“And there, where the mountain stream widens into a shallow pool, and where a great carob tree overshadows the waters, I saw Margaridette crouching beside a boulder, just as I saw you, my little girl, last night. Her hair was wet like yours was, her shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was soaked in the stream; her dear arms were thrown over the wet stone, and her face was buried in her hands. I gathered her up in my arms. I wrapped my coat around her shoulders, and I carried her to the mas, just as I carried you....”
He said no more, and with his arms still held tightly around his child, he once more stared into the fire. And Nicolette lay in his arms, quite still, quite still. Presently he spoke again, but she scarcely heard him now: only a few phrases spoken with more passionate intensity than the rest reached her dulled senses: “She acquiesced—just like a child who was too sick to argue—her father urged it because he thought that Margaridette’s name had been unpleasantly coupled with that of M. Raymond—and then he liked me, and I was rich—and so we were married—and I loved my Margaridette so ardently that in time, I think, she cared for me a little, too—Then you were born, my Nicolette—and she died——”
Nicolette felt as if her very soul were numb within her; her heart felt as if it were dead.
So then this was the end? Oh! she no longer had any illusions, no longer any hope. What could she do in face of THIS? Her father’s grief! that awful tragedy which he had recalled had as effectually killed every hope as not even death could have done.
This, then, was the end? Tan-tan would in very truth go out of her life after this. She could never see him again. Never. She could never hope to make him understand how utterly, utterly impossible it would be for her to deal her father another blow. It would be a death blow! And dealt by her? No, it could not, could not be. Vaguely she asked—thinking of Bertrand—what ultimately became of Raymond de Ventadour.
“He came back from the wars,” Deydier explained, “three months after I had laid your mother in her grave. We, in the meanwhile, had heard of the cruel deceit practised upon her by old Madame, we had seen M. le Comte de Ventadour bring home his bride: and it is the fondest tribute that I can offer to my Margaridette’s undying memory, that never once did she make me feel that I had won her through that woman’s infamous trick. Raymond de Ventadour had naturally been led to believe that Margaridette had been false to him: when he came home his first visit was to me. I think he meant to kill me. Never have I seen a man in such a passion of despair. But, standing in the room where she died and where you were born, I told him the whole truth just as I knew it: and I don’t know which of us two suffered the most at that hour: he or I.”
“And after that?” Nicolette murmured.
“He went away. Some said that he fought in Egypt, and there was killed in action. But no one ever knew: not even his mother. All we did know was that Raymond de Ventadour never came back!”
He never came back!
And Nicolette, lying in her father’s arms, took to envying her mother who rested so peacefully in the little churchyard way up at La Bastide. As for her, even her life was not her own. It belonged to this grief-stricken man who held her so closely in his arms that she knew she could never go. It belonged to him, and would have to go on, and on, in dreary, or cheerful monotony, while the snows on Luberon melted year after year, and, year after year, the wild thyme and rosemary came into bloom, and the flowers on the orange trees blossomed and withered again.