Chapter Twenty One.
Out of the Depths.
There was no sign of life as with difficulty they dragged him out of the water. His hands were tied together by a handkerchief, drawn to a knot, as Jacques guessed, by his teeth. His saturated clothes were pulling him down, and it was the catch of his sleeve in a protruding stake which had held him for a few minutes, and shown him to his wife’s searching eyes. In the river she had fancied he moved, mistaking the movements with which it mocked its plaything for life, but on the grass he lay motionless. Still she kept her presence of mind, and gave directions, telling the gardener to run to the nearest house across the bridge for help. It was nearer than the château.
“I know what to do,” she said, kneeling down. “I have done it before.”
“But alone, madame?”
“Go, go, and bring blankets with you.”
He went reluctantly, running along the bank without any hope in his heart. “First his father, and now Monsieur Léon,” he reflected. “Poor madame, it will be the death of her! And what lies behind? I must make it out to have been an accident, if it comes to breaking down a rail of the bridge.” Help was not at first to be found, and it was old Antoine who at last started at a run for the spot, while Jacques got blankets at another cottage. When he reached the spot again, Mme. Léon was so stiff and numbed that she could scarcely move her husband’s arms up and down, and she made him a sign to watch her and take her place.
“Ah, madame!” said the gardener, sorrowfully.
She did not hear him. She was bending over the motionless body, laying her hand on his chest, listening. Old Antoine was reflecting that she had certainly gone mad, and that if monsieur le baron was not drowned beyond hope of recovery, there would be more sense in rubbing him with blankets, and pouring brandy down his throat, when suddenly Nathalie lifted her head. “Keep on, keep on!” she cried to the gardener, “I am sure that he breathes!”
Twenty minutes later Claire, wretchedly flitting across the terrace, cried out with terror at seeing a figure swathed in blankets carried towards the house. A woman ran in front, drenched, ghastly, who cried out as she came near:
“He is alive! Get his bed and hot things ready!”
Yes, he lived; and when the first moment of relief was over, Claire felt as if it might have been better had Nathalie not been there to call him back to dishonour. She did as she was told, but with no eagerness of love, feeling, indeed, as if all love for her brother had been killed in her heart. It was not so, for, thank God, love does not die so easily, but it gave her a fierce sense of satisfaction to believe it.
They did not tell Mme. de Beaudrillart that night how near he had been to death; though perhaps, poor woman, when she heard that monsieur le baron, in going to look at the river in its turbulence, had leaned upon a rotten rail, and had slipped into the stream, she guessed. Jacques went back at once that night, under pretence of its being unsafe for chance passers-by, and managed to break down and roughly mend again a piece of the railing. Old Antoine came by as he was at his work, and chuckled.
“So you are acting up to your name, Monsieur Charpentier, he, he, he! Strange that I should never have seen the hole as I passed, he, he, he!”
“Your eyes are not so good as they were, Antoine,” said the gardener, coolly.
“No, that’s true; and it’s natural the glass of good beer I got up there should have improved their sight. Well, I’m not a talker.”
“I’d keep to that if I were you,” said Jacques, whistling, “for we all know you’re a good deal besides. If you don’t see all you might, the saints know whether monsieur le baron has not looked at you with his eyes shut! There, that will do till the morning. Good-night, Antoine. You can tell your neighbours that monsieur le baron was leaning over to see if it was all right, when the rail gave way, and gave him a bad wetting. And when the next storm blows down a few branches up by the château you may have them for your store in the winter. I’ll see about it. Old fox!” he muttered, as he turned away. “But I think that will muzzle him. If all else could be as easily put right! Or if one only knew what Monsieur Léon did it for! But perhaps now he will take it quieter, whatever it was.”
Through the night Nathalie watched her husband, sore misery in her heart, and her young limbs aching. The latter part of it he slept well, and when he woke in the morning he was himself again—something more than himself, she thought, indeed, after he had called to her.
“Nathalie!”
“Dear.”
“Is it true? Did you save me?”
“Jacques and I.”
He said no more, but lay watching her. Presently he exclaimed: “How you have suffered!”
She shuddered. She knew that the hours had written on her face with lines which, come what would, would never be erased. She took his hand in both hers. “Léon, I want you to promise me something.”
“That I won’t do it again? Well, I promise. I did not think any one could care so much. It seemed the best way for myself; but when I was in the water—” He stopped, and went on in a minute: “It struck me as rather a sneaky way of getting out of it.”
She sank down by his side, and buried her face in her arms. “It was cruel, cruel to those who love you!”
He put out his hand and touched her gently.
“You really love me so much! Still!”
“Still? Oh, Léon, more than ever!”
She heard him murmuring to himself as if wondering. “More than ever! Well,” he went on, raising himself on his elbow, “I owe you something for sticking to me. You shall have your way.”
With a sudden cry of tenderness and pity, Nathalie flung her arms round him and sobbed. At that moment what a way it seemed! Was she right? Could she give him up? She was speechless, thankful, miserable, all at once, and, seeing it, he tried to jest a little.
“Suggest what I shall put on for the occasion—my best or my oldest coat! One has no precedent to go by—”
She interrupted him, eagerly: “Léon, let us go to Paris.”
“Thrust my head into the lion’s mouth?”
“Whatever—whatever happens, it will not be so terrible for you there as here—at Poissy. Telegraph to Monsieur Rodoin, and he will let them know that you are coming up by the morning express—if you are strong enough to travel.”
“Yes, yes!” he cried, with sudden energy, “you are right. Then my mother—Poissy—will be spared something of humiliation. Send off a messenger at once with the telegram, and order the carriage in an hour. And—and, Nathalie, let them know, keep them away; I cannot bear my mother’s reproaches.”
They fell on her; Claire’s with stinging sharpness, but the conflict in her own heart had this effect that words did not succeed in wounding. Mme. de Beaudrillart was more passive; it struck Nathalie that the blow had stunned her, and that physically her stately height had shrunk. She kept in her own room, sending only a message to her son that she could not wish him good-bye. Félicie wandered miserably about, suggesting impossible plans, though unable to realise that anything so terrible as Claire suggested could fall on Poissy. “If only Monsieur Georges were here, I am sure he would think of something, or if only I might go and ask the abbé! If Nathalie had attended more to his advice, and less to those dreadful books of hers, this would never have been permitted to come upon us. There they are in her room still, in spite of all that monseigneur said.”
Claire stared. “How do you know he said anything!”
“What else can he have had to say? He asked me whether it was not a great pleasure to have my sister-in-law with us, and I said I was afraid she held very strange opinions, so of course he spoke.”
“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t talk!” cried Claire, irritably. “Have they gone?”
“They would not go so unceremoniously,”—Félicie was strong in etiquette. “Besides,”—she broke again into sobs—“dear, dear Léon could not leave us without a single word!”
It was a strange farewell when the carriage drove round: Léon kissing his sisters; Félicie clinging to him; Claire white, cold, and impassive as she presented her cheek. At the gates stood Jacques, hat off, sadness on his face. When they had gone a short distance, Léon turned impulsively and looked back. The gardener was in the road, gazing after them; behind him rose a frowning Poissy, for the day was sunless, the stone had lost its mellow tint, and the roof was dark and unbeautiful. Léon shivered.
“Are you cold?” asked Nathalie, anxiously. She was afraid that the night might have left a chill, and wrapped the rug round him.
“I do not think that will warm me,” he said, with a smile which she felt to be piteous.
They had driven a mile before he asked whether she would like to leave word at her father’s. “We have time.”
But Nathalie refused. She did not tell him that she did not dare face the possibility of an outburst from M. Bourget, but she owned that she knew he would disapprove of the course they had taken.
“It seems to me that every one disapproves,” he muttered, restlessly.
Then Nathalie took a resolution.
“I am afraid you will be angry with me,” she said, timidly, “but when the bishop was at Poissy he saw that something was wrong, and spoke to me. I was sure he was to be trusted, and I told him.”
“Ah, you are a woman,” said Léon, who told everything. But he said it with a smile.
“He was very kind, and helped me,” she went on, more freely. “And he—he did not disapprove. I believe he thought it was the most noble act that you could do.”
Léon turned his face to her, pleased as a child at praise, though he only said, “Ah?”
His spirits rose almost to their old level when they were in the train. He had a power which she envied, of letting himself be distracted by the events of the moment; and while, as the train neared Paris, a painful tension held her limbs in a vice, he might have been on an errand differing in no degree from one of every-day importance.
The train ran smoothly into the station as he laid down a newspaper with a remark on a scene in the Chambers. Standing on the platform, Nathalie recognised M. Rodoin. He came hastily towards them, and at the same moment she saw two men approach. M. Rodoin said, in a low tone: “There will be no open scandal. They know that you have come voluntarily, and we can all go together as far as the carriage. You have acted courageously, Monsieur de Beaudrillart, and I honour you. Trust to me to see to madame.”
Nathalie’s throat was parched, her head swam; but now, more than ever, she must call her fortitude to her aid. At the door of the carriage she kissed her husband, even smiled at him, though with quivering lips.
“God bless you, Léon; I shall be near.”
White, mute, confused, he stepped into the carriage; one man followed him, the other clambered to the box, and they rolled away.