Part 19 (1/2)

Even if you had taken the jewels from me, and had asked my forgiveness, I would have given it freely. But I could not be as I was, a comrade to you.”

There was a silence. The Countess, looking perfectly miserable, still gazed at Buckhurst. He dropped his gray, symmetrical head, yet I felt that he was listening to every minute sound in the room.

”You must not care what I say,” she said. ”I am only an unhappy woman, unused to the liberty I have given myself, not yet habituated to the charity of those blameless hearts which forgive everything! I am a novice, groping my way into a new and vast world, a limitless, generous, forgiving commune, where love alone dominates.... And if I had lived among my brothers long enough to be purged of those traditions which I have drawn from generations, I might now be n.o.ble enough and wise enough to say I do forgive and forget that you--”

”That you were once a thief,” I ended, with the genial officiousness of the hopelessly fat-minded.

In the stillness I heard Buckhurst draw in his breath--once. Some day he would try to kill me for that; in the mean time my cra.s.s stupidity was no longer a question in his mind. I had hurt the Countess, too, with what she must have believed a fool's needless brutality. But it had to be so if I played at Jaques Bonhomme.

So I put the finis.h.i.+ng whine to it--”Our Lord died between two thieves”--and relapsed into virtuous contemplation of my finger-tips.

”Madame,” said Buckhurst, in a low voice, ”your contempt of me is part of my penalty. I must endure it. I shall not complain. But I shall try to live a life that will at least show you my deep sincerity.”

”I do not doubt it,” said the Countess, earnestly. ”Don't think that I mean to turn away from you or to push you away. There is nothing of the Pharisee in me. I would gladly trust you with what I have. I will consult you and advise with you, Mr. Buckhurst--”

”And ... despise me.”

The unhappy Countess looked at me. It goes hard with a woman when her guide and mentor falls.

”If you return to Paradise, in Morbihan,... as we had planned, may I go,” he asked, humbly, ”only as an obscure worker in the cause? I beg, madame, that you will not cast me off.”

So he wanted to go to Morbihan--to the village of Paradise? Why?

The Countess said: ”I welcome all who care for the cause. You will never hear an unkind word from me if you desire to resume the work in Paradise. Dr. Delmont will be there; Monsieur Tavernier also, I hope; and they are older and wiser than I, and they have reached that lofty serenity which is far above my troubled mind. Ask them what you have asked of me; they are equipped to answer you.”

It was time for another discord from me, so I said: ”Madame, you have seen a thousand men lay down their lives for France. Has it not shaken your allegiance to that ghost of patriotism which you call the 'Internationale'?”

Here was food for thought, or rather fodder for a.s.ses--the Police Oracle turned missionary under the nose of the most cunning criminal in France and the vainest. Of course Buckhurst's contempt for me at once pa.s.sed all bounds, and, secure in that contempt, he felt it scarcely worth while to use his favorite weapon--persuasion. Still, if the occasion should require it, he was quite ready, I knew, to loose his eloquence on the Countess, and on me too.

The Countess turned her troubled eyes to me.

”What I have seen, what I have thought since yesterday has distressed me dreadfully,” she said. ”I have tried to include all the world in a broader pity, a broader, higher, and less selfish love than the jealous, single-minded love for one country--”

”The mother-land,” I said, and Buckhurst looked up, adding, ”The world is the true mother-land.”

Whereupon I appeared profoundly impressed at such a novel and epigrammatic view.

”There is much to be argued on both sides,” said the young Countess, ”but I am utterly unfitted to struggle with this new code of ethics.

If it had been different--if I had been born among the poor, in misery!--But you see I come a pilgrim among the proletariat, clothed in conservatism, cloaked with tradition, and if at heart I burn with sorrow for the miserable, and if I gladly give what I have to help, I cannot with a single gesture throw off those inherited garments, though they tortured my body like the garment of Nessus.”

I did not smile or respect her less for the stilted phrases, the pathetic poverty of metaphor. Profoundly troubled, struggling with a reserve the borders of which she strove so bravely to cross, her distress touched me the more because I knew it aroused the uneasy contempt of Buckhurst. Yet I could not spare her.

”You saw the cuira.s.siers die in the street below,” I repeated, with the obstinacy of a limited intellect.

”Yes--and my heart went out to them,” she replied, with an emphasis that pleased me and startled Buckhurst.

Buckhurst began to speak, but I cut him short.

”Then, madame, if your heart went out to the soldiers of France, it went out to France, too!”

”Yes--to France,” she repeated, and I saw her lip begin to quiver.