XXII
Evening had come when Bertrand neared the quarry on the road to Loudeac, where Robin Raguenel lay hid. A path ran from the main track and wound through the woods, leaving the open moorland sweeping—a wave of gold into the west. It was one of those rare passings of the day in spring when strangeness and mystery were everywhere, brooding on the dream hills against the splendid sky, watching for the night in the windless woodways of the forest. The song of the birds went up towards the sunset, tumultuous, and borne upon the wings of joy. Yet to Bertrand the beauty of it all was but a mockery, even as the dawn mocks the eyes of a man dying in his youth.
The inn, a mere hovel with rotting thatch and sagging beams, stood at the mouth of the quarry with a dirty stable yard behind it. The greater part of the quarry was tangled with brushwood, a few patches of coarse grass closing in a strip of shallow soil where the inn folk grew their vegetables. A Breton lass, brown-legged and bare-armed, was hoeing in the garden when Bertrand rode up towards the inn. Robin, sitting on a block of stone, was talking to the girl, making love to her for lack of else to do. The girl’s black eyes and insolent mouth were charms that might make a man forget for the moment thoughts that were troubling to his conscience. She returned Robin as good as he gave, laughing, and tossing back her hair as she plied her hoe, her bare feet sinking into the soil.
Bertrand, riding into the dirty yard behind the inn, broke like an unwelcome elder brother upon Robin philandering with this Breton Hebe. A few ragged chickens scurried away from Bertrand’s horse. An ass brayed at him over the door of a byre, and a couple of pigs rooting in the offal went grunting surlily towards a dung heap.
Bertrand looked round him, saw the girl leaning on her hoe, one hand stretched out to slap the boyish face that had ventured near in quest of favors. She dropped her hoe on catching sight of the strange knight in the yard, and came forward to take his horse. An old woman appeared at the back door of the inn, and screamed peevishly at her daughter. Bertrand dismounted and let the girl tether his horse to a post in the yard.
Robin Raguenel had recognized his own shield with a start and a flush, the amorous glint gone from his eyes in a moment. His sulky face betrayed the meaner thoughts that had been working in his heart, and that he had dreaded the hour of Du Guesclin’s return. He had begun to hate Bertrand because Bertrand had been a witness of his shame. He hated him for the very sacrifice he had made, his ungenerous and thin-blooded nature revolting at the thought that Bertrand held him in his power. The debt had transformed Robin into a mean and grudging enemy. Self-pity and disgust at his own impotence had destroyed any feeling such as gratitude, and he was ready to quarrel with the man who had renounced so much to save him.
Bertrand left his horse with the girl and went towards Robin, who was digging his heels into the turf and looking as though he would have given much to escape the meeting. He made no pretence of welcome, but stood sulky and ill at ease, all the rebellious littleness of his soul puffing itself out against the man who had made him such a debtor.
Bertrand, puzzled, and suspecting nothing in the breadth and simplicity of his heart, scanned Robin’s face, finding no gladness thereon, no gratitude in the eyes.
“So you have come back?”
The antagonism was instinctive in those few curt words. Bertrand’s out-stretched hand dropped. He looked hard at Robin, as though baffled by the lad’s manner.