“Then one evening, my dear, something was revealed to me. Shall I ever forget that night, soft as a dream, warm as a downy bed; and spring was in the air—spring that sent the blood coursing through one’s veins, and beating against one’s temples with a delicious sense of longing and of languor. It was Candlemas, and I had been to church at Pertuis where Monseigneur the Bishop of Aix had celebrated Mass. I remember I had walked over with Margaï because she had never seen a real bishop celebrating. We had some beautiful tall green candles which I had bought in Marseilles, they were nearly two metres high, and very thick, and of course these were blessed by Monseigneur. The air was so marvellously still, and we both walked so carefully with our candles, that their lights never went out the whole of the way back from Pertuis. Your grandmother was alive then, and my cousin Violante was staying at the mas with her two children, so when Margaï and I arrived home with our beautiful green candles alight, my mother started the round of the house with them, and we all after her, Violante, the children, Margaï and the servants, and she marked every door and every window of the mas with a cross, as is traditional in our beautiful country, so as to preserve us all against God’s thunder and lightning. And still the candles were burning; neither the draught nor the rush up and down the stairs had blown out the lights. And they were so tall and thick, that I stuck them up on spikes which I had got ready for the purpose, and they went on burning all through dinner and the whole of the long afternoon. And Margaï would have it that candles blessed by a bishop were more potent as harbingers of good fortune than those on which only the hand of a curé had lain. So when the sun had gone down, and the air was full of the scent of spring, of young earth, and growing grass and budding flowers, I took one of the candles and went down into the valley. I wanted to give it to Margaridette so that all the blessings of God of which that burning candle was the symbol, should descend upon her head.
“I went down into the valley, and walked on the shores of the Lèze. The candle burned clear and bright, the flame hardly flickered for the air was so still. Then suddenly I spied, coming towards me, two young forms that seemed as one, so closely did they cling to one another. Young Raymond de Ventadour, it was, and he had his arm around your dear mother’s waist, and her pretty head rested against his shoulder. They did not see me, for they were so completely absorbed in one another; and I remained quite still, crouching behind a carob tree, lest I should disturb them in their happiness. But when they had gone by I saw that a breath of wind, or perhaps the lips of an angel, had blown my candle out.
“Well, my dear, after that,” Deydier went on in a firmer and more even voice, “I was convinced in my mind that all was well with Margaridette. True, Raymond de Ventadour belonged to an ancient and aristocratic race, but the Revolution was recent then, and we all held on to those ideals of equality and fraternity for which we had suffered so terribly. Margaridette’s father had been a ship-builder in Marseilles; he had retired at the outbreak of the Revolution and bought a house and a little piece of land on the other side of La Bastide. We all looked upon him as something of an “aristo,” and to me it seemed the most natural thing in the world that the two young people, being in love with one another, should eventually get married, especially as Raymond de Ventadour was a younger son. But though I was a middle-aged man, turned forty then, I had it seems not sufficient experience of life to realise to what depths of infamy man or woman can sink, when their ruling passion is at stake. I had not yet learned to know Madame la Comtesse Margarita de Ventadour, the Italian mother of Bertrand’s father, and of young Raymond.
“You know her, my dear, but have you eyes sharp enough to probe the abyss of cruelty that lies in that woman’s soul? Her arrogance, her pride of race, her worship of grandeur have made her a fiend—no longer human—just a monster of falsehood and of malice. Well do I remember the day when first the news reached my ears that young M. Raymond was affianced to Mademoiselle Marcelle de Cercamons. There,” he added quickly, and for the first time turning his gaze on the girl kneeling at his feet, “your dear hand is trembling on mine. You have begun to guess something of the awful tragedy which wrecked two young lives at the bidding of that cruel vixen. Yes, that was the news that was all over the villages that summer. M. Raymond was marrying Mademoiselle Marcelle de Cercamons. He was fighting under General Moreau in Germany, but he was coming home early in the autumn to get married. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind about it, as the news was originally brought by Pérone, Mme. la Comtesse’s own confidential maid. She spoke—to Margaï amongst others—about the preparations for the wedding, the beauty of Marcelle de Cercamons, the love M. Raymond had for his beautiful fiancée. The lady was passing rich, and the wedding would take place at her ancestral home in Normandy; all this that spawn of Satan, the woman Pérone, told everyone with a wealth of detail that deceived us all. Then one day she descended like a hideous black crow on Margaridette with a letter purporting to be from M. Raymond, in which he demanded that the poor child should return him the ring that he had given her in token of his faith. The next day the Comtesse left the château, accompanied by Pérone. She was going to Normandy for the wedding of her son.”
“It was all false?” Nicolette murmured under her breath, awed by this tale of a tragedy that she felt was also the story of her destiny.
“All false, my dear,” Deydier replied, and the fire of a fierce resentment glowed in his deep-set eyes. “It was M. le Comte de Ventadour, Madame’s eldest son, who was marrying Mademoiselle de Cercamons. He, too, was away. He was in Paris, leading the life of dissipation which one has learned to associate with his family. M. Raymond was in Germany fighting under Moreau, and writing letters full of glowing ardour to his beloved. But mark the fulness of that woman’s infamy. Before her son left for the war, he had confessed to his mother his love for Margaridette, and the Comtesse, whose cruelty is only equalled by her cunning, appeared to acquiesce in this idyll, nay! to bestow on it her motherly blessing. And do you know why she did that, my dear? So as to gain the two young people’s confidence and cause them to send all their letters to one another through her hands. How should a boy mistrust his own mother? especially after she has blessed him and his love; and Raymond was little more than a boy.
“Madame la Comtesse withheld all his letters from Margaridette, and all Margaridette’s letters from him. After awhile, Margaridette thought herself forgotten, and when the news came that her lover had been false to her, and was about to wed another, how could she help but believe it?
“From such depths of falsehood to the mere forging of a letter and a signature asking for the return of the ring, was but a step in this path of iniquity. Poor Margaridette fell into the execrable trap laid for her by those cunning hands, she fell into it like a bird, and in it received her death wound. It was the day of the wedding at Cercamons in Normandy—Pérone, you see, had not spared us a single detail—and I, vaguely agitated, vaguely terrified of something I could not define, could not rest at home. All morning, all afternoon, I tried to kill that agitation by hard work, but the evening came and my very blood was on fire. I felt stifled in the house. My mother, I could see, was anxious about me; her kind eyes fell sadly on me from time to time, while she sat knitting in this very chair by the hearth. It was late autumn, and the day had been grey and mild, but for some hours past heavy clouds had gathered over Luberon and spread themselves above the valley. Toward eight o’clock the rain came down; soon it turned into a downpour. The water beat against the shutters, the cypress trees by the gate bowed and sighed under the wind. Presently I noticed that my mother had, as was her wont, fallen asleep over her knitting. I seized the opportunity and stole out of the room, and out of the house. Something seemed to be driving me along, just as it did last night, my dear, when I found that you had gone——”
His rough hand closed on Nicolette’s, and he lifted her back upon his knees, and put his arms round her with an almost savage gesture of possession.
“I went down into the valley,” he went on sombrely, “and along the river bank. The rain beat into my face, and all around me the olive and the carob trees were moaning and groaning under the lash of the wind. I had a storm lanthorn with me—for in truth I do believe that God Himself sent me out into the valley that night—and this, I swung before me as I walked through the darkness and the gale. Something drew me on. Something!