CHAPTER IV

M. Chatelard sat down by the bed and laid his finger on the slender wrist. A hardening pulse. Fever. He had anticipated fever, he almost welcomed it as the natural course.

Would she live? These nervous creatures are as tough as cats. But, poor soul, were it not perhaps best for her were she to pass? What a situation! Great gods, what a situation! There was not one of these searchers after psychological enigmas, not one of these implacable exponents of the weaknesses of the human heart, not a Maupassant, not a Mirbeau, not a d'Annunzio who could have devised the story of this impasse. To die would be too absolutely commonplace a solution. If he, Chatelard, could help it, she should not die, were it only for the proper working-out of the problem.

Propping his chin on his hand and his elbow on the bed, the savant leaned forward, gazing at his patient, till his keen eyes, piercing the gloom, were able to trace the lines of the unconscious face.

"It is not that she is so beautiful—there are many in this country who possess the same incredible purity of outline, the same delicate wealth of feminine charm—but c'est une ensorceleuse! Did I not say it to the young man? One of those women who create passions that become historic. One of those whose fate is to make havoc as they go. The three men here—they are mad of her, each in his different way. The poor Gerardine, he could have cried like a child, as we turned him from the room ... and the sly, quiet, relentless Bethune, that man of granite ... the lover, he's devoured; the very stone wastes in the furnace. How thin he has grown since that Indian night! And the third—the most surprising of all—the real husband! Oh, the strange story! the husband—the first husband par dessus le marché, as though matters were not sufficiently entangled already! Ah, ?a! mais d'où sort-il, celui-là? C'est qu'il faisait pitié—c'est encore lui le plus atteint des trois! One could feel the frenzied soul under that air of calm command." ...

Then enthusiastically following the trail of his own Gallic deductions, M. Chatelard began to reconstruct, con amore, the threads of the drama.

"Un beau gaillard, malgré sa paleur de revenant.... Avec lui, sans doute, elle a appris ce que c'est que l'amour. Ils se sont aimés jeunes et beaux.... Ils se valaient bien l'un l'autre, certes! Idylle parfaite, heures parfumées! Then comes the cyclone. He is swept from her by relentless duty. He dies, a hero in war as he was a hero in love. She is alone, desolate. She mourns. At the psychological moment, enters upon the scene the handsome, rich, powerful Sir Gerardine. He offers her ease, position, comfort, a home, his protection. She turns to him as a child to a father. She places her hand in his. And thereafter follows the inevitable. The years have gone by; she becomes more and more a woman; the demands of her nature expand; and the old husband who is—and I don't blame him—not content to be father.... Sapristi, how he bores her, the old husband! Then arrives the man, the young man, the man of her own age. (He has loved her already as his friend's wife, in the secret of his own soul, all in honour and loyalty.) He seeks her now, knowing that his hour has come." ...

"L'oublierai-je, jamais telle qu'elle était ce soir-là, au moment de la première tentation? Ruisselante du feu vert de ses émeraudes; superbe dans sa beauté, sa chasteté insolente; mais couvant déjà sous la neige de sa blanche beauté, le feu destructeur de la passion renaissante. Elle a lutté. Oh, oui, celle-là a lutté! Son ame et son corps se sont entredéchirés.... Mais, poursuivie jusque dans cette solitude même par l'implacable qui l'a traquée comme le tigre sa proie, la fin est inévitable!"

"Et au moment suprême où, femme au zénith des a gloire, elle cède à la seconde passion—voilà l'objet de la première qui rèsuscite, et vient la rèclamer! Ah, dieux, quel cri! Les oreilles m'en tintent encore. Jamais je ne l'oublierai, ce cri d'un coeur qui s'effondre...."

"And the resuscitated man? The devil! where does he come from? Springing up in the old house in the middle of the night. Another tragedy there! He misdoubts, as yet, nothing. Strong in his right, in the memory of their love, he comes to claim her of the old husband—Of the third, of the lover, he has no suspicion. My God, with what eyes of trouble and wonder did he not look at me when I bade him leave her! Unhappy fellow, why 'tis his very existence that's killing her! How long will it be before he finds out the truth, finds out that, at the very moment of regaining his treasure, he has been robbed, robbed by him who was his friend? And the friend, then, that man of granite, how will he bear himself? Will even his relentless determination stand before that terrible double knowledge of his own unconscious treachery to his comrade and of the mortal danger to his beloved? A stronger man, even than he, might well go mad! ... As for the pitiable second husband, the old man, who counts for so little in the midst of these three young lives, and is yet so stricken in all he holds most dear—his dignity, his honour, his pathetic senile confidence and affection—what of him? Oh, antique, silent house, what palpitating drama do you not hold, this desolate dawn! Those three men, each with his passion and his claim—his just claim—and the woman there, lying so still! ..."

So M. Chatelard mused, with ever and anon a keen eye to the patient, a stealthy touch on the pulse.

A pale shaft of light pierced in between the curtains, and, like a slowly shifting finger, moved straightly till it pointed to the bed. M. Chatelard started, rubbed his eyes, adjusted his spectacles, and stared again. The heavy, half-loosened tress that lay across the sheet shone silver in the light—the tress that had been so richly golden, crown of that haughty head, only the evening before.

"I have heard of such a thing," said the doctor to himself, "but it is the first time that I have seen it with my own eyes." He bent over the pillow and curiously lifted the strand of hair. There was no illusion about it. Rosamond's glorious hair was white.