CHAPTER XXX
FEARS, HOPES, AND MYSTIFICATION OF M. DES GRAVES
If Louis slept soundly during the remainder of that night M. des Graves did not. He went down slowly to the library, and sat there a long time by the dying fire, stunned. Louis in love with Gilbert’s affianced wife! But that was only a part of the calamity. Had it stopped there the priest might merely have pitied him, the victim of a hopeless passion which he had tried to conceal. But the case did not stand thus; there was more behind. All that sensation of tension which had afflicted the observer at the return of the cousins from Paris was explained now, and explained in the most disastrous manner conceivable. For Gilbert knew something, and therefore there must be something to know. What was it? That Lucienne was deceiving him? Ah no! God grant that it was not that! Yet what of the look which he had surprised on the Marquis’ face that evening when he had spoken to him of Lucienne—a look which had haunted him ever since? And that mysterious weight on Louis’ mind, of which, the same evening, he had so nearly unburdened himself—his fits of depression now. . . . Alas, it was all too clear. . . . Yet he could not believe that the Vicomte had acted treacherously. He was in love with Lucienne, granted; it was a misfortune, but that was all. Back came the other argument; if that were all, how explain Gilbert’s behaviour, Louis’ own dejection? It all came round to the same heartbreaking inference. . . .
Between these two verdicts the priest was tossed all the next few days. He began almost to dread Gilbert’s return; he found himself for ever gazing at Louis, wondering, hoping, saying to himself that the boy whom he had loved, whom he had brought up, with whom he had always been on such terms of semi-intimacy, could not have done such a thing. But he was always faced by the same conclusion, till at last it became too painful to be much in the Vicomte’s society, and, feigning stress of occupation, M. des Graves withdrew more and more into solitude and the library, because he had not the heart to sit or walk with the young man and think such things of him. But Louis, absorbed by the mounting tide of his passion, and dispirited by the conflicts into which it threw him, noticed nothing. Once or twice indeed it occurred to him that he was seeing very little of M. des Graves, and that the dullness was becoming intolerable. He really longed for Gilbert’s return.
Late one afternoon in November he came riding slowly up the avenue. Under Saladin’s hoofs the ground, covered with dead and rotting leaves, plashed soddenly; chill drops descended at intervals from the half-naked boughs on horse and rider, and the Vicomte, usually a particularly gallant figure in the saddle, had visible dejection in his air, as he went up under the elms. Instead of summoning a groom to take his horse or riding round to the stables he dismounted at the steps, flung the reins on Saladin’s neck, and, slapping him on the flank, left him to find his own way to his quarters, while he went to look in upon M. des Graves. Perhaps the Curé would not now be too busy to speak to him, as he had been all morning.
The library was sufficiently lit by the firelight to show him that the priest was not there, but the fancy coming upon him to sit down and wait a few minutes for him he advanced towards the fire—and suddenly stood motionless. The glow had revealed to him the top of a familiar black head resting against the back of one of the arm-chairs.
“Good God!” he said softly. “Is it possible?”
It was. In a second Louis was round the chair, bending over it, shaking its half-dozing occupant. “Is it really you?” he cried, dropping to his knees beside him.
The Marquis opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said, with his usual composure; “it is I. I have been back an hour or more.”
Louis, kneeling there, embraced him. “Ma foi, but I am glad to see you! I can hardly believe you are here! And you have not got a crutch, or a wooden leg?”
For answer Château-Foix got to his feet. “No, I am perfectly sound. And you, Louis?”