The Battle Of The Strong: Chapter 26

Chapter 26

It had been a hot, oppressive day, but when, a half-hour later, Guida
hastened back from a fruitless visit to the house of the Dean, who was
absent in England, a vast black cloud had drawn up from the south-east,
dropping a curtain of darkness upon the town. As she neared the doorway
of the cottage, a few heavy drops began to fall, and, in spite of her
bitter trouble, she quickened her footsteps, fearing that her grandfather
had come back, to find the house empty and no light or supper ready.

M. de Mauprat had preceded her by not more than five minutes. His
footsteps across the Place du Vier Prison had been unsteady, his head
bowed, though more than once he raised it with a sort of effort, as it
were in indignation or defiance. He muttered to himself as he opened the
door, and he paused in the hall-way as though hesitating to go forward.
After a moment he made a piteous gesture of his hand towards the kitchen,
and whispered to himself in a kind of reassurance. Then he entered the
room and stood still. All was dark save for the glimmer of the fire.

"Guida! Guida!" he said in a shaking, muffled voice. There was no answer.
He put by his hat and stick in the corner, and felt his way to the great
chair-he seemed to have lost his sight. Finding the familiar, worn arm of
the chair, he seated himself with a heavy sigh. His lips moved, and he
shook his head now and then, as though in protest against some unspoken
thought.

Presently he brought his clinched hand down heavily on the table, and
said aloud:

"They lie--they lie! The Connetable lies! Their tongues shall be cut out.
. . . Ah, my little, little child! . . . The Connetable dared--he
dared--to tell me this evil gossip--of the little one--of my Guida!"

He laughed contemptuously, but it was a crackling, dry laugh, painful in
its cheerlessness. He drew his snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and
slowly taking a pinch, raised it towards his nose, but the hand paused
half-way, as though a new thought arrested it.

In the pause there came the sound of the front door opening, and then
footsteps in the hall.

The pinch of snuff fell from the fingers of the old man on to the white
stuff of his short-clothes, but as Guida entered the room and stood still
a moment, he did not stir in his seat. The thundercloud had come still
lower and the room was dark, the coals in the fireplace being now covered
with grey ashes.

"Grandpethe! Grandpethe!" Guida said.

He did not answer. His heart was fluttering, his tongue clove to the roof
of his mouth, dry and thick. Now he should know the truth, now he should
be sure that they had lied about his little Guida, those slanderers of
the Vier Marchi. Yet, too, he had a strange, depressing fear, at variance
with his loving faith and belief that in Guida there was no wrong: such
belief as has the strong swimmer that he can reach the shore through wave
and tide; yet also with strange foreboding, prelude to the cramp that
makes powerless, defying youth, strength, and skill. He could not have
spoken if it had been to save his own life--or hers.

Getting no answer to her words, Guida went first to the hearth and
stirred the fire, the old man sitting rigid in his chair and regarding
her with fixed, watchful eyes. Then she found two candles and lighted
them, placing them on the mantel, and turning to the crasset hanging by
its osier rings from a beam, slowly lighted it. Turning round, she was
full in the light of the candles and the shooting flames of the fire.

De Mauprat's eyes had followed her every motion, unconscious of his
presence as she was. This--this was not the Guida he had known! This was
not his grandchild, this woman with the pale, cold face, and dark,
unhappy eyes; this was not the laughing girl who but yesterday was a babe
at his knee. This was not--

The truth, which had yet been before his blinded eyes how long! burst
upon him. The shock of it snapped the filmy thread of being. As the
escaping soul found its wings, spread them, and rose from that dun morass
called Life, the Sieur de Mauprat, giving a long, deep sigh, fell back in
his great arm-chair dead, and the silver snuff-box rattled to the floor.

Guida turned round with a sharp cry. Running to him, she lifted up the
head that lay over on his shoulder. She felt his pulse, she called to
him. Opening his waistcoat, she put her ear to his heart; but it was
still--still.

A mist, a blackness, came over her own eyes, and without a cry or a word,
she slid to the floor unconscious, as the black thunderstorm broke upon
the Place du Vier Prison.

The rain was like a curtain let down between the prying, clattering world
without and the strange peace within: the old man in his perfect sleep;
the young, misused wife in that passing oblivion borrowed from death and
as tender and compassionate while it lasts.

As though with merciful indulgence, Fate permitted no one to enter upon
the dark scene save a woman in whom was a deep motherhood which had never
nourished a child, and to whom this silence and this sorrow gave no
terrors. Silence was her constant companion, and for sorrow she had been
granted the touch that assuages the sharpness of pain and the love called
neighbourly kindness. Maitresse Aimable came.

Unto her it was given to minister here. As the night went by, and the
offices had been done for the dead, she took her place by the bedside of
the young wife, who lay staring into space, tearless and still, the life
consuming away within her.

In the front room of the cottage, his head buried in his hands, Ranulph
Delagarde sat watching beside the body of the Sieur de Mauprat.

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