Part 33 (1/2)

Don Ricardo was lowering his pistol, and his pistol was smoking. He had fired. Moreover, he had aimed truly. But he had chosen his weapon honorably--it was the one that did not hold a bullet.

Cartaret was dazed, but knew instantly what to do. As if it was the performance of an act long since subconsciously decided upon, he raised his own pistol slowly--the death-laden pistol--and shot straight up into the air....

The smoke was still circling about the American's head when he saw Eskurola striding toward him. The Basque's face was a study of humiliation and dismay.

”What is this?” he demanded. ”After I have tried to kill you, you do not kill me? You refuse to kill me? You inflict the greatest insult and the only one that I cannot resent?”

Cartaret threw down his pistol: it frightened him now. ”I don't know whether it's an insult to let you live or not,” he said, ”and I don't care a d.a.m.n. Where's my mare?”

He went to the gate. It was opened by the French-speaking servant, wide-eyed now, but with his curiosity inarticulate. Cartaret mounted.

His hand trembled as he gathered up the reins. He was angry at this and at the comedy that Fate had made of his attempted heroism. Was there ever before, he reflected, a duel the two princ.i.p.als of which were angry because they survived?

Eskurola was standing at the edge of the unrailed drawbridge that crossed the precipitous abyss. It was evident even to Cartaret that the Basque was still too amazed to think, much less speak, coherently; that something beyond his comprehension had occurred; that a phenomenon hitherto unknown had wrecked his cosmos.

”Sir,” he began, ”will you not return first into the castle and there----”

”If you don't get out of my way,” said Cartaret, ”I'll ride you into this chasm!”

Don Ricardo drew dumbly aside, and Cartaret rode on. With Vitoria relentless and unattainable, abjured by the woman he had loved, robbed even of the chance to give his life for her, he was riding anywhere to get away from Alava, was fleeing from his sense of loss and failure.

He rode as fast as the steep descent permitted, and only once, at a sharp twist of the way, a full mile down the mountain, did he allow himself to turn in his saddle and look back.

There was Eskurola, a silhouette against the gray walls. Behind him rose the castle of his fathers, and back of it the great peak towered, through a hundred flas.h.i.+ng colors, to its s.h.i.+ning crown of eternal snow.

CHAPTER XVI

AND LAST

It must be a very dear and intimate reality for which people will be content to give up a dream.--Hawthorne: _The Marble Faun_.

Summer held Paris in his arms when Cartaret returned there--held her, wearied from the dance with Spring, in his warm arms, and was rocking her to sleep. Romance had crowded commerce from the boulevards; poets wrote their verses at the marble-topped tables along the awninged pavements; the lesser streets were lovers' lanes.

For Cartaret had not hurried. Once the Pyrenees were behind him, he felt growing upon him a dread of any return to the city in which he had first met and loved the Lady of the Rose; and only the necessity of settling his affairs there--of collecting his few possessions, paying two or three remaining bills and bidding a last good-by to his friends--drew him forward. He lingered at one town after the other, caring nothing for what he saw, but hating the thought of even a week in a Paris without her. Vaguely he had decided to return to America, though what of interest life could hold there, or anywhere, for him he could not imagine: some dull business routine, most likely--for he would never paint again--and the duller the better. Thus he wasted a fortnight along the Loire and among the chateaux of Touraine and found himself at last leaving his train in the Gare D'Orsay at the end of a Summer afternoon.

He made for his own room with the objectless hurry of a native American, his feet keeping time to a remembered stanza of Andrew Lang:

”In dreams she grows not older The lands of Dream among, Though all the world wax colder, Though all the songs be sung; In dreams doth he behold her Still fair and kind and young.”

Taciturn Refrogne seemed no more surprised to see him than if he had gone out but an hour since: the trade of the Parisian concierge slays surprise early.

”A letter for monsieur,” said Refrogne.

Cartaret took it from the grimy paw that was extended out of the concierge's cave. He went on up the stairs.

The door of the magic Room Opposite--in all probability commonplace enough now--stood slightly ajar, and Cartaret felt a new pang as he glanced at it. He pa.s.sed on to his own room.

His own room! It was precisely as he had seen it last--a little dustier, and far more dreary, but with no other change. The table at which she had leaned, the easel on which he had painted those portraits of her, were just as when he had left them. He went to the window at which he used to store the provisions that Chitta looted, and there he opened the envelope Refrogne had given him. It contained only one piece of paper: A Spanish draft on the Comptoir General for a hundred and twenty francs, and on the back, in a labored English script, was written:

”For repayment of the sum advanced to my servant, Chitta Grekekora.