The Isle of Unrest Part 41

And all the while de Va.s.selot was talking and laughing, and commenting on his friend's appearance and clothes, and goodness of heart--all in a breath, as was his manner. Also he found time to ask a hundred questions which the stupid would take at least a week to answer, but his answer to each would be the right one.

It was during the great cold of the early days of January, that the baron and Lory turned their backs on that bitter valley of the Loire.

They had a cross-journey to Lyons, and there joined a main line train, in which they fell asleep to awake in the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne, amid the cool grey-greens, the bare rocks and dark cypresses of the south. After Ma.r.s.eilles the journey became tedious again.

"Heavens!" cried Lory, impatiently, "what a delay! Why need they stop at this little station at all?"

The baron made no reply just then. The train travelled five miles while he stared thoughtfully at the grey hills. It was six months since he had seen the vivacious lady who was supposed by this one-eyed world to rule him.

"After all," he said at length, "Frejus is a little station."

For the baron was a philosopher.

When at last they reached the quiet tree-grown station, where even to this day so few trains stop, and so insignificant a business is transacted, they found the Baroness de Melide on the platform awaiting them. She was in black, as were all Frenchwomen at this time. She gave an odd little laugh at the sight of her husband, and immediately held her lip between her teeth, as if she were afraid that her laugh might change to something else.

"Ah!" she said, "how hungry you both look--and yet you must have lunched at Toulon."

She looked curiously from one drawn face to the other as the baron helped Lory to descend.

"Hungry," she repeated with a reflective nod. "Perhaps your precious France does not satisfy."

And as she led the way to the carriage there was a gleam, almost fierce, of triumph in her eyes.

The arrival at the chateau was uneventful. Mademoiselle Brun said no word at all; but stood a little aside with folded hands and watched. Denise, young and slim in her black dress, shook hands and said that she was afraid the travellers must be tired after their long journey.

"Why should Denise think that I was tired?" the baron inquired later, as he was opening his letters in the study.

"Mon ami," replied the baroness, "she did not think you were tired, and did not care whether you were or not."

Lory had the same room a.s.signed to him that opened on to the verandah where heliotrope and roses and Bougainvilliers contended for the mastery.

Outside his windows were placed the same table and long chair, and beside the last the other chair where Denise had sat--which had been placed there by Fate. The butler was, it appeared, a man of few ideas. He had arranged everything as before.

After his early coffee Lory went to the verandah and lay down by that empty chair. It was a brilliant morning, with a light keen air which has not its equal all the world over. The sun was powerful enough to draw the scent from the pinewoods, and the sea-breeze swept it up towards the mountains. Lory waited alone in the verandah all the morning. After luncheon the baron a.s.sisted him back to his long chair, and all the party came there and drank coffee. Coffee was one of Mademoiselle Brun's solaces in life. "It makes existence bearable," she said--"if it is hot enough." But she finished her cup quickly and went away. The baron was full of business. He received a score of letters during the day. At any moment the preliminaries of peace might now be signed. He had not even time for a cigarette. The baroness sat for some minutes looking at Lory, endeavouring to make him meet her shrewd eyes; but he was looking out over the plain of Les Arcs. Denise had not sat down, but was standing rather restlessly at the edge of the verandah near the heliotrope which clambered up the supports. She had picked a piece of the delicate flower and was idly smelling it.

At last the baroness rose and walked away without any explanation at all.

After a few minutes, which pa.s.sed slowly in silence, Denise turned and came slowly towards Lory. The chair had never been occupied. She sat down and looked away from him. Her face, still delicately sunburnt, was flushed. Then she turned, and her eyes as they met his were stricken with fear.

"I did not understand," she said. And she must have been referring to their conversation in that same spot months before. She was either profoundly ignorant of the world or profoundly indifferent to it. She ought, of course, to have made some safe remark about the weather. She ought to have distrusted Lory. But he seemed to know her meaning without any difficulty.

"I think a great many people never understand, mademoiselle."

"It has taken me a long time--nearly four months," said Denise, reflectively. "But I understood quite suddenly at Bastia--when the soldiers pa.s.sed the notary's office. I understood then what life is and what it is meant to be."

Lory looked up at her for a moment,

"That is because you are nearer heaven than I am," he said.

"But it was you who taught me, not heaven," said Denise. "You said--well, you remember what you said, perhaps--and then immediately after you denied me the first thing I asked you. You knew what was right, and I did not. You have always known what was right, and have always done it. I see that now as I look back. So I have learnt my lesson, you see." She concluded with a grave smile. Life is full of gravity, but love is the gravest part of it.

"Not from me," persisted Lory.

"Yes, from you. Suppose you had done what I asked you. Suppose you had not gone to the war again, what would have become of our lives?"

"Perhaps," suggested Lory, "we have both to learn from each other.

Perhaps it is a long lesson and will take all our lives. I think we are only beginning it. And perhaps I opened the book when I told you that I loved you, here in the verandah!"

Denise turned and looked at him with a smile full of pity, and touched with that contempt which women sometimes bestow upon men for understanding so little of life.

"Mon Dieu!" she said, "I loved you long before that."

The sun was setting behind the distant Esterelles--those low and lonesome mountains clad from foot to summit in pine--when Mademoiselle Brun came out into the garden. She had to pa.s.s across the verandah, and instinctively turned to look towards that end of it where de Va.s.selot had come a second time to lie in the sun and heal his wounds--a man who had fought a good fight.

Denise was holding out a spray of heliotrope towards Lory and he had taken, not the flower, but her hand: and thus without a word and unconsciously they told their whole story to mademoiselle.

The little old woman walked on without showing that she had seen and understood. She was not an expansive person.

She sat down at the corner of the lowest terrace and with blinking eyes stared across the great plain of Les Arcs, where north and south meet, where the palm tree and the pine grow side by side, towards the Esterelles and the setting sun. The sky was clear, but for a few little puffs of cloud low down towards the west, like a flock of sheep ready to go home, waiting for the gate to open.

Mademoiselle's thin lips were moving as if she were whispering to the G.o.d whom she served with such a remarkable paucity of words. It may have been that she was muttering a sort of grim _Nunc Dimittis_--she who had seen so many wars. "Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace."