Martin, his face immediately full of concern. “Go with her quickly, my sister. Do you not see? She is ill.” To the priest he said, “You understand to what a pass it has come? I would give half my farm if this soldier from Rochefort had never come to Luchon. This will unsettle her reason.”
The sister, who had followed Bertrande, found her kneeling beside the bed, clutching the coverlet in agony. To all questions and reproaches she answered only:
“I am dying, I am dying. I beg of you, send for my nurse.”
She was delivered that night in great suffering of a daughter who died before she had lived an hour. Bertrande herself was very ill, and in the fever which followed the birth of the child, asked only to see the soldier from Rochefort. To humor her, for he thought her hours were numbered, the curé sent for the soldier, but the man was not to be found. He had not lingered at Artigues. He had been seen at St. Gaudens some days later. After that all trace of him was lost. However, the curé caused to be written down and properly witnessed and signed the accounts of those who heard the soldier’s accusation, and these papers he brought to the invalid. Immediately after she had received them, the condition of Madame Guerre began to improve, a fact which could not fail to impress not only the curé but her entire family.
“She is mad,” they said to each other, “but if we humor her and are patient, God willing, she may recover.”
The improvement continued. She gained strength slowly but steadily and was soon able to walk about a little in her room, but she refused steadily to leave the Chamber. She refused likewise to see her husband, to admit him to her room, or in any way to have anything to do with him. Everyone on the farm could see how heavily this weighed upon the master. He was as patient as ever with his people, and as kind, but there was little merriment.
“Madame is not herself since her illness,” the housekeeper said to the priest, “and it is breaking the Master’s heart.”
The priest sought out Martin Guerre, and found him at work in the fields. Together they sat down in the shade of the beech trees, and the priest said:
“Who would have thought that kindness could have worked so much sorrow!”
Martin shook his head.
“There would have been no sorrow, Father, if I had not tried to run away from my father’s anger. The trouble begins there. But what shall I do to help her? Once she asked me to leave her.”
The priest surveyed his friend intently. If this man were not indeed his friend and the son of his friend, surely his eyes would betray him.
“And you refused to leave?” the priest said.
“At that time I refused,” said the man before him, evenly, his sad eyes meeting those of the priest without hesitation. “I thought that to leave her then would but confirm her in this madness, and that I should be deserting her to years of pain—as if I were to fasten upon her the guilt of a sin—” he hesitated—“a sin of which she must not be accused.”
His voice was vehement, and he stopped speaking abruptly, overcome with emotion. To the priest, who knew the voice, who knew the face, there could be no doubt whatever but that the grief, the concern and the humility were real. He passed a hand over his forehead and looked away toward the empty wheat field.
“My son,” he answered at last, “I do not know what to advise you. What you have said is true. If you run away—if you disappear again—it will look like an admission of guilt. Unless, of course, you go with my consent and knowledge, leaving word of where you may be found, and denying the accusation of the fellow from Rochefort. It is conceivable that your absence might improve the condition of your wife. Your presence but adds continual fuel to the fire. The spirit is ill, and it has need of rest to heal itself, of rest as well as prayer. But you cannot leave the farm indefinitely. Your people have need of you. The parish, also—I have need of you. Is there no journey you could make about some business of the farm?”
Martin shook his head.
“The business of the farm is all in the parish of Artigues.”
“You left a sum of money with your uncle when you were a boy. I think that it has never been spent. Take it, and journey to Toulouse and there purchase a gift for Our Lady. Be home again before the snow. Say farewell to your wife before you go.”
“She will not speak to me,” said the man with a wry smile. “But I shall say farewell to you before I go. I must help them with the wheat harvest before I leave. Meanwhile”—he hesitated—“let us say nothing of the matter until it is accomplished. There will be less talk.”
The priest nodded, and blessed him. Martin Guerre returned to his work.
A few days later Bertrande herself sent for Pierre Guerre. The honest man found her seated in the high-backed chair near the curtained bed, but as he approached her, she rose.
“I have sent for you, my uncle,” she said in a low voice, “because you are still the head of our family, and I must beseech your help.”
The room was cool, and to the diminished vitality of the invalid it seemed even cold. She stood wrapped in her black wool capuchon, the hood thrown back on her shoulders. Her illness had aged her, but there showed in her face such poise and clarity of spirit that the uncle was unaccountably moved.
“Sit down, my child,” he said gently. “You will tire yourself.”
She shook her head.
“I ask you to believe me, believe me at last, when I say to you now, ‘I am not mad.’ All my household believe me to be mad. I have only yourself to whom to look for help.”
“I believe you, my child,” he answered quietly. “Sit down. Look, I will sit down beside you on the coffer.”
“I have no proof,” said she, “unless the story of the soldier from Rochefort can be considered proof.”
“It is a strange story,” replied the uncle. “I was angered that day, but since then, the picture seems to move, like people changing places in a dance. If there is another man who resembles Martin, this must be the man. You are Martin’s wife, and you would be the first to know. Moreover, he has behaved strangely of late.”
“In what manner?” said Bertrande.
“He came to me demanding a sum of money which he left with me before he ran away. I replied that the money had made part of the sum for the purchase of the lower fields. It was a matter of which his father had approved. The purchase was made after his father’s death, according to his father’s plan.”
“I remember,” said Bertrande. “What then?”
“He was angered,” said Pierre shortly.
“I understand,” said Bertrande slowly. “He wishes money in hand in order to leave us. Now that he fears detection, now that he has pillaged us, now that he has almost killed me, he will go away.” She began to weep and hid her face in her hands.
A deliberate, abiding wrath grew in the old uncle as he watched her bent head and listened to her sobs. “Madame,” he said, striking with his clenched hand upon his knee, “give me your permission to accuse this man of his crime. He shall not leave us unpunished.”
Bertrande could hardly speak for her
