Green Fire: A Romance

by William Sharp

When, suddenly, and while quietly dictating a letter, the Marquis Tristran died, it seemed at last as though Judik's triumph had come. For a brief while he was even addressed as M. le Marquis. But on the noon following that day he had a rude awakening. A notary from Ploumaliou arrived with the family lawyers, and produced a written and signed confession on the part of the woman whom he had called mother, that he was not her child at all, that her own child was dead, and that Kerbastiou was really a forest foundling. As if this were not enough, the notary also proved, even to the conviction of Judik, that the written marriage testimony from the parish books was an impudent forgery.

So the man who had made so abrupt and dramatic an appearance on the threshold of Kerival had, in the very moment of his triumph, to retreat once more to his obscurity as a homeless woodlander.

The sole heirs now were Annaik and Ynys, but of neither was any thing known. The difficulty was partially solved by the abrupt appearance of Annaik on the day of the second conclave.

For a time thereafter all went well at Kerival. Then rumor began to spread mysterious whispers about the Lady Annaik. She would see none of her neighbors, whether from far or near, and even the Sieur de Morvan and his kith or kin were denied. Then, too, she disappeared for days at a time. Some thought she went to Ploumaliou or Kerloek, some that she had gone as far away as Rennes or St. Brieuc, and a few even imagined the remote Paris to be her goal. None dreamed that she had gone no further than the forest of Kerival.

But as the autumn waned, rumors became more explicit. Strange things were said of Annaik de Kerival. At last the anxious Curé of Ploumaliou took it upon himself to assure all who spoke to him about the Lady of Kerival that he had good reason to believe she was privately married. This, at least, drew some of the poison out of the gossip that had arisen.

Then a day came when the Lady Annaik dismissed the servants at Kerival, and left none in the house save an old gardener and his wife. She was going away for a time, she said. She went, and from that day was not seen again.

Then came, in the Abbé Cæsar de La Bruyère's letter, the strangest part of the mystery.

Annaik, ever since the departure of Alan and Ynys, had been living the forest life. All her passionate sylvan and barbaric instincts had been suddenly aroused. For the green woods and the forest ways she suffered an intolerable nostalgia. But over and above this was another reason. It seemed, said the Abbé Cæsar, that she must have returned the rude love of Judik Kerbastiou. However this might be, she lived with him for days at a time, and he himself had a copy of their marriage certificate made out at a registrar's in a remote little hill-town in the Montagnes Noires.

This union with the morose and strange Judik Kerbastiou had not been known to any of the peasants until her trouble came to her. When the day was near she did not return to Kerival, but kept to the gypsy tent which she shared with Judik. After the birth of the child, every one knew, and every one marvelled. It was a madness: that was what all said, from Kerloek to Ploumaliou.