“How much?” I asked.
“Enough,” said he, “to lose her for her own good. I was a poor student with no prospects. She was beautiful and good, and her duty to her family required that she should marry as they wished. I had no right to her. I could not have her. For her love I vowed to live single—and I have come to know that the love of a woman is but one small part of life.”
“Plainly,” said I, watching him with interest, “there was no resistless compulsion in that love. But you are right; of most lives love is but an accident, the plaything of propinquity. It dimly feels its insignificance in the face of serious affairs, and gives place, as it should. But there is a love which is different. Few, indeed, are they who are born to endure the light of its uncovered face; but all have heard the dim tradition of it. I cannot make you understand it, father, any more than I could teach a blind man the wonder of that radiating blue up there. That old half-knowledge of yours has sealed your eyes more closely than if you had never known at all. I can only tell you there is a love to which life and death must serve as lackeys.”
As he listened, first astonishment marked his face; for never before had I spoken to him save as a boy to his trusted master. Then indignation struggled with solicitude. Then he seemed to remember that I was not a boy, but a man well hardened in the school of stern experience. Therefore he seemed to decide that I must be treated with mild banter. He lay back in his chair, folded his well-kept hands on his ample stomach, and chuckled indulgently before replying.
“The fever is upon you, Paul,” said he. “Poet and peasant alike must have it. In this form it is not often more dangerous or more lasting than measles; but unlike measles, alas, one attack grants no immunity from another!”
I loved him well, and his jibes stung me not at all. I fell comfortably into his mood.
“A frontier fighter must be his own physician,” I said lightly. “You shall see how I will medicine this fever.”
“I will trust Yvonne de Lamourie’s plighted word,” he said gravely, after a pause of some moments. Then a wave of strong feeling went over his face, and he broke out with a passion in his voice:
“Paul, do not misjudge me. I love you as my own son, and there is no one else in the world whom I love as I love Yvonne de Lamourie. Not her own father can love her as I do, a lonely old man to whom her face is more than sunshine. Do I not desire with all my heart that you should have her—you whom I trust, you whom I know to be a true son of the church? But as I must tell you again, though it grieves me to say it, you have come too late. The Englishman’s faithful and unselfish devotion has won her promise. She will keep it, and she will bring him into the church. Moreover, she owes him more than she can ever repay. Giles de Lamourie has long been under the suspicion of the English government, who accused him, unjustly, of having had a hand in the massacre of the New Englanders here. His estates were on the very verge of confiscation; but Anderson saved him and made him secure. That there is some dreadful fate even now hanging over this fair land I feel assured. What it may be I dare not guess; but in the hour of ruin George Anderson will see that the house of De Lamourie stands unscathed. For, Paul, I know that Heaven is with the English in this quarrel. Our iniquity in high places has not escaped unseen.”
“Grûl’s prophecy touches even you,” I remarked, rising. “But I must go, father. I have errands across the dyke, for my uncle; and I would be back for the night, if possible, to ease the fears of Monsieur de Lamourie. And as for her—be assured I will use none but fair means in the great venture of my life.”