of Heaven,” replied the sister, shocked, “how can you say such a thing, even think so? It is enough to tempt the saints to anger. Oh, Bertrande, you have not said such a thing to anyone else, have you?”
“Oh, no,” she answered lightly.
“Then for the love of Our Lady, never speak of it again to me or to anyone. It is unkind. Martin could consider it an insult. He might be very angry if he heard it.”
“Very well,” said Bertrande. “I was jesting,” and she smiled, but her heart was sick.
At confession, kneeling in the stale, cold semi-darkness, her hands muffled in her black wool capuchon, her head bowed, she said, as she had long meditated but never dared:
“Father, I have believed my husband, who is now master of my house, not to be Martin Guerre whom I married. Believing this, I have continued to live with him. I have sinned greatly.”
“My child,” replied the voice of the priest, without indicating the least surprise, “for what reason have you suspected this man not to be the true Martin Guerre?”
“Ah, he also has suspected him,” said Bertrande to herself, and her heart gave a great leap of joy, like that of an imprisoned animal who sees the way to escape.
She replied to the priest as she had replied to her husband, giving instances of his behavior which seemed to her unnatural.
“What shall I do,” she besought him finally, “what shall I do to be forgiven?”
“Softly, my child,” said the calm voice of the priest. “It is then for his kindness to you that you accuse him?”
“Not for his kindness, but for the manner of his kindness.”
“No matter,” said the priest. “It is because of a great change in his spirit. He spoke to me of this long since, being concerned for you, and it seems to me that he has been toward you both wise and gentle. Go now in peace, my daughter. Be disturbed no more.”
Bertrande continued to kneel, only drawing her cloak closer about her shoulders. The cold air seemed to draw slowly through the meshes of the wool and rise from the cold stones on which she knelt. At last she replied incredulously:
“You then believe him to be no impostor?”
“Surely not,” said the easy voice of the priest, warm, definite and uncomprehending. “Surely not. Men change with the years, you must remember. Pray for understanding, my daughter, and go in peace.”
Slowly she got to her feet and slowly made her way through the obscurity to the doorway, pushed aside the unwieldy leather curtain, stepped outside into the freely moving air and the more spacious dusk, and descended the familiar steps.
Familiar figures passed her, greeting her as they went on into the church. She answered them as in a dream, and as in a dream took the path to her farm. She felt like one who has been condemned to solitude, whether of exile or of prison. All the circumstances of her life, the instruction of the church, her affection for her children and her kindred rose up about her in a wall implacable as stone, invisible as air, condemning her to silence and to the perpetuation of a sin which her soul had learned to abhor. She could not by any effort of the imagination return to the happy and deluded state of mind in which she had passed the first years since the return of her husband. The realization that she was again with child added to her woe, and the weight, such as she had carried before in her body joyously, now seemed the burden of her sin made actual and dragged her down at every step.
The path, turning to follow the contours of the mountainside, brought her after a time to the crest of a slope above her farm. There it lay, house, grange and stable, set about with its own orchards, its chimney smoking gently, infinitely more familiar, more her own after all these years than the house in which she had been born; yet as she looked down toward it from the hillside she thought that it was no longer hers. An enemy had taken possession of it and had treacherously drawn to his party all those who most owed her loyalty and trust. Her eyes filled with tears, and when she drew her hands away from her face, a commotion had arisen in the courtyard below. People were running about with torches, gathering into a group from which excited cries, staccato and sonorous, rose toward the hillside, and presently three figures on horseback detached themselves from the group and rode away, the hoofs ringing on the stones. She remembered then that Martin had promised to make one of a cordon for a bear hunt from the parish of Sode, and knew that these must be his neighbors come for him.
When she reached her doorway, the housekeeper greeted her.
“The Master is gone to Sode. Ah, they are fortunate to have him! He is famous as a hunter of bear.” She laughed, helping Bertrande to remove her cape; and did not see that her mistress’s face had been stained with tears.
The next evening as they sat together, her husband said to Bertrande:
“Why do you look at me so strangely with your lovely two-colored eyes, your lucky eyes?”
“I was wondering when you would leave me to return again to the wars.”
“I have told you never, never until you cease to love me.”
“I have ceased to love you. Will you go?”
Something in the quality of her voice restrained the man from jesting. “I do not believe you,” he said, courteously.
“You must believe me,” she cried with passion. “I beg of you to go. You have been here too long already,” and a fire kindled in the eyes which the Gascons call lucky, the eyes of hazel and green, which made her husband lean forward and look long and searchingly into her face.
At last he said:
“You are still cherishing that madness of which you spoke, long since. Can you suppose that while you believe this thing of me, I will ever leave you? That would serve only to deepen your madness and increase your suffering. Do you not understand?”
“You are intricate,” she cried. “You have the subtlety of the Evil One himself.”
The man straightened, and rose from his chair. When he spoke, the quality of his voice had changed completely.
“I am sorry, Madame. There are others to be considered besides yourself. School yourself, Madame, to the inevitable.”
He lifted her hand to his lips, and without another word turned and left her.
“Ah,” exclaimed Bertrande bitterly, “that was the true manner of Martin Guerre. He has profited well from my complaints, this impostor.”
Then began for the woman a long game of waiting and scrutinizing. Some day, she told herself, he will be off his guard, some day, if I do not warn him too often, I shall catch him in his deception, and free myself of him. “Ah, Martin, Martin,” she cried in her loneliness, “where are you and why do you not return?” And as she observed the man whom she now called the impostor, considered the tranquillity of his demeanor and the ease with which he accomplished all his designs, confidently winning all people to him, the terrifying thought occurred to her that his great sense of security might lie in some certain knowledge, unshared by herself or by anyone else at Artigues. Perhaps the real Martin was indeed dead. Perhaps this man had seen his body on some distant battlefield, besmeared with blood and mutilated, the face turned downward to the bloody grass.
Perhaps,
