“What do you propose to do with it?”
“I propose to leave it at the door of the first hut we reach;” and she made a motion as though to pass me.
I seized the hamper roughly and strode on through the dusk, marvelling at the inconsistencies of a heart which could be at the same time so cruel and so tender.
CHAPTER XXIII.
FORTUNE FROWNS.
We gained the road again and turned westward along it, walking for some time in silence. I confess I was in bad humor. I was not altruist enough to burden myself willingly with that hamper, and more than once I was tempted to fling it into the ditch at the roadside, especially as minute followed minute and no house appeared. But at last at a turn of the road we came upon a miserable hovel supported by a pile of stone, without which it must inevitably have collapsed. I thought for an instant that the hut was empty, but as we drew near a child’s thin wail came to us through the open door. I set the hamper down, knocked and passed on, and I doubt not that in that family there still survives the legend of a heavenly visitation.
My spirit cleared after that, perhaps as the reward of a good action, perhaps because I was rid of the hamper; at any rate, I could lift my head and look about me and take joy in the beauty of the night. There were only the stars to light us, for the moon had not yet risen. They looked down upon us from the high heavens, and it seemed to me that there was kindness and sympathy in their gaze—that they blessed us and wished us well. The road was much smoother than the one we had traversed the night before, and we got forward at a speed which warranted our reaching Coulonges in good time if nothing happened to delay us. We were both well rested and I already had good reason to know and wonder at my companion’s powers of endurance.
I glanced down at her and saw that she was staring straight ahead at the road unrolling before us. How near we were to the moment of parting! With every step we approached the place where I must leave her. Even should I survive my pilgrimage of vengeance, it seemed most unlikely that I should see her again—certainly we should never be thrown together in this sweet, intimate, personal relation. And would I wish to see her in any other way? To gaze at her from a distance, to find her fenced about, to stand silent while some other gallant whispered in her ear—would not all that be as the rubbing of salt into an open wound?
Indeed she had already applied that torture with that mocking invitation to Chambray. Why was it that I had so failed to touch a responsive chord in her? Or rather why, at the very moment I fancied I had touched it, should she draw back and deal me a cruel blow? Perhaps she fancied there was kindness in this cruelty; perhaps she was trying to save me from sinking too deeply into the quicksand which entangled me. Alas! I felt that I was already past all hope of rescue. So a real kindness would have been to make my last moments as happy as might be ere the sands closed over me and divided us forever!
I shook the thought away. Nothing on earth should so divide us. Honor compelled no man to wreck his life beyond redemption. But as I turned the problem over in my mind, I confess my heart sank. So long as Mlle. de Benseval lived, just so long was I bound to her. That was the final statement to which the tangle reduced itself, and I reflected bitterly upon the folly of parents who disposed of their children without asking their consent, or indeed before they were old enough to know to what they were consenting. A boy of ten will blithely promise to marry any one, or will bind himself indifferently with a vow of celibacy, for what does he know of either? Only when he comes to look at the world and the women in it with a man’s eyes does he understand.
“What is it, Sir Sorrowful?” asked my companion at last. “The old problem?”