She looked at him half sadly, half curiously. “You—you haven’t any ambitions now, Maitre Ranulph?” It suddenly struck her that perhaps she was responsible for the maiming of this man’s life—for clearly it was maimed. More than once she had thought of it, but it came home to her to-day with force. Years ago Ranulph Delagarde had been spoken of as one who might do great things, even to becoming Bailly. In the eyes of a Jerseyman to be Bailly was to be great, with jurats sitting in a row on either side of him and more important than any judge in the Kingdom. Looking back now Guida realised that Ranulph had never been the same since that day on the Ecrehos when his father had returned and Philip had told his wild tale of love.
A great bitterness suddenly welled up in her. Without intention, without blame, she had brought suffering upon others. The untoward happenings of her life had killed her grandfather, had bowed and aged the old Chevalier, had forced her to reject the friendship of Carterette Mattingley, for the girl’s own sake; had made the heart of one fat old woman heavy within her; and, it would seem, had taken hope and ambition from the life of this man before her. Love in itself is but a bitter pleasure; when it is given to the unworthy it becomes a torture—and so far as Ranulph and the world knew she was wholly unworthy. Of late she had sometimes wondered if, after all, she had had the right to do as she had done in accepting the public shame, and in not proclaiming the truth: if to act for one’s own heart, feelings, and life alone, no matter how perfect the honesty, is not a sort of noble cruelty, or cruel nobility; an egotism which obeys but its own commandments, finding its own straight and narrow path by first disbarring the feelings and lives of others. Had she done what was best for the child? Misgiving upon this point made her heart ache bitterly. Was life then but a series of trist condonings at the best, of humiliating compromises at the worst?
She repeated her question to Ranulph now. “You haven’t ambition any longer?”
“I’m busy building ships,” he answered evasively. “I build good ships, they tell me, and I am strong and healthy. As for being connetable, I’d rather help prisoners free than hale them before the Royal Court. For somehow when you get at the bottom of most crimes—the small ones leastways—you find they weren’t quite meant. I expect—I expect,” he added gravely, “that half the crimes oughtn’t to be punished at all; for it’s queer that things which hurt most can’t be punished by law.”
“Perhaps it evens up in the long end,” answered Guida, turning away from him to the fire, and feeling her heart beat faster as she saw how the child nestled in Ranulph’s arms—her child which had no father. “You see,” she added, “if some are punished who oughtn’t to be, there are others who ought to be that aren’t, and the worst of it is, we care so little for real justice that we often wouldn’t punish if we could. I have come to feel that. Sometimes if you do exactly what’s right, you hurt some one you don’t wish to hurt, and if you don’t do exactly what’s right, perhaps that some one else hurts you. So, often, we would rather be hurt than hurt.”
With the last words she turned from the fire and involuntarily faced him. Their eyes met. In hers were only the pity of life, the sadness, the cruelty of misfortune, and friendliness for him. In his eyes was purpose definite, strong.
He went over and put the child in its high chair. Then coming a little nearer to Guida, he said:
“There’s only one thing in life that really hurts—playing false.”
Her heart suddenly stopped beating. What was Ranulph going to say? After all these years was he going to speak of Philip? But she did not reply according to her thought.
“Have people played false in your life—ever?” she asked.