Part 17 (1/2)

Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had entertained no doubt that the Count was merely a madman. Now she was startled with a new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow whiskers and yellow moustache first returned the blow of Bert, as if it were a sort of duty, and then stepped back with a slight bow and an easy smile.

”This need go no further here, M. Bert,” he said. ”I need not remind you how far it should go elsewhere.”

”Certainly, you need remind me of nothing,” answered Camille, stolidly.

”I am glad that you are just not too much of a scoundrel for a gentleman to fight.”

”We are detaining the lady,” said Count Gregory, with politeness; and, making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his hat if he had had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and eventually disappeared. He was so complete an aristocrat that he could offer his back to them all the way up that avenue; and his back never once looked uncomfortable.

”You must allow me to see you home,” said Bert to the girl, in a gruff and almost stifled voice; ”I think we have only a little way to go.”

”Only a little way,” she said, and smiled once more that night, in spite of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the devil. The glowing and transparent blue of twilight had long been covered by the opaque and slatelike blue of night, when he handed her into the lamp-lit interior of her home. He went out himself into the darkness, walking st.u.r.dily, but tearing at his black beard.

All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered this a case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and neither party had any difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as they were in the place.

Two small landowners, who were careful, practising Catholics, willingly undertook to represent that strict church-goer Camille Burt; while the profligate but apparently powerful Count Gregory found friends in an energetic local doctor who was ready for social promotion and an accidental Californian tourist who was ready for anything. As no particular purpose could be served by delay, it was arranged that the affair should fall out three days afterwards. And when this was settled the whole community, as it were, turned over again in bed and thought no more about the matter. At least there was only one member of it who seemed to be restless, and that was she who was commonly most restful.

On the next night Madeleine Durand went to church as usual; and as usual the stricken Camille was there also. What was not so usual was that when they were a bow-shot from the church Madeleine turned round and walked back to him. ”Sir,” she began, ”it is not wrong of me to speak to you,”

and the very words gave him a jar of unexpected truth; for in all the novels he had ever read she would have begun: ”It is wrong of me to speak to you.” She went on with wide and serious eyes like an animal's: ”It is not wrong of me to speak to you, because your soul, or anybody's soul, matters so much more than what the world says about anybody. I want to talk to you about what you are going to do.”

Bert saw in front of him the inevitable heroine of the novels trying to prevent bloodshed; and his pale firm face became implacable.

”I would do anything but that for you,” he said; ”but no man can be called less than a man.”

She looked at him for a moment with a face openly puzzled, and then broke into an odd and beautiful half-smile.

”Oh, I don't mean that,” she said; ”I don't talk about what I don't understand. No one has ever hit me; and if they had I should not feel as a man may. I am sure it is not the best thing to fight. It would be better to forgive--if one could really forgive. But when people dine with my father and say that fighting a duel is mere murder--of course I can see that is not just. It's all so different--having a reason--and letting the other man know--and using the same guns and things--and doing it in front of your friends. I'm awfully stupid, but I know that men like you aren't murderers. But it wasn't that that I meant.”

”What did you mean?” asked the other, looking broodingly at the earth.

”Don't you know,” she said, ”there is only one more celebration? I thought that as you always go to church--I thought you would communicate this morning.”

Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in him before. It seemed to alter his whole body.

”You may be right or wrong to risk dying,” said the girl, simply; ”the poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby. You men are the other half of the world. I know nothing about when you ought to die.

But surely if you are daring to try and find G.o.d beyond the grave and appeal to Him--you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands there every morning in our little church.”

And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which the pathos wrung the heart.

M. Camille Bert was by no means placid. Before that incomplete gesture and frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon.

His dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the startling pallor of his face. When at last he said something it was: ”O G.o.d! I can't stand this!” He did not say it in French. Nor did he, strictly speaking, say it in English. The truth (interesting only to anthropologists) is that he said it in Scotch.

”There will be another ma.s.s in a matter of eight hours,” said Madeleine, with a sort of business eagerness and energy, ”and you can do it then before the fighting. You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that you would not do it at all.”

Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to say between them: ”And why should you suppose that I shouldn't do as you say--I mean not to do it at all?”

”You always go to Ma.s.s,” answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes, ”and the Ma.s.s is very long and tiresome unless one loves G.o.d.”

Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come from Count Gregory, his criminal opponent. He advanced upon Madeleine with flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders. ”I do not love G.o.d,” he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; ”I do not want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found. I must burst up the show; I must and will say everything. You are the happiest and honestest thing I ever saw in this G.o.dless universe. And I am the dirtiest and most dishonest.”