But Mademoiselle had me by the hand, and was biting her lip, so that I said my farewells hastily.
"God bless you, Mademoiselle! Only He knows what you have been to me in my weakness," and stooping, I kissed her hand as I had kissed it once before. "It is not so very hard; never believe that it has been very hard. Father Paul——"
But Father Paul was fairly crying, and when I saw the tears running unrestrained down his cheeks, I judged it time to be in the saddle, lest I should disgrace my manhood. To weep at a friend's grave is no shame, but a man who rides in his own funeral should keep back his tears that others may not suffer with him.
What benediction was in Father Paul's heart I do not know, for his tongue turned traitor and would not speak, but I have no doubt that He to Whom it was addressed heard and recorded it.
Almost in silence I left the great door of Morsigny, but not the outer gate. There waited Hugues, 'Tuco, Antony, and the rest, all who had so rightly mistrusted me. They were in two lines, between which we rode bareheaded as they. At first they were dumb, and stood to arms as soldiers stand when a fellow soldier goes where a soldier may look to go in the fulfilment of his duty. But as we passed beneath the teeth of the portcullis a roar followed us, a cheer, a hoarse shout like the rumble of thunder, "Vive Hellewyl! Vive Solignac! Vive Flanders!"
At the shout I turned in the saddle, my heart beating fast, my eyes wet, and the last I saw of Morsigny was not Mademoiselle's white face, nor Brother Paul's tears, but a forest of bare steel shaken in the air, and quivering like fire as the sun caught the flat of the friendly blades. Truly it was something of a triumph that Navarre should cheer a man of Flanders who came by way of Plessis-les-Tours!
But the mockery of it. Vive Hellewyl! Vive Solignac! Long live the man who dies within two weeks! Long live the man who rides in his own funeral! Long live Solignac of the burnt roof-tree! Solignac, the harbour for owls and bats! They might as well cry, Long live Death and Destruction! And yet at the ring of the hoarse roar my blood warmed, my eyes lightened, and my heart leaped. Gaspard Hellewyl would pass as the over-blown rose had passed, but his memory would live, and Morsigny would hold it fragrant. There was some comfort in that to the man who so dearly and without hope loved the mistress of Morsigny.
But such comfort soon passes; the spirit needs stronger meat than a windy cheer, however well meant, to keep it in health, and as my pulses calmed I saw facts in their true proportions. So long as I was at Morsigny, so long as I was in touch with Mademoiselle, she was the prism at which I looked at life and the hours shone red or blue at her mood's pleasure. Now that was finally done with, and thenceforward if there was a light at all it was cold and passionless. In that glamour of interweaving reds and blues I could play the stoic and say, It is not so very hard. And at the time it was true. We all have a high note in us, though all too soon it dies away in a quaver.
Nor was Martin helpful. Sour and disconsolate he rode behind, whistling a Dies irae, Dies illa of his own composing, until Morsigny was no longer in sight. Then, according to custom, he spurred up Ninus until his muzzle was a foot or two ahead of my girth.
"I don't understand it at all, Monsieur Gaspard. We come to a place where we plainly were not wanted, stay there two months playing ourselves, then ride back where plainly we do not want to go. Why is all that? Do you remember, we were to roof over Solignac, redeem the old lands, and catch Jan Meert, and when we rode from Morsigny we were to ride as if the devil or Tristan were after us. But here we are, pricking along leisurely, as if——"