There was a little auberge on the Montverd, kept open during the summer months for the benefit of those (not many in 1783) who came to enjoy the view. There, in a green oasis, planted amongst the stupendous buttresses of the mountains, lived Nicholas Target and his daughter Margot, the latter a good sensible girl and the responsible aubergiste. The father was a drunken scamp, a guide by profession, but long discredited as such in the eyes of all but his daughter, whose faithful heart continued to make its compromise with the self-evident. The fellow spent his days, of slouching and soaking, mostly at the foot of the steep path which descended from the inn to the moraine of the Winds, where, in a tiny shed, he kept a store of woollen socks for the feet of those who desired to cross the glacier. This at least left the auberge free of his presence, and Margot to the peaceful entertainment of her guests.
Amongst these, on a certain tragic day, came to be included Yolande, new Marchesa di Rocco. Only the wonderful visitor came to stay, it seemed, and not merely to gather Dutch courage for the passage of the glacier. She took a bed at the inn, and cold command, as by right of her husband, its rent-lord, of its general conduct. She had always had an affection for Margot, the good girl, and this was her way of showing her confidence in her discretion.
“I want to be alone,” she had said; “and hither none comes but the stranger who cannot know me or my concerns. I look to you to secure me utter privacy—from man, from woman, from child, from the whole world. Only if my father comes must I see him, for I am his daughter. For all else be my true and faithful watchdog, Margot.”
Margot had of course heard of the tragic ending to that idyll on Le Marais. In common with her fellow-women she had deplored the finish to a pretty romance; but then, when one’s feudal lord stepped in at the door, love must fly out at the window. It was pitiful, it was sad, but it was inevitable. She promised with all her heart to contribute what gentle salve was hers to that open wound.
She said it with fervour, but in a panic. It was difficult for her to reconstruct, from this figure of bloodless hauteur, the sweet and kindly patroness of yesterday, who had never held herself other than such a simple girl as she was herself. Could shock so turn to stone? It was a catalepsy of the soul.
And Yolande made her home there in the auberge. With all Le Prieuré at her feet, she elected for this chill small refuge of the hills. She felt she could breathe there—was nearer God and her mother. She felt she could pray a little even, and with more chance of being heard in that austere silence. There was no sound of waterfalls in all the vast valley to strike between her and her isolation, rushing down into the hateful plains where men dwelt, dragging her thoughts on their torrents. What voices reached her came from above—the whisper of avalanches, the echoing crack of ice-falls in those enormous attics of the world. She was alone with her desolation among desolations.
Once, and once only, her father visited her there. He was very humble and deprecating. He had come to remonstrate, and he remained to weep. She saw his tears without emotion, and bid him kindly to the descent, lest the mists should rise presently and give him cold. He went without a word.
Did she ever think of Louis and that dead idyll? A will of self-reticence had so been born in her that perhaps she was able to hold his figure from her mind. If she had not, the memory of the cruelty of her part to him must have driven her mad. Not to think at all was her hold on reason—not to think what he was thinking, suffering, designing. That he could come to claim her yet, in defiance of law, orthodoxy and every right but the right of human nature, she could not believe, nor wish to believe. He was not so to be dethroned from her worship of him past. It would be another Louis than the Louis of her knowledge who could so dare. Yet was she not another Yolande? An awful rapture, should outrage have conceived a wicked will in him like hers! But Louis would not come. He was a purer soul than she, and prayed, always prayed, before he committed himself to action.
The far unconquered heights above her were her reassurance, she told herself, that he was of those who accept repulse unquestioning. His faith was always first in heaven, and its high reasons for baffling high achievement. Christ’s creed, and he a Christian. He could not love her so much, “loved he not honour more.” She bowed to that higher rival, and believed that the thing remotest from her wishes was to see her ousted. And her brain reeled to the sound of every footstep which came up the mountain.
Among them all she never dreamed of listening for her husband’s. That di Rocco had kept his word and left Le Prieuré on the morrow of the tragedy she never doubted. It was not he, but the interval which was to separate her from him which filled her thoughts. Nebulous, unformed, the idea was still never less than a fixed one in her mind that any consummation to that tyranny but Death’s was unspeakable. Whether his or hers it mattered nothing. The knot must be cut before it was double-tied; and in her heart she rejoiced to think of his succession to an empty bed. She did not suppose she could possibly survive the year—twelve long months of suspension between torture past and the prospect of the living “question” to come. She had only to be herself and die. “Duty” could not traverse that decision. Her heart was cold already.