CHAPTER XXVI

A DYING WOMAN

Next day brought it home to Madelon how true her forebodings had been. Noon brought her a visit from her father, and nothing would serve him but to go into every hole and corner. He alleged a wish to admire her housewifery, but the dark brow with which he accompanied her, and the quick, suspicious glances which he cast all round, made Madelon thank every saint in the calendar that the fugitives were well on the road, and that she had removed every trace of their presence betimes.

"Mon Dieu, Madame Aline!" she said afterwards, "when he came to the apple loft he seemed to know something. There he stood, not speaking, but just staring at me, like a dog at a rat-hole. I tell you, I thanked Saint Perpetua, whose day it was, that the rats were away!" In the end he went away, frowning, and swearing a little to himself, and quiet days set in.

No news was good news, and no news came; presently Aline stopped being terrified at every meeting with the inn-keeper, or the cure, and then Mlle Marthe became so ill that all interests centred in her sick-room. Her malady, which had remained stationary for so long, began to gain ground quickly, and nights and days of agony consumed her strength, and made even the sister to whom she was everything look upon Death as the Angel not of the Sword, but of Peace.

One day the pain ebbed with the light, and at sunset she was more comfortable than she had been for a long while. Aline persuaded Mlle Ange to go and lie down for a little, and she and Marthe were alone.

"The day is a long time going," said Marthe after a silence of some minutes.

"Yes, the days are lengthening."

"And mine are shortening,--only I 'm an unreasonable time over my dying. It's a trial to me, for I liked to do things quickly. I suppose no one has ever known what it has been to me to see Jeanne pottering about her work, or Ange moving a chair, or a book, in her slow, deliberate way; and now that it's come to my turn I 'm having my revenge, and inflicting the same kind of annoyance on you."

She spoke in a quick, toneless voice, that sounded very feeble,--almost as if the life going from her had left it behind as a stranded wreck of sound.

Aline turned with a sob.

"Heavens, child! did you think I did n't know I was going, or that I expected you to cry over me? You 've been a butt for my sharp tongue too often to be heart-broken when there 's a chance of your being left in peace."

"Oh, don't!" said Aline, choking; and something in voice and face brought a queer look to the black, mocking eyes.

"What, you really care a little? My dear, it's too amiable of you. Why, Aline,"--as the girl buried her face in her hands,--"why, Aline!"

There was a pause, and then the weak voice went on again:

"If you do care at all--if I mean anything at all in your life--then I will ask you one thing. What are you doing to Jacques?"

"Was that why you hated me?" said Aline quickly.

"Oh, hate? Well, I never hated you, but--Yes, that was it. He and Ange are the two things I 've had to love, and though I don't suppose he thinks about me twice a year, still his happiness means more to me than it does--well, to you."

"Oh, that's not true!" cried Aline on a quick breath.

Marthe Desaix looked sharply at her.

"Aline," she said, "how long are you going to break his heart and your own?"

"I don't know," whispered the girl. "There's so much between us. Too much for honour."

"Too much for pride, Aline de Rochambeau," said Marthe with cruel emphasis, and her own name made Aline wince. It seemed a thing of hard, unyielding pride; a thing her heart shrank from.

"Listen to me. When he is dead over there in Spain, what good will your pride do you? Women who live without love, or natural ties, what do they become? Hard, and sour, and bitter, like me; or foolish, and spiteful, and soft, and petty. I tell you, I could have shed the last drop of my blood, worked my fingers to the raw stump, for the man I loved. I 'd have borne his children by the roadside, followed him footsore through the world, slept by his side in the snow, and thought myself blessed. But to me there came neither love nor lover. Aline, can you live in other people's lives, love with other women's hearts, rear and foster other mothers' children as Ange does? That is the only road for a barren woman, that does not lead to desert places and a land dry as her heart. Can you take my sister's road? Is there nothing in you that calls out for the man who loves you, for the children that might be yours? Is your pride more to you than all this?"

Aline looked up steadily.

"No," she said, "it is nothing. I would do as you say you would have done, but there was one thing I thought I could not do. May I tell you the whole story now? I have wished to often, but it is hard to begin."

"Tell me," said Marthe; and Aline told her all, from the beginning.

When she had finished she saw that Marthe's eyes were closed, and moved a little to rise, thinking that she had dropped asleep. But as she did so the eyes opened again, and Marthe said fretfully, "No, I heard it all. It is very hard to judge, very hard."

Aline looked at her in alarm, for she seemed all at once to have grown very old.

"Yes, it is hard. Life is so difficult," she went on slowly--weakly, "I 'm glad to be going out of it--out into the dark."

Aline kissed her hand, and spoke wistfully:

"Is it all so dark to you?"

"Why yes, dark enough--cold enough--lonely enough. Is n't it so to you?"

"Not altogether, ma tante."

"What, because of those old tales which you believe? Well, if they comfort you, take comfort from them. I can't."

"But Mlle Ange--believes?"

Marthe frowned impatiently.

"Who knows what Ange believes? Not she herself. She is a saint to be sure, but orthodox? A hundred years ago she would have been lucky if she had escaped Purgatory fire in this life. She is content to wander in vague, beautiful imaginings. She abstracts her mind, and calls it prayer; confuses it, and says she has been meditating. I am not like that. I like things clear and settled, with a good hard edge to them. I should have been the worker and Ange the invalid,--no, no! what am I saying? God forgive me, I don't mean that."

"You would not like to see M. le Cure?" said Aline timidly. The question had been on her lips a hundred times, but she had not had the courage to let it pass them.

Mlle Marthe was too weak for anger, but she raised her eyebrows in the old sarcastic way.

"Poor man," she said, "he needs absolution a great deal more than I do. He thinks he has sold his soul, and can't even enjoy the price of it. After all, those are the people to pity--the ones who have courage for neither good nor evil."

She lay silent for a long while then, and watched the sunset colours burn to flame, and fade to cold ash-grey.

Suddenly Aline said:

"Ma tante."

"Well?"

"Ma tante, do you think he loves me still?"

"Why should he?"

The girl took her breath sharply, and Mlle Marthe moved her head with an impatient jerk.

"There, there, I 'm too near my end to lie. Jacques is like his mother, he has n't the talent of forgetfulness."

"He looked so hard when he went away."

"Little fool, if he had smiled he would have forgotten easily enough."

Aline turned her head aside.

"Listen to me," said Mlle Marthe insistently. "What kind of a man do you take your husband to be, good or bad?"

"Oh, he is good--don't I know that! What would have become of me if he had been a bad man?" said the girl in a tense whisper.

"Then would you not have him follow his conscience? In all that is between you has he not acted as a man should do? Would you have him do what is right in your eyes and not in his own; follow your lead, take the law from you? Do you, or does any woman, desire a husband like that?"

Aline did not answer, only stared out of the window. She was recalling the King's death, Dangeau's vote, and her passion of loyalty and pain. It seemed to her now a thing incredibly old and far away, like a tale read of in history a hundred years ago. Something seemed to touch her heart and shrivel it, as she wondered if in years to come she would look back as remotely upon the love, and longing, which rent her now.

There was a long, long silence, and in the end Mlle Marthe dozed a little. When Ange came in, she found her lying easily, and so free from pain that she took heart and was quite cheerful over the little sick-room offices. But at midnight there was a change,--a greyness of face, a labouring of failing lungs,--and with the dawn she sighed heavily once or twice and died, leaving the white house a house of mourning.

Mlle Ange took the blow quietly, too quietly to satisfy Aline, who would rather have seen her weep. Her cold, dreamy composure was somehow very alarming, and the few tears she shed on the day they buried Marthe in the little windy graveyard were dried almost as they fell. After that she took up all her daily tasks at once, but went about them abstractedly.

Even the children could not make her smile, or a visit to the grave draw tears. The sad monotony of grief settled down upon the household, the days were heavy, work without zest, and a wet April splashed the window-panes with torrents of warm, unceasing rain.