“I dreamed of it all last night,” went on Lucienne with a horrible calm, “and about midday I knew that it was true. I can see him now . . . I think it did not hurt him much . . . he was very tired . . . but he lies there quite cold now—and dead, dead. . . .” And exclaiming, in accents of breathless horror and longing, “Louis, Louis, my love, my love!” she knelt upright and gazed with clasped hands and dilated eyes at a spot on the floor not far from either of them.
And when the Marquise, having shudderingly turned her head in the same direction, was conscious of a distinct feeling of relief at not beholding the lifeless body of her nephew stretched on that tract of carpet, half in firelight, half in shadow, between the hearth and the sofa, she was thoroughly frightened, though she did not show it.
She went quickly to the girl and shook her.
“Lucienne, stop! I cannot have this! Wake up, child, and control yourself. There is nothing there.”
But Lucienne still gazed at the same place, till the passion of love and despair in her eyes was swamped by a rising tide of horror. “Yes, there is blood there,” she said, “a pool of blood . . . and no one to stop it. O Madame, what shall I do? He is dying there and I cannot help him!” She caught the Marquise’s dress in a fierce and frightened grip, and, cowering on the ground, hid her face against it. Madame de Château-Foix, nothing but alarm in her mind, contrived to sit down and to draw the girl with her, and Lucienne knelt there clutching her, and shaken with paroxysms of almost tearless sobs, till those, too, were exhausted, and she slipped down to her old position against the elder woman’s knees.
There was then presented to Madame de Château-Foix one of the great opportunities of life, which, when they come unannounced, go sometimes unrecognised as such. But the Marquise did realise that something great was being demanded of her, something so foreign to her outlook that it was almost beyond her powers, but that for the very sake of the dead son whose memory it seemed to outrage she must try to respond to the call. Moreover, she knew that she must respond at once—not to-morrow or the next day, when the bitterness and shock had a little passed, but now, at this very moment. Yet in that half-hour of tension and reflection, while she mechanically tried to soothe the girl, she saw that she was about to do one of those—to her—fantastic actions, one of those “things which we are not called upon to do,” as she would have phrased it, such as she had sometimes carped at in her husband, or Gilbert, or M. des Graves. She did not realise what the result would be; that she would gain Lucienne for ever; perhaps, indeed, she never realised that she had need to gain her. For Félicité de Chantemerle had not the gift of clear thinking; and so, happily, it did not occur to her to consider that Gilbert, with the best intentions, had been guilty of a measure of duplicity towards her. To her mind his course of action was right, because he had taken it, and there was an end of the matter. Her love for her son had made it hard to bear patiently the news that another man had been preferred before him, but the same love would carry her over this crisis—her love and her rather childlike belief that if she did not act as he would have acted she would never attain to his company in those blessed regions whither she never doubted he had gone—regions which, all unconsciously, she now desired less for their own sake than because he would be there.
The great effort which she made at last was scarcely perceptible in her voice. “Lucienne, look at me . . . I am Gilbert’s mother, and if he could forgive this I must learn to. I promised him once that I would be a mother to you, and I have tried to keep my promise. I am afraid that I have failed many times; I have failed most of all to-night. . . . But I am an old woman, Lucienne, and have always been jealous for my son—perhaps you cannot understand that, but you may some day. It has always seemed to me that . . . others . . . have taken everything, and that he was always ready to give, and never got the appreciation he deserved. But I knew; he was my boy, my very own. . . . Sometimes I was afraid that I loved him too much, and that God would take him from me. . . . And now He has taken him. . . . Some day—not yet—I shall learn to thank Him for the death He has sent him. . . .” She struggled for a moment, and went on: “Since I was allowed to be his mother, I must be worthy of it. And so, my dear child, we will put away . . . all this . . . and you shall be my daughter really . . . if you can care for a mother who has loved her son too much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now, my child, you must be brave, and remember that because we have not heard from Louis since November it probably only means that his letters have miscarried. And he will soon be here—he will soon be here! You shall have him, I promise you!” She stroked the head on her breast. “My poor child, what you have suffered!”
“But Louis is dead,” repeated Lucienne. “Do not tell me that he will come, for that hurts more . . . and in time, perhaps, I shall get used to it . . . like all the other things. . . .”
“My child,” said the Marquise, fighting down her fears, “you are very greatly overwrought. All these fancies come from what you have gone through; when you are better you will forget them. Now kiss me, and go and bathe your eyes. . . . That’s right.” She studied the girl’s marred face for a moment. “An idea has just occurred to me, my dear; yes, I believe it would be an excellent plan. Only this afternoon Lady Milton was telling Amelia of the benefit which her daughter has derived from the waters of Bath. I shall most certainly take you to Bath after Christmas.”