“There is a millwheel in my head. You see they are all falling away from me, so that even my mother will never be able to forgive.”
“Do you know,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully, “I believe we are all making too much of it. What will you say if it comes to nothing, and the jury are clever enough to take the sensible view of the case? Why should this man make the charge when Monsieur de Cadanet is dead? You will see that will tell against him.”
He groaned.
“And if worst comes to the worst, your friends will know that you have told the truth, dear; they will not think evil of you. And you will have us—your mother and sisters, and Raoul, and me. Do not we count for anything? Do not—”
He lifted his face and looked at her, and all her loving words stopped midway in her throat, and made a lump there. If she could have thought of herself she would have cried out to him to take away his eyes and their anguish, for if Léon’s soul had been wanting before, it had come to him now, and gazed at her; and it needs an angel or a devil to bear the sight of a human soul wrung with misery. Curiously enough, she felt all the time that if she had known about the world and its ways, her husband would have listened to her more readily. What she said to comfort him he set down to ignorance. One of his old companions with a jest and a laugh might have had a stronger influence than she with a bleeding heart. But this only made her try the more. She knew enough of Léon to be assured that silence would not soothe; she must talk, argue, entreat, go over the same ground again and again, appeal to his sentiment for them all, and this with a horrid fear deep within her to which she dared not allude, and scarcely dared to think of. He was not going to attempt to fly; so much she gathered. But that there was some rising purpose in his mind which was colouring his broken words and looks at her she was certain, and the certainty drove her almost mad with hidden fear. She made him drink a little coffee, which was something, and she wanted to bring Raoul to the rescue. But Raoul had gone off with the pony and Jacques Charpentier to see the last of the vintage at a distant farm, and would not be home until late—perhaps not till after dark.
By this time all the household was aware that there was something wrong, though they had different opinions as to the what, but, with a feeble sort of pretence, dinner was gone through as usual. Mme. de Beaudrillart, however, went away before it was ended, and Nathalie detained Claire, to ask her if she would come to her room as soon as Raoul returned. She grew more and more uneasy.
The lamp had been brought in before Claire appeared with the news that she had heard the pony pass the window a few minutes before. His wife glanced at Léon, but he sat, as he had sat for the last hour, his head buried on his arm, and she hoped that, worn out, he might be sleeping. She signed to Claire to speak to her outside the door.
“Please don’t leave him, even for a minute,” she whispered, and flew down the stairs.
Rain was falling at last, and though Jacques had sheltered Raoul with his own coat, the boy was wet. His mother hurried him up the stairs, his laugh ringing out so strangely in the sorrow-stilled house that she almost hushed it. But she did not, because she thought within herself that a child’s laugh is a healthy thing, and that the sound might drive away other things not so healthy. She left the door of his room open, however, and kept her ears on the alert, while she hustled him into dry clothes, and then, holding his hand, ran along the passages to the room where she had left her husband and Claire. Claire met her at the door.
“He is gone,” she said, in a frightened whisper.