was colouring his broken words and looks at her she was certain, and the certainty drove her almost mad with hidden fear. She made him drink a little coffee, which was something, and she wanted to bring Raoul to the rescue. But Raoul had gone off with the pony and Jacques Charpentier to see the last of the vintage at a distant farm, and would not be home until late—perhaps not till after dark.
By this time all the household was aware that there was something wrong, though they had different opinions as to the what, but, with a feeble sort of pretence, dinner was gone through as usual. Mme. de Beaudrillart, however, went away before it was ended, and Nathalie detained Claire, to ask her if she would come to her room as soon as Raoul returned. She grew more and more uneasy.
The lamp had been brought in before Claire appeared with the news that she had heard the pony pass the window a few minutes before. His wife glanced at Léon, but he sat, as he had sat for the last hour, his head buried on his arm, and she hoped that, worn out, he might be sleeping. She signed to Claire to speak to her outside the door.
“Please don’t leave him, even for a minute,” she whispered, and flew down the stairs.
Rain was falling at last, and though Jacques had sheltered Raoul with his own coat, the boy was wet. His mother hurried him up the stairs, his laugh ringing out so strangely in the sorrow-stilled house that she almost hushed it. But she did not, because she thought within herself that a child’s laugh is a healthy thing, and that the sound might drive away other things not so healthy. She left the door of his room open, however, and kept her ears on the alert, while she hustled him into dry clothes, and then, holding his hand, ran along the passages to the room where she had left her husband and Claire. Claire met her at the door.
“He is gone,” she said, in a frightened whisper.
“You left him?”
“Only for a minute. He asked me to get him a newspaper from down-stairs, and when I came back the window was open—”
Nathalie rocked as she stood, caught at the wall, and said, with a gasp: “Take the boy to your mother, and don’t frighten her.” Then she ran—how she ran!—though to this hour she thinks her feet were tied together.
In three minutes she had found Jacques in the stable. He thought a ghost was upon him till she spoke.
“Your master is out somewhere, and I think he is going to kill himself. You and I must find him.”
Jacques understood at once. He had known that some calamity was at hand. He snatched up the stable-lantern, went outside, locked the door, and put his question:
“Had he his pistols, madame?”
“No.”
“Then I believe he will have gone to the river.”
“I know it, I know it!” she cried, wildly. “But where!” Jacques muttered to himself, “He would go to the bridge, because it is at its deepest, but there is no use in following him there; one must strike it lower down.” He caught up a long rake which stood against the wall. “Come, madame.” The rain had been swept off by a strong breeze, and the moon made the leaves glisten like diamonds, and flung deep shadows under the trees. The two hurried round in front of the château, and plunged into the heavy wet gloom which brooded round the garden. Nathalie’s cry, “Léon, Léon!” at first timid, rose sharper as they left the house behind them; then she remembered the whistle which she used as a call for her husband, and blew shrilly.
“That is better,” said the gardener, encouragingly. He had kicked off his shoes and stockings before Mme. Léon came out, and ran all the easier, his steps falling with a soft thud. That, the croaking of frogs, the soft hoot of owls, and the rush of the river were the only sounds, and to the wife’s strained ears the silence seemed full of strange significance.
Suddenly Jacques stopped.
“Go round by the bridge, madame. I shall take the bank.”
“I am coming with you,” she said, determinedly.
He raised no further objection, and they went where she and Jean had followed Raoul not so long ago, down a dark abyss of underwood which snatched at them as they pushed through it, slipping and sliding on the wet ground, her dress torn by briars and sharp twigs. Here and there, as they parted the branches, they caught a gleam of the river running, fiercely swollen, below, the moon striking the swift current, and leaving the darkness on either side more impenetrable. Several times Nathalie fell, but she repelled her companion’s help almost angrily, catching at the branches, and trying to add her feeble voice to the gardener’s shouts. When they reached the river it was like coming out into the day, the freakish moonlight falling in a flood of light on the grass, and bringing into clear distinctness the broad burdocks and mulleins which spread themselves near the water, while it left a fringe of poplars lower down on the other side in misty shadow. Jacques knew the river well, and had hastily made up his mind. Close to the spot where they were was a shallow into which he could wade, a spot where, when the river was in flood, things brought down by the current were often recoverable, caught as they were by a few stakes driven in at that point. It might be—But how the river ran, how it ran! What a slender hope was here! Their thoughts, though they had sprung together to this point, might be all unfounded; they might already be too late, or Léon might be lying, stiff and ghastly, in some gloomy shadow close to which they had passed unknowing. Jacques stood for a moment considering, and with the foolish inconsequence of misery Nathalie found herself noticing how white his bare feet looked in the moonlight, sunk as they were in the wet grass.
“I will stay here with the pole, madame,” he said. “Will you go up towards the bridge, and whistle for me if there is need?”
She was gone before he had finished, stumbling along, her staring eyes devouring the waters as they rushed by her; and she had not gone twenty yards before Jacques heard a scream, a splash, and, running to the spot, found her up to her knees in the water among the flags, clutching something which rose and fell, and, when it rose, turned a white face to the moonlight.