Part 21

Rodvard got up first; the man, whose features remained indistinguishable, helped Lalette up behind and gave them a farewell in tones not unfriendly. Rodvard had seldom followed the maze of streets toward the northwest quarter, but it was fairly easy to maintain direction, and there was only one gate leading to the Archer’s Highroad. The horse walked, and Lalette felt so sleepy that it was almost agony to keep her place.

There was no one moving on any street and hardly a light at any window. Once a wrong turn led into a blind alley, but that did not hold them back long, and now they were in the shadow of the gate, with a sentry barring the path with a pike and another holding up a lantern.

“This is a fine hour to be leaving the city,” grumbled the first.

“All hours are fine when one must go,” said Rodvard, and produced his paper; this was the moment of test.

The sentry puzzled over it a moment, looked back at them, to the paper again, and said; “Pass friends.” As he turned back to the sentry-cachet with his pike-bearing companion, Rodvard caught a fragment of words “. . . won’t be too glad to see that couple,” and wondered what the paper had said.

As they reached the far end of the bridge, where the ancient stone leopard stands, he urged his mount to trot, but the pace was too fast for Lalette, she had to beg him not to. They moved for a long time through a space without figures until, like a conjurer’s trick, trees and houses began to appear in grey outline around them, and then slowly to take on color. The road turned leftward, and the river was beyond, with ice on it. Lalette said; “Rodvard.”

He did not turn his head. “What will you have?”

“Can you forgive me?”

“For what?”

“Taking you away from—everything. Your new day, the work.”

“There is nothing to forgive. I had to go.”

They were silent again, and in that silence the sun grew behind streaked clouds. Lalette was so tired and sore that she felt she must say something about it, but just before endurance reached its limit, they came to the famous bridge of boats at Gogau, with its inn on the opposite bank, and Rodvard said; “Let us rest here and take refreshment.”

He helped her down and inside to a seat, still without words, and a round-cheeked innkeeper came to them with a good morning. After he had gone, Rodvard said:

“No . . . I do not know quite what I wished or what I wish now; but I am sure it is not to be compelled to use all I have in Mathurin’s way. . . .”

He stared across the room away from her, and she (grateful that he was not looking to read her thought with the Blue Star) said; “Do you think he can make his regency stand?”

“I do not know, but I think not in the long run. If Prince Pavinius has beaten the Tritulaccans so badly . . .” He touched the jacket where the cold stone lay. “This is not me, and I’ll not be ruled by it, no more than you by your gift of witchery.”

She shuddered slightly. “It is a gift I never wished.”

Now his face showed trouble. He stood up and paced the floor, then turned to the inn portal, where after a moment she joined him, looking out. The sun had daunted down the clouds, picking everything out in winter’s white gold; beneath them the river hurried past, carrying little pieces of ice against the black boats. At last he said; “Somewhere I have lost the line. . . . I suppose that the most we can do is try to use the lesser evil to overcome the greater, forgiving what we can. . . . It is I who ask you to forgive me.”

She put an arm around his waist. “You do not need to. I think I love you.”

For an enchanted moment they stood so. Then Rodvard’s hands went to his neck, and with a swift motion, he drew out the Blue Star, over his head and holding it in his hand, glanced at the stream and then at Lalette.

“Yes,” she said. It made only a small splash where it struck the water.

Epilogue

In view of the speed with which the low-hung clouds were driving past the window, there would evidently be no business with ducks that day. Hodge helped himself to more coffee.

“I wonder what happened to them afterward,” he said.

“Does it matter?” said Penfield. “When an emotional problem is solved, the others become unreal.”

“You don’t consider poverty a real problem?” asked McCall.

“Only in a social and relative sense. Go look at the natives in the hill-country of any Latin-American state. They live on rice, beans and fifteen cents a day, and remain quite happy.”

Hodge said; “I agree that poverty is a minor matter in this particular case. But it seems to me that you’re assuming too much when you speak of the emotional problem of that couple as solved. It’s not like a sum in arithmetic, with a simple answer in definite figures. There are all sorts of sub- and side-problems involved, to which no definite values can be assigned. For instance, isn’t the memory of the girl, Leece, together with one of Lalette’s outbursts of temper, going to produce an explosive mixture at some point? And aren’t they keeping a good deal from each other?”

Penfield’s long face was thoughtful. “There are secrets in the background of every union,” he said. “Even secrets as black as the murder by witchcraft, and as inexplicable as the failure and recovery of the Blue Star. But it seems to me that they are like the disagreements of parties in a politically stable state. Once the essential agreement to abide has been reached, any difficulties can be resolved or compromised. Another thing—these people have a capacity for . . . well, close attunement to each other. More of it than we have. What puzzles me—” he took a pull at his cigarette “—is a certain preoccupation with sex.”

McCall laughed. “Since it was the product of all three of us, that probably came out of Hodge’s mind somehow. Persons of your age and mine . . .”

Hodge said; “I don’t know where it came from, but I think I can explain it. It goes with religion, which is so often an outgrowth of sex—or a substitute for it.”

“What really interests me,” said McCall, “is what happened in a political sense.”

“Well, the short-range developments seem fairly obvious,” said Penfield, “and long-range ones are always unpredictable.”

“I wonder if it really exists,” said Hodge, as Penfield had the night before.

Penfield got up, went to the window, and looked out at the scudding clouds. “I wonder if we do,” he said.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--Provided a new cover image for free and unrestricted use with this eBook.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)