It was easily explained: the demoiselle and her woman, whom the French captain carried away, were no witches; they were falsely accused, as doubtless monsieur would soon be informed. In the meantime, Monsieur d'Estrailles had commands to carry the demoiselle, and also her woman, to Rennes; surely Monsieur le Capitaine would raise no objection when he heard it was the command of Madame la Duchesse herself.
"Vive la Duchesse!" That was a cry that these Breton soldiers could understand. "Vive la Duchesse!"—and confusion to her enemies! Well, it was a thing most extraordinary that the Duchess should send enemies as her messengers to rescue reputed witches from burning; and yet—Captain Maurice d'Yvec hesitated, but there was a soft corner in this heart, which was not all of grey Breton flint-stone, and perchance the beauty of Gwennola de Mereac had found it out, and perchance also the gallant captain had no great love for the new Sieur de Mereac. Moreover, the Sieur had unaccountably disappeared; and even did he himself oppose this fair-speaking, gallant enemy, it was probable that he and his soldiers would be out-numbered and killed. So at length the hesitation came to an end, and Henri d'Estrailles rode out of Martigue with Gwennola de Mereac clinging to his saddle-bow and the wild landes before them, where the wind howled its welcome and the rain beat in their faces as if laughing at their triumph over its rival element. But what cared Henri or Gwennola for wind or rain? Behind them lay their enemies, vanquished and overcome, and before them through the mists of wind and rain shone the sunshine of love and life—love, life, and each other.
"En avant—to Rennes!" cried d'Estrailles gaily, as he rode forward with one arm round Gwennola's slender waist. "To Rennes!"
"To Rennes!" echoed Jean Marcille, and stooped with a merry laugh to kiss the rosy lips of little Marie, which pouted up at him from under the hood drawn tightly about her face. "To Rennes, little sweetheart—where thou and I wilt wed."
"Wed!" whispered Marie coyly, as she nestled closely to him. "How knowest thou that, great foolish one?—perchance I have no mind to wed at all; and as for wedding thee——" But he did not allow her to complete her sentence.
CHAPTER XXIV
Back through the vague shadowland of unconsciousness, back once more to a still vaguer, more terrible realization of life—life all drawn into one great and hideous contraction of pain, where thoughts became at first impossible, till, the mists clearing aside, recollections of the past claimed fresh tortures of the mind. It was so that Guillaume de Coray crept back once more into conscious existence, to find himself lying on a couch in a chamber of the Château de Mereac. What chamber it was his weary brain refused to realize: all he was aware of was the agony which shot through his body with the first attempt to move. Then swiftly came the unerring intuition that this was death—death, terrible, unrelenting, inexorable, come to claim him all unready, sin-stained, fear-stricken. A shudder passed through the quivering, broken body, which suffered now less than the man's soul. Clearly they stood out, those sins,—hideous sins, arraigning him before the judgment seat of One Whose Eyes must needs search deep to the heart's core. Was it all black within?—all black, irredeemable guilt? Far back in the secret chambers of his heart there flickered a feeble light; it was the inner shrine, so long empty, but filled now with the image, not of its Creator, but of His creature. Gabrielle Laurent, the humble peasant-girl of Arteze—it was she who alone had found that sanctuary and filled it so strangely. Cruel, evil, treacherous to all, his love for her had been the one pure spot in a shameless life. For her sake indeed he might have striven to become other than he was, had it not been for the devil-whisper which prompted him to win for her by foul and wicked means what she, had she known, would have shrunk from in horror. So the powers of evil twist us to their will, and Guillaume had plotted with no thought for the undoing of his soul, even whilst he felt stirring within him the birth of a pure love. And now——? Again the shiver ran through him. He had played for a high stake, and he had lost. Death was the penalty. In solitude his lost soul must steal forth to its doom, and even in so going leave behind it a memory of shame which should be read in grief and horror by eyes from which he had striven so carefully to hide so horrible a story. What would she think of him when she knew him for what he was? What would she say when she learnt that her noble lover was but the phantom of her own pure spirit, and that the thing she had loved was that from which all true and upright men and women must turn shuddering away? Even in death the thought tormented him above all bodily sufferings. If only he could have explained,—if only he could have told her that his love at least was true,—if only he could have had time. But it was too late, all too late; never again would he see her as he had seen her that summer morning, innocent and beautiful, sitting there in the sunshine beside her spinning-wheel. The destiny she might have woven for him with those tender hands had been snapped by his own reckless touch, and love, life, and hope,—that purer life and hope of which he had vaguely dreamt,—were quenched in the utter gloom of death and sin.
With a groan his eyelids flickered and unclosed, staring out into the whirling darkness. But even as life seemed rushing from him in a mad agony of mind and body, a hand was laid on his, and a face bent close to his twisted, death-distorted one. Was it the face of an angel come to taunt him in those last moments with a glance into the Paradise he had lost? Somewhere near he fancied he heard a low, monotonous voice chanting prayers, but the words were lost in the tumultuous surgings of his brain.
Then suddenly mental vision and recollection became clear, with that strange, unearthly clearness which comes to the dying, and reveals past and present in the intense, mysterious light of summer moonlight. He remembered all, realizing that he lay a-dying in the great hall of the Château de Mereac. He realized that he was stretched on a low couch close to the blaze of the fire, although the heat failed to warm the chill of his body; as in a dream he saw Pierre the fool crouched at his feet, sobbing as if in pain, as he knelt there. He had often wondered what had made this strange, uncanny lad evince such affection to him; he wondered vaguely now as his languid eyes gazed into the wizened face of the ape, perched on the boy's shoulder. Then he became aware that there were other figures around him; that close by, gazing down at him in awed and pitying silence, were his sister and Yvon de Mereac—Yvon de Mereac, the man whose life he had so often and so vainly sought. He tried to wonder why he had sought it, tried to wonder why he looked at him so curiously,—was he spirit, or flesh and blood? He had heard that Yvon was dead, but that had been a lie—his own lie, perchance; but he was not dead, although he stood there so gaunt, so pale, so reproachful; he was alive, and it was he himself who was to die—not Yvon de Mereac. The chanting voice of the priest was clearer now—were those the prayers for the dying he was saying? What mockery it was!—prayers for a lost soul—lost beyond redemption! Then the hand that held his closed again over his cold fingers in a warm, strong clasp. Whose was it? Once again his eyes fell on that other face which had floated before his half-conscious gaze.
"Gabrielle!" It was a cry of anguish, of pleading, of despair, though it rose little above a whisper. But she understood, for there is a language of the soul which but one other pair of eyes beside our own can read.