I will not agree, then, that I was a subject for laughter if, lying there alone, sick, tormented, loving without hope, fast bound in ignorance of events most vital to my love, I let my mind recall the curious prophesyings of old Mother Pêche. Of Yvonne directly I dared not suffer myself to think, lest my heart should break or stop.
When fate denies occasion to play the hero, it is often well, while waiting, to play the child. I lay quiet, looked at the patch of sky, and occupied myself with Mother Pêche’s soothsayings.
Your heart’s desire is near your death of hope.
At first there was comfort in this, and I took it very seriously, for the sake of the argument. But oh, these oracles, astute from the days of Delphi and Dodona! Already I could perceive that my hope was not quite dead. A thousand chances came hinting about the windows of my thought. Why might not Yvonne be safe, well,—free? The odds were that things had gone ill in my absence, but there was still the chance they might have instead gone well. Here and now, plainly, was not my death of hope, wherefore my heart’s desire could not be near. I turned aside the saying in angry contempt, and fell to feeling my ribs, my shrunk chest, my skinny arms, wondering how long before I could well wield sword again.
In this far from reassuring occupation I came upon the little leather pouch which Mother Pêche had hung about my neck. With eagerness I drew out the mystic stone and held it up before my face. The eye waned and dilated in the dim light, as if a living spirit lurked behind it.
“Le Veilleur,” I said to myself. “The Watcher. Little strange is it if simple souls ascribe to you sorcery and power.”
Then I remembered the snatch of doggerel which the old dame had muttered over it as she gave it to me. While this you wear what most you fear will never come to pass.
Curious it seemed to me that it should have stuck in my mind, though so little heeded at the time. What most you fear. What was it most I feared? Surely, that Yvonne should go to another. Then that, at least, should not befall while I lived, if there were force in witchcraft; for I would wear the “Watcher” till I died.
But here again my delusive little satisfaction had but a breath long to live. For indeed what most I feared was something, alas! quite different. What most I feared was calamity, evil, anguish, for Yvonne. Then, clearly, if her happiness required her to be the wife of George Anderson, I could not hinder it. Could not? Nay, “would not!” I cried aloud; and thereupon, no longer able to drug myself with auguries, and no longer able to be dumb under the misery of my own soul, I sprang upright, strained my arms above my head, and prayed a selfish prayer:
“God, give her joy, but through me, through me!” Then I flung myself down again, and set my teeth, and turned my face to the wall. Thus I lay as one dead; and so it fell that when the door of the cave was darkened, and steps came to my bed, I did not look up.