_ PART I CHAPTER XIII. PALS
"Ah! now for a good talk," said Chris. "We have got at least half an hour. Are you tired, Bertie, or only bored?"
But he was neither, he assured her. He had enjoyed his evening greatly. No, he had not danced. He had found it enough diverting to look on tranquilly in a corner. _Mais oui_, everybody had been most kind, including his hostess, to whom he paid a special tribute of appreciation. He had found her as gracious as she was beautiful.
"Did she try to pump you?" asked Chris.
He raised his brows in humorous bewilderment. But to pump--what was it? To ask questions? Ah yes, she had asked him several questions. He had not answered all of them. He feared she had found him a little stupid. But she had been very patient with him, ah! so patient--he spread out his hands, with the old, quick smile, and Chris's peal of laughter echoed far and wide.
"Bertie, you're too heavenly for words! Then she didn't find out about Valpre? She thinks--I suppose she thinks--that Trevor introduced us to each other."
"I do not know what she thinks," the Frenchman made answer. "But no, we did not speak of Valpre! That is a secret, _hein_?"
"Not exactly a secret. I told Max. But Aunt Philippa--oh, she is so different. She never understands things," said Chris. "I daresay she will find out from Trevor as it is; but I hope she won't--I do hope she won't!"
He smiled comprehendingly. "But Mr. Mordaunt--he understands, yes?" he said.
She hesitated. "I never told even him about that night in the Magic Cave, Bertie."
"No?" he said, his quick eyes upon her. "But why not?"
She shook her head with vehemence. "I couldn't. Everyone--even Jack--made such a fuss at the time--as if--as if"--she turned crimson--"I had done something really wicked. I'm sure I don't know why. I always said so."
There was defiance as well as distress in her voice. Bertrand leaned a little towards her.
"Mr. Mordaunt would not think like that," he said, with conviction.
She looked at him dubiously. "I'm not so sure. He has extraordinary views on some things. I never quite know how he will take anything. Other people are the same. You are the only person I am quite sure of."
He smiled, but not as if greatly elated. "That is because we are pals," he said.
"Yes, I know. It's good to have a pal who understands." Chris spoke a little wistfully, but almost instantly dismissed the matter. "Why, I am forgetting! You haven't seen Cinders yet, and I told him you were coming. He is upstairs. Shall we go and find him?"
They went up together. Half-way up she slipped her hand into his, with a soft little laugh. "It's like old times, Bertie. Don't break the spell, _preux chevalier_. Let us pretend--just for to-night!"
They found Cinders imprisoned in a little sitting-room at the top of the house which Chris shared with her cousin. His greeting of Bertrand was effusive, even rapturous. Like his mistress, he never forgot a friend.
Afterwards they sat and talked of many things, chiefly connected with Valpre. There was so much to remember--Mademoiselle Gautier and her queer, conventual prejudices, Manon, the maid-of-all-work, and her funny stories of the shore.
"She quite believed in the spell," Chris said. "She almost frightened me with it."
"Without doubt there was a spell," said Bertrand gravely.
"You really think so? I never believed in it after that night."
"No?" he said. "And yet it was there."
Chris peered at him. "You talk as if it were something quite substantial," she said.
"It was substantial," he made answer, and then with a sudden smile into her wondering eyes: "As substantial, _cherie_, as my rope of sand that was to make my work endure like--like the Sphinx and Cleopatra's Needle and--and--" He broke off with his eloquent shrug, paused a moment, then--"and--our friendship, if you will," he ended.
"Ah, fancy your remembering that!" she said. "But I believe you remember everything."
"That is the spell," he said.
"Is it, Bertie? And do you remember the duel, and how you wouldn't tell me what it was all about? Tell me now!" she begged, as a child pleading for a story. "I always wanted to know."
But his face darkened instantly. "Not that, _petite_. He was bad. He was _scelerat_. We will not speak of him."
"But, Bertie, I'm grown-up now. I'm quite old enough to know," she urged, with a coaxing hand upon his arm.
He took the hand, turned it upwards, stroked the soft palm very reverently. "I pray that you will never be old enough, Chris," he said, and in the shaded lamplight she saw that his face had grown suddenly melancholy, almost haggard. "The knowledge of evil is a poisonous thing. Those who find it can never be young again."
His manner awed her a little. She did not pursue the point with her customary persistence. "Well, tell me what happened afterwards," she said. "He got well again?"
"Yes, _petite_."
"And--you forgave each other?"
"Never!" Bertrand raised his head and shot out the word with emphasis.
"Never, Bertie?" Chris looked at him, slightly startled.
He looked back at her, faintly smiling, but with the melancholy still in his eyes. "Never," he repeated. "That shocks you, no?"
"Not really," she said loyally. "I'm sure he was horrid. He looked it. Then--you are enemies still?"
"Enemies?" He shrugged his shoulders. "No, I think he would not consider me as an enemy now."
"And yet you never forgave him?"
"No, never." Again his denial was emphatic. After a moment, seeing her bewilderment, he proceeded to explain. "If he had apologized, if he had retracted the insult, then it is possible that a reconciliation might have been effected between us."
"But he didn't?" said Chris. "Then what happened? Did he do nothing at all?"
"For a long time--nothing," said Bertrand.
"And then?"
"Then," very simply he made reply, "he ruined me."
"Bertie!" She gazed at him with tragedy dawning in her eyes. "He ruined you! He!"
"He supplied the evidence against me," Bertrand said. "But it was clever. He spread a net--so"--he flung out his hands with an explanatory gesture--"a net that I see not nor suspect, and then when I am entrapped he draw it close--close, and--I am a prisoner." He shut his teeth with a click, and for an instant smiled--the smile of the man who fights with his back against the wall.
But the tragedy had grown from shadow to reality in the turquoise blue eyes of the girl beside him. "Oh, Bertie," she said, with a break in her voice, "then it was all my fault--mine!"
He turned towards her swiftly. "No, no, no! Who has said that? It is not true!" he declared, with vehemence.
"You said it yourself--almost," she told him. "And it is true, for if you hadn't fought him it would never have happened. Oh, Bertie! I'm beginning to think it was a dreadful pity I ever went to Valpre!"
He caught her hands and held them. "You shall not say it!" he declared passionately. "You shall not think it! _Mignonne_, listen! Those days at Valpre are to me the most precious, the most sacred, the most dear of my life. They can never return, it is true. But the memory of them is mine for ever. Of that can no one deprive me. While I live I shall cherish them in my heart."
He cheeked himself abruptly; she was gazing at him with a sort of speculative wonder that had arrested the tragedy in her eyes. At his sudden pause she began to smile.
"Bertie, dear, forgive me, but I can't help thinking what a funny Englishman you would have made! So you really don't think it was my fault? I'm so glad. I should break my heart if it were."
He stooped, catching her hands up to his lips, whispering inarticulately.
She suffered him, half-laughing. "Silly Frenchman!" she said softly.
And at that he looked up and let her go. "You are right," he said, speaking rather thickly. "I am foolish. I am mad. And you--you have the patience of an angel to support me thus."
"Oh no," said Chris. "I'm not a bit like an angel. In fact, I'm rather wicked sometimes--not very, you know, Bertie, only rather. Now let me show you my presents. I brought them up here on purpose."
So gaily she diverted the conversation, mainly because she had caught a gleam of tears in her friend's eyes and was aware that they had not been far from her own. It would never do for them to sit crying together on her birthday night. Besides, it was too ridiculous, for what was there to cry about? Bertrand was in a better position now than he had been for years. And she--and she--well, it was her birthday, and surely that was reason enough for being glad.
It was Bertrand who at length gently drew her attention to the time. They had been talking for the best part of an hour.
"Will not the supper dances be nearly finished?" he suggested.
"Oh, goodness!" exclaimed Chris. "Yes, long ago. We must fly. Say good-bye to Cinders. You will come and see him again soon, won't you? Come just as often as you can."
At the door she paused a moment, slipped a warm hand into his, and for the first time shyly broke her silence upon the subject of her approaching marriage.
"I'm so glad you are coming to live with us when we are married," she said. "I shall never feel lonely with you there."
"You would not be lonely without me," he made quick response. "You will have always your husband."
She caught her breath, and then laughed. "To be sure. I hadn't thought of that. But Trevor is always busy, and he is going to write a book too." She looked at him with sudden mischief in her eyes. "Yes, I am very glad you are coming," she said again. "When he doesn't want you with him you can come and play with me. And when it's summer"--her eyes fairly danced--"we'll go for picnics, Bertie, lots of picnics. You'll like that, _preux chevalier_?"
He smiled back upon her; who could have helped it? But he stifled a sigh as he smiled. Would life be always a picnic to her, he asked himself? He could not imagine it otherwise, and yet he knew that even upon this child of mirth and innocence the reality of life must dawn some day. Would it be a gracious dawning of pearly tints and roselit radiance, gradually filling that eager young soul to the brim with the greater joys of life? Or would it be fiery and terrible, a blinding, relentless burst of light, from which she would shrink appalled, discerning the wrath of the gods before ever she had realized their bounty?
Could it be thus with her, his little comrade, his bird of Paradise, his darling? He thought not. He believed not. And yet deep in the heart of him he feared.
And because of that lurking fear he vowed silently over the little friendly hand that lay so confidingly in his that never while breath remained in his body would he leave her until he knew her happiness--the ultimate happiness of her womanhood--to be assured.
It seemed to him that it was for this alone that he had been introduced once more into her book of life. All his hopes and dreams had passed; he was an old man before his time; but this one thing, it seemed, was left to him. For a while longer his name would figure with hers across the page. Only when the page turned his part would be done. She would not need him then. She would be a woman; and--_eh bien_, it was only the child Chris who could ever be expected to need him now. When she ceased to be a child the need--if such, indeed, existed--would be for ever past; and he would be no more to her than a memory--the memory of one who had played with her a while in the happy land of her childhood and had shared with her the picnics of those summer days.
This was the sole remaining aspiration of Bertrand de Montville--the man who in the arrogance of his youth had diced with the gods, and had lost the cast. _