He went in, leaving the door ajar, and M. des Graves heard him say in a voice quite unknown to him: “I have done your errand. I am ready to do any others with which you think you can trust me.”
“Thank you,” said Gilbert; “I am much obliged to you. There will no doubt be others.”
Louis came straight out and went up to his room, and his face, as he passed the priest, was the face of a man in hell.
What did it mean? Surely only one thing. Gilbert had discovered the truth—had perhaps imagined more than the truth. That explosion which the priest had dreaded in November, and whose non-occurrence had so bewildered him, was come at last. But now he was better prepared to meet it.
The Curé went, not to the library, but to his own room, and there, unlocking a drawer, he took out and re-read a long letter with an English postmark. Even as he touched it he experienced again the overwhelming feeling of relief which had enveloped him when first he read it, a week ago. Things were bad enough, but Louis was not, thank God, what he had been almost forced into believing him. As for Lucienne. . . . “Poor child! poor child!” he said once or twice. Then he put the letter away, and sat a long time thinking. His face was very stern.
At supper that evening both the young men made pitiable and unconcerted attempts to behave as though nothing had happened. Gilbert’s were crowned with a certain success. Neither of them said a word to the other.
And next morning after his Mass, in the privacy of his own room, M. des Graves again took out Lucienne’s letter. His coffee and rolls lay almost untouched at his elbow. Again he put the letter away, and fell to pacing up and down on the track which he was beginning to wear on the Marquise’s carpet. As he walked, he reflected on the girl whose pitiful confession he was beginning to know by heart, and on the mysterious ways of that providence which had set her in a position which she was not strong enough to fill. She was sweet, she was good, but she was not strong. And now he saw that Lucienne, not in herself remarkable, had come to be a kind of symbol in the lives of the two men who loved her; that the idea of her stood for more than she in her own person could ever be. Stranger still, it was the man who had trespassed in loving her at all who was the better for it; of the other he could not say that. For that Louis had gained nothing of ennoblement by his renunciation, necessary and just though it had been, the priest did not believe. But Gilbert—on what unrighteous path was his righteous claim impelling him? He thought of the bitter, determined line of his mouth last night; of the haunting anger and despair in the Vicomte’s eyes. Something must be done. But since he must proceed with the utmost caution, and since he was still in the dark as to the amount of Gilbert’s knowledge, he resolved on a course for him very unusual, and not a little repugnant.
He rang. “Ask Monsieur le Vicomte, if he is up, whether he will be so good as to come and speak to me.”
Louis was up; indeed, he looked as if he had had but little sleep. “You sent for me?” he asked, with an obvious surprise, as he came in.
“Yes; I want to have a talk with you. Sit down there, if you will.” The priest waited until Louis had taken a chair and then sat down himself. “I want to ask you,” he said without preamble, “what is wrong between you and Gilbert?”