A broad hint, forsooth, and Bertrand had read more in the old man’s restless eyes than the Vicomte’s tongue had suffered him to say. Half an hour’s talk with Tiphaïne at the open window! Stephen Raguenel had even grudged him that, and betrayed by a flash of senile peevishness that the younger man’s presence cast a shadow across the narrowing path of age.
Human, most human, and yet there was something pitiful to Bertrand in the old man’s sensitiveness, his readiness to resent any sharing of Tiphaïne’s thoughts. No doubt she was all that was left to him, his pearl of great price, which he would suffer no other man to handle. In this life the services of a friend may be too soon forgotten when the clash of interests rouses the armed ego. Gratitude is the most volatile of all the sentiments. Return an old man his lost purse, and it is but natural that he should knit his brows when the self-same purse is coveted by the very mortal who returned it.
Yet to one who has suffered in the cause of others a grudging and suspicious spirit is as a north wind in the midst of June. It was for this reason that Bertrand’s heart was bitter in him that morning, not because Tiphaïne loved her father, but because the old man grudged her even a friend. In the past the lord of La Bellière would have laughed at such a notion of tyranny. But sorrow and the slackening of the fibres of the heart can change the temper of the happiest mind.
The forenoon had gone when Bertrand turned homeward to La Bellière without having so much as slipped the hood or jesses. Yet even though he had won nothing by the falcon’s talons, he had come by a decision to leave La Bellière on the morrow.
Not in the best of tempers, he came suddenly upon two shabby-looking devils squatting side by side under a wayside cross. They were sharing half a brown loaf and a bottle of cider, the jaws of both munching energetically with that stolid emphasis that betrays the philosophic and worldly mendicant. A couple of rusty swords and bucklers lay on the grass at the men’s feet. One of the pair was leathery and tall; the other, buxom about the body, with a face that matched the frayed scarlet of his coat.
They sighted Bertrand, falcon on wrist, and stared at him casually as though considering whether he was a gentleman likely to disburse a coin. There was an abrupt slackening of the masticatory muscles. Two pairs of eyes were startled by the apparition. The lean man bolted a large mouthful of bread and started up with a shout that sent Bertrand’s horse swerving across the road.
The loaf and the cider bottle were tossed upon the grass.
“Soul of my grandmother, bully Hopart, but it’s the captain!”
“Lording! lording!”
“Devil’s luck, and I’m no sinner!”