Sir Isumbras at the Ford

by D. K. Broster

CHAPTER XXXVII
The Child unlocks the Door

(1)

The Chevalier de la Vireville was lying, as he had so often lain, staring at the stuffed trout and the triptych of the Assumption. The adventurous and disappointed spirit which dwelt in him, that had always faced with a jest every blow of circumstance—but one—had indeed ebbed very low. Although the sun which five days ago had opened the aconites in the garden came streaming into the room in a way to rejoice the heart of the room's late owner, who had given it up for that very reason, the present occupant was perfectly indifferent as to whether the sun shone or no. He was back at Quiberon in the rain—back at Auray in the little chapel, emptied of all its victims save him alone—back in front of those levelled muskets which he alone had escaped. . . . Why, in God's name, had fate so marked him out for safety? Why had he put himself to the agony of that derelict voyage to Houat and the long suffering that came after? Mostly because of his promise to his friend, and because he thought Anne wanted him . . . or because he wanted Anne. But he was not needed, neither by the boy nor by anyone. He had built a foolish dream on the assumption of René's death, which to him had seemed a certainty. The dream had proved baseless, like everything else, and all it had done was to plant in his sincere thankfulness for René's escape a thorn of regret which was horrible to him, and made him, who had suffered so bitterly from treachery, feel a traitor himself.

No, he was not needed any more; he had done his work. Or rather, he had not even that consolation, for everything to which he had set his hand at Quiberon had been a failure, even though the fault were not his. His men, whom he had never once led to victory in the Morbihan, were dead or disbanded. There was nothing for him to do henceforward, and even had there been, he was useless—a tool that had never been of much account, and was now blunted for the rest of time.

And further back still. . . . Had he not failed to keep the woman he loved, the woman who had spurned even the difficult sacrifice he had made for her sake, when he had spared her lover? He had no daily perils now to anodyne that ache. But he had another ache to set against it. . . .

Yes, for ironically enough, at the very hour, five days ago, when his mother was protesting in the garden to the Bishop that he could never think of another woman, he was thinking of one. Equally had Mme. de la Vireville, almost incredulous, carried about for five days her half-knowledge, longing for her son to speak that name which meant nothing to her, yet hinted at so much; studying him at odd moments, trying not to feel hurt at his reserve, puzzled, hoping, fearing, and far from guessing that this 'Raymonde,' to Fortuné's mind, was not a subject of which he could ever speak to anyone. For the thought of her warred against that perverted faithfulness to the faithless which had made his torment these ten years.

Yet day after day the vision of Mme. de Guéfontaine had been dwelling more and more constantly with him, and her image, by a volition, so it seemed, of its own, seeking to efface that other. From its beginning in that night of agony and effort at Quiberon, its renewal in the drifting boat, the process had gone on gaining vitality with time. At Houat he had wakened once from fever to fancy that he was lying with his head pillowed on her arm, as he had done that evening when he had stumbled exhausted into the old manoir. That had proved to be but fever also; his aching head had no such support, and the English corporal of marines who sat by him, though kind enough, had very little suggestion of Raymonde about him. Yet the illusion had given the wounded man such extraordinary pleasure, and so surprising a sense of rest and security, that he used, in those barren days, to try to repeat it by a conscious act of the imagination. She had sat by his couch, once, through the night . . . she had walked by his horse's stirrup on a spring evening towards the sea . . . and among the nodding sea-holly she had kissed his hand. It was his last memory of her, almost as startling as his first. . . .

And now in England he thought of her too—fitfully at first, then incessantly. But this had served in no way to lighten his depression. For he was not in love with her, he told himself—how could he be? Was not all his heart seared over with a fatal memory? Those shackles could not be loosed now—and even were they miraculously to be smitten from him, what had he to offer another woman? A maimed body, an empty purse, a ruined home. . . .

And yet oddly, persistently, he would see himself standing with her under the larches in front of a house like Kerdronan, that was perished, and with them stood a little boy like Anne, who did not need him and was gone from him. . . . He was suddenly possessed now by that foolish and torturing vision, and lay there clenching and unclenching his hand, as though in physical pain. No, he and Kerdronan would go into the dust together, and it was no use reflecting on what might have been. They were both broken and done with, he and his home—and no great loss, doubtless, after all.

"Good God!" he exclaimed at last, "what a cowardly fool I am, lying here and moaning like a sick girl because I am short of an arm!"