The man’s voice broke a little. He added:
“They used to come to swords or pistols on such points. We can’t settle it in that way. Anyhow, you have handicapped us to-day.” Then, with a burst of reproach, indignation, and trouble: “Great God, as if you hadn’t been the luckiest man on earth! Delia, the estate, the Commons—all for a dompteuse!”
“Let us say nothing more,” said Gaston, choking down wrath at the reference to Andree, but sorrowful, and pitying Mr. Gasgoyne. Besides, the man had a right to rail.
Soon after they parted courteously.
Gaston went to the chateau. As he came up the stone steps he met a procession—it was the feast-day of the Virgin—of priests and people and little children, filing up from the village and the sea, singing as they came. He drew up to the wall, stood upon the stone seat, and took off his hat while the procession passed. He had met the cure, first accidentally on the shore, and afterwards in the cure’s house, finding much in common—he had known many priests in the North, known much good of them. The cure glanced up at him now as they passed, and a half-sad smile crossed his face. Gaston caught it as it passed. The cure read his case truly enough and gently enough too. In some wise hour he would plead with Gaston for the woman’s soul and his own.
Gaston did not find Andree at the chateau. She had gone out alone towards the sea, Annette said, by a route at the rear of the village. He went also, but did not find her. As he came again to the quay he saw the Kismet beating upon the rocks—the sailors had given up any idea of saving her. He stood and watched the sea breaking over her, and the whole scene flashed back on him. He thought how easily he could be sentimental over the thing. But that was not his nature. He had made his bed, but he would not lie in it—he would carry it on his back. They all said that he had gone on the rocks. He laughed.
“I can turn that tide: I can make things come my way,” he said. “All they want is sensation, it isn’t morals that concerns them. Well, IT give them sensation. They expect me to hide, and drop out of the game. Never—so help me Heaven! I’ll play it so they’ll forget this!”
He rolled and lighted a cigarette, and went again to the chateau. Dinner was ready—had been ready for some time. He sat down, and presently Andree came. There was a look in her face that he could not understand. They ate their dinner quietly, not mentioning the events of the afternoon.
Presently a telegram was brought to him. It read: “Come. My office, Downing Street, Friday. Expect you.” It was signed “Faramond.” At the same time came letters: from his grandfather, from Captain Maudsley. The first was stern, imperious, reproachful.—Shame for those that took him in and made him, a ruined reputation, a spoiled tradition: he had been but a heathen after all! There was only left to bid him farewell, and to enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds.
Captain Maudsley called him a fool, and asked him what he meant to do—hoped he would give up the woman at once, and come back. He owed something to his position as Master of the Hounds—a tradition that oughtn’t to be messed about.