CHAPTER XXXVII

THE CHILD UNLOCKS THE DOOR

(1)

The Chevalier de la Vireville was lying, as he had so often lain, staring at the stuffed trout and the triptych of the Assumption. The adventurous and disappointed spirit which dwelt in him, that had always faced with a jest every blow of circumstance--but one--had indeed ebbed very low. Although the sun which five days ago had opened the aconites in the garden came streaming into the room in a way to rejoice the heart of the room's late owner, who had given it up for that very reason, the present occupant was perfectly indifferent as to whether the sun shone or no. He was back at Quiberon in the rain--back at Auray in the little chapel, emptied of all its victims save him alone--back in front of those levelled muskets which he alone had escaped. . . . Why, in God's name, had fate so marked him out for safety? Why had he put himself to the agony of that derelict voyage to Houat and the long suffering that came after? Mostly because of his promise to his friend, and because he thought Anne wanted him . . . or because he wanted Anne. But he was not needed, neither by the boy nor by anyone. He had built a foolish dream on the assumption of René's death, which to him had seemed a certainty. The dream had proved baseless, like everything else, and all it had done was to plant in his sincere thankfulness for René's escape a thorn of regret which was horrible to him, and made him, who had suffered so bitterly from treachery, feel a traitor himself.

No, he was not needed any more; he had done his work. Or rather, he had not even that consolation, for everything to which he had set his hand at Quiberon had been a failure, even though the fault were not his. His men, whom he had never once led to victory in the Morbihan, were dead or disbanded. There was nothing for him to do henceforward, and even had there been, he was useless--a tool that had never been of much account, and was now blunted for the rest of time.

And further back still. . . . Had he not failed to keep the woman he loved, the woman who had spurned even the difficult sacrifice he had made for her sake, when he had spared her lover? He had no daily perils now to anodyne that ache. But he had another ache to set against it. . . .

Yes, for ironically enough, at the very hour, five days ago, when his mother was protesting in the garden to the Bishop that he could never think of another woman, he _was_ thinking of one. Equally had Mme. de la Vireville, almost incredulous, carried about for five days her half-knowledge, longing for her son to speak that name which meant nothing to her, yet hinted at so much; studying him at odd moments, trying not to feel hurt at his reserve, puzzled, hoping, fearing, and far from guessing that this 'Raymonde,' to Fortuné's mind, was not a subject of which he could ever speak to anyone. For the thought of her warred against that perverted faithfulness to the faithless which had made his torment these ten years.

Yet day after day the vision of Mme. de Guéfontaine had been dwelling more and more constantly with him, and her image, by a volition, so it seemed, of its own, seeking to efface that other. From its beginning in that night of agony and effort at Quiberon, its renewal in the drifting boat, the process had gone on gaining vitality with time. At Houat he had wakened once from fever to fancy that he was lying with his head pillowed on her arm, as he had done that evening when he had stumbled exhausted into the old manoir. That had proved to be but fever also; his aching head had no such support, and the English corporal of marines who sat by him, though kind enough, had very little suggestion of Raymonde about him. Yet the illusion had given the wounded man such extraordinary pleasure, and so surprising a sense of rest and security, that he used, in those barren days, to try to repeat it by a conscious act of the imagination. She _had_ sat by his couch, once, through the night . . . she had walked by his horse's stirrup on a spring evening towards the sea . . . and among the nodding sea-holly she had kissed his hand. It was his last memory of her, almost as startling as his first. . . .

And now in England he thought of her too--fitfully at first, then incessantly. But this had served in no way to lighten his depression. For he was not in love with her, he told himself--how could he be? Was not all his heart seared over with a fatal memory? Those shackles could not be loosed now--and even were they miraculously to be smitten from him, what had he to offer another woman? A maimed body, an empty purse, a ruined home. . . .

And yet oddly, persistently, he would see himself standing with her under the larches in front of a house like Kerdronan, that was perished, and with them stood a little boy like Anne, who did not need him and was gone from him. . . . He was suddenly possessed now by that foolish and torturing vision, and lay there clenching and unclenching his hand, as though in physical pain. No, he and Kerdronan would go into the dust together, and it was no use reflecting on what might have been. They were both broken and done with, he and his home--and no great loss, doubtless, after all.

"Good God!" he exclaimed at last, "what a cowardly fool I am, lying here and moaning like a sick girl because I am short of an arm!"

He shut his eyes on that self-condemnation (which had not helped him), and did not trouble to open them when there came a knock at the door. Nor, as he still kept them closed when he said "Come in!" did he see who opened it, and Mr. Elphinstone's face in the doorway looking at him with a smile that died away to concern. He only heard the door shut again, and supposed that the visitor, his mother, or Monseigneur, had decided after all not to disturb him.

(2)

The treble voice, therefore, that said his name suddenly and softly gave him a violent start. He opened his eyes to see Anne-Hilarion standing by the closed door, carrying in both his hands a large glass bowl wherein there swam an enormously magnified goldfish.

"_Anne!_" he exclaimed, in a voice of utter incredulity.

And then the sight of him, unchanged, solemn-eyed and engaging as ever, the touching absurdity of his bringing a goldfish all the way from London to cheer a sick Chouan, caused La Vireville to break into a weak laugh that was half something else.

"Oh, M. le Chevalier!" cried Anne, gazing at him. Then he deposited his precious burden with haste on the floor, and, running to the bed, flung himself into the welcome of La Vireville's arm.

"My cabbage, my little comrade!" murmured the émigré, and he kissed the cold, fresh cheek again and again. "You are not changed at all--yes, I suppose you have grown. . . . Then you have not forgotten me after all? Have you come all this way to see your poor bedridden uncle--not by yourself, though, I trust?"

"Oh no," replied Anne-Hilarion, his arms round Fortuné's neck. "Grandpapa brought me. I wanted to see you so much!" He hugged him hard, then, drawing back a little, eyed him with a sudden doubt. La Vireville hastily withdrew his arm and pulled the bedclothes over his left side.

"Come and get up on the bed," he suggested, "and we can talk better."

The Comte de Flavigny, needing no second invitation, incontinently scrambled up--not without difficulty, for the bed was high.

"I am not too heavy?" he inquired rather anxiously, as he took a seat on La Vireville's legs. "Papa says I am getting too heavy for him."

And, as a matter of fact, he had planted himself exactly on one of the more painful souvenirs of the Ile de Houat; but La Vireville would not for worlds have asked him to move.

"You are a mere featherweight," he assured him. "And is your father nearly well again, Anne? He has written to me, but he did not say much about himself."

"Papa looks much better than you do, M. le Chevalier," said the little boy critically. "He can walk quite well now. He is coming to see you when he is quite better. Grandpapa is downstairs, you know; he will come up soon, I expect."

La Vireville, in his turn, surveyed the visitor perched on his body. Anne's legs, in their blue pantaloons, stuck out straight in front of him on the bed; the shoes at the end of them looked ridiculously small. His curls, falling on his deep ruffle, seemed heavier and a little longer than of yore, and the sun was busily employed in gilding them. For the first time, therefore, La Vireville was really conscious of the presence of that luminary.

Anne-Hilarion was the first to break the silence. "Did Papa tell you in his letter," he inquired, "that a lady came into the garden to ask for you, M. le Chevalier?"

"A lady!" exclaimed Fortuné. "What garden, child--here?"

"Oh no," replied Anne. "The garden in the Square at home. It is a long time ago now. I was there, and John Simms, and I had leaves in my cart--dead leaves--and she came in, all in black, and she asked if you had come back from France, and I said no, and then I cried, and I think she cried too, and she kissed me, and then Grandpapa came, and----"

"Stop a moment!" cried La Vireville, who was not without experience of the volume of detail Anne could pour forth when once he was embarked on the tide of narration. "What was the lady like? Was she young?"

"She was not so old as Elspeth," pronounced the Comte de Flavigny, after due thought.

La Vireville gave a rather shaken laugh. Had this impossible thing really happened? Anne-Hilarion never lied. But--it must have been someone else!

"You did not learn her name, I suppose, child?" he asked, his heart beginning to thud.

"Yes," responded Anne. "I asked Grandpapa afterwards, because I liked her. She was called the Comtesse de Préfontaine--or perhaps it was Guéfontaine."

La Vireville's heart missed a couple of beats, then pounded harder than ever, seeming to shake his whole body--a humiliating experience. But for his present physical condition, however, no doubt he would not have gasped for breath as he did, nor would the colour have come and gone like a woman's in his hollow cheeks. Nevertheless, as both these things happened, Anne-Hilarion looked at him in a little dismay.

"You are--do you feel ill, M. le Chevalier?" he asked solicitously.

"No--yes," stammered Fortuné, lifting himself on his elbow. "No, child, don't move! It is not that you are . . . too heavy." He drew a long breath, closed his eyes, and dropped back on his pillows. "What did you and Grandpapa tell Mme. de Guéfontaine?" he asked, after a moment.

"Grandpapa told her, I think, that the Republican soldiers had shot you at that place--Quiberon. . . . M. le Chevalier," continued Anne, leaning with very wide-open eyes towards him, and thus still further contributing to the discomfort of the leg on which he was situated, "did they really and truly shoot you?"

"Well," said Fortuné, in a dreamy voice, "they did and they did not. Anyhow, here I am, you see." He reopened his eyes.

"Yes," said Anne, in a tone of great contentment, and bestowed on his friend one of those infrequent smiles of his, sudden and shy, at the same time sliding his hand into the strong, wasted one lying idly near it on the coverlet.

A thrill ran up Fortuné's arm. Ever since he had seen Anne standing by the door he had been conscious of a strange sensation, as if, with the advent of the child who had sailed the seas with him on that wild adventure, there had begun to blow through his hot brain the first whisper of a clean and joyous breath that came from the waves themselves. A moment or two ago, those lips had made him an annunciation the full meaning of which he could hardly grasp. Now, at the little warm touch, his eyes were suddenly opened, and he saw the tainted memory in his heart as only a handful of dead dust, not worth the keeping, fit only to be scattered on that wind of morning. It was the past, useless and done with, a thing long dead. . . . Here, close to him, touching him, smiling at him, enshrined in this child who had no past, shone the future, like something gallant and green with the dew on it, and, blowing over it, that strong, fresh wind. The worthless burden he had carried for years fell from him. He too could have what René de Flavigny had, the air of morning at his gates--nay, morning's self. . . .

In the almost physical sense of deliverance he must have gripped Anne-Hilarion's hand very hard, for the child gave a movement.

"Little pigeon, have I hurt you?" cried La Vireville, instantly penitent, releasing the imprisoned hand. "I am so sorry. . . . I did not know that I was still so strong." At the moment, indeed, he hardly knew anything--scarcely, even, what he was saying.

Anne-Hilarion carried the injured member to his mouth for a second or two, then he put it back in La Vireville's palm. "I am very glad that you are so strong, M. le Chevalier," he said valiantly. "Perhaps you will soon be quite well again. I hope so very much. And then--what are you going to do?"

"What am I going to do, Anne?" A little while ago, under that cloud of lassitude and depression, the question would have seemed a mockery. "Well, you know--or you will soon know--that they had to cut off my other arm, but I can still hold a sword--and hurt a small boy's hand, eh? When I get quite better I shall go back to the heather, and the sea, and perhaps . . ." He broke off and fell silent, staring at his visitor with an air compound of bewilderment and meditation. "Meanwhile, am I not to see the new goldfish?"

Anne-Hilarion slipped promptly from the bed and ran to the corner by the door. Anon, raising himself from his stooping position, and carrying it between his hands with even more than his accustomed care, he came back with his trophy. His eyes were very bright.

"It is my biggest one of all," he observed, as La Vireville propped himself on his elbow to view the captive. "I called it after you, M. le Chevalier . . . you do not mind? And I thought, as you were ill . . . and I heard Papa and Grandpapa say you could never be repaid for coming after me to France . . . you might . . . I mean I brought it to give it to you, if you liked . . . for your own!"

"Oh, my child," said La Vireville, rather breathlessly, "you have given me much more than that!"