But, if to Jan Meert I was but a pigeon for a hawk's harrying, to Martin I was Hellewyl of Solignac, and his last words called for a rebuke.
"You presume. Keep your scurrilous tongue quiet, or if you must talk, show all respect when you speak of the lady who——"
"Lady! Has it come to that? Lady! God save us all! Slattern, black-eyed 'Gitta' a Lady? She'll never be that in God's world, it's not in her. Listen again, Monsieur Gaspard. A while back you stared—I saw you—when I thanked God for the woman. And I still thank Him, she kept you out of Solignac when you were best away. I suppose it was to that end the Lord made her—to save a Hellewyl of Solignac, and so even she has her uses. But now I say thank God for something worse than a——a——but we'll let that pass; why fret a green wound! You won't understand me now, still less will you understand me an hour hence, but the day'll come when you will know why I say God be thanked for Jan Meert, God be thanked for a burnt Solignac. From my heart I pray the scoundrel may have done his work well."
There was a solemnity about his earnestness that gave his words weight, mad though they were, and, waiting his explanation, I made no answer. It came promptly.
"See now, here were you day by day sinking lower in the scale, day by day growing liker to the peasant that is so little better than a brute. I should know what he is for I was of the breed till your father, and yet more your mother, drew me from the mud to what I am. Don't think I boast, for I don't. Bad's my best, but it's chalk or charcoal compared with a woman fly-trap! Well then; your land was gone—not your doing, but bread of a father's baking is of ten sour in the children's mouth. For three generations Hellewyls of Solignac have played the fool, always riding the wrong wave till bit by bit they were dashed to pieces. One followed Austria, and France getting the upper hand wrenched a lordship from him as the price of pardon. The next followed France, and Burgundy seized and held what France let go as a makeweight in the next treaty. The last followed Burgundy, and Austria said 'oh ho! Solignac was a fief of mine in the good old days,' and Burgundy in part bought peace with Solignac as a counter in the deal. Now what is left? Ten acres of bad grass, a belt of woods, and a forlorn house; a house fit for a Seigneurie and dripping dank with wet and mould for lack of service, and the last Hellewyl of Solignac philandering after a goatherd's daughter—pray God she's his daughter, her mother had just such another coarse, pretty face of her own—philandering, I say, after a goatherd's daughter by way of mending his fortunes. But Jan Meert has changed all that. Brigitta can sell her red cheeks, her plump white flesh and big black eyes to better advantage elsewhere, and so I say may God show mercy to Jan Meert the day I show him none."
"I don't understand."
"Not understand? And yet it is all so simple. D'you really think that your Brigitta of the bold face would bury herself in a burned house with singed owls and scorched rats for company, all for the sake of a man with a ragged coat? And where are you to live Monsieur Gaspard? With the pigs in the swineherd's mud hut? You! Hellewyl of Solignac! No, no; don't you see that whether you like it or not you're flung out into the world? Or is it by mouldering in the burnt shell of Solignac that you would seek strength to yourself to take Jan Meert by the throat? Shame, Monsieur Gaspard, shame! Five and twenty, sound in limb and head—yes, and in heart too, in spite of the swineherd in petticoats; you, God's own image of a man, and yet content to live like a snipe, sucking mud from a bog!"
"Why did you wait till to-day to throw my laisser-aller in my teeth? and why to-day of all unfortunate days? Is that like a friend?"
"Because," and Martin's withered face softened, "I suppose I loved Solignac as well as you did. I was born there as you were, and we poor devils of servants have hearts to suffer and souls to be saved as well as our masters. To-day, too, you say you would put Brigitta the swineherd into my lady's place! With great respect, Monsieur Gaspard, till to-day I had not thought you such a fool; but God be thanked for Jan Meert, and be merciful to him." Then, as if by an afterthought, he added, "God be merciful to me, too, and give me five minutes of Jan Meert's throat though I die for it. Ah! look, Monsieur Gaspard; what did I tell you?"
Above the trees that lay between us and Solignac a pall of smoke hovered, its edges feathered by the wind.