ran in shining cascades across the parched and broken earth, but Bertrande de Rols did not walk out to see it, nor did it matter to her that the flowers sprang up after the passage of the water as if a carpet had suddenly been spread, a carpet of a thousand flowers and a thousand pleasant odors. During the last days of August word was brought to Artigues that the parliament of Toulouse had found the evidence inconclusive and had called the witnesses for a second trial.
The curé visited Bertrande.
“My daughter,” he said, as persuasive and kindly as if she had not now for almost a year steadily refused his advice, “it is no more than my duty to entreat you to consider once more that which you have undertaken.”
“Reverend Father,” said Bertrande abruptly, “have you never once thought but that I might be right? Consider the soldier from Rochefort. Is it not possible that this man may indeed be Arnaud du Tilh? Is it not more than likely?”
“All things are possible with God,” said the priest, “but I cannot think it likely that the man of whom we speak should be one and the same with a most notorious rogue.” His voice softened and his eyes became very sad. “The man of whom we speak was one whom I had grown to value greatly. His ways, his thoughts, were kindly. There was no soul in my parish of Artigues who did not benefit in some way from his presence here.”
“You valued him,” said Bertrande quietly, “more than you valued Martin Guerre who ran away?”
“Indeed, more,” said the priest. “What was that boy? A raw, impatient youth, a thoughtless boy, selfish in the extreme. He had in him, it is true, the qualities of a great man. I like to think that he has grown into that man. His selfishness has become generosity, his impatience has become energy well-directed. It did not happen suddenly. He was eight years in a hard school.” He paused, and in a curious voice asked her, “It does not pain you to hear me praise him?”
“No,” she answered slowly, as if she questioned herself. “It is no more than just to remember that he has been kind to us—kind to all, save me, and kind even to me after a strange fashion.”
“Then if it does not pain you to hear him praised,” said the priest, pursuing his slight advantage, “if it pleases you a little to hear good of him, then you cannot have ceased entirely to love him, and does not this love convince you that he is truly Martin Guerre?”
“No,” said Bertrande fiercely and quickly. “No, Father. Can you not see, it is in this love that he has wronged me most, that he has damned my soul? I have sinned, through him, and you will not understand it even long enough to give me absolution! No, Father, I cannot believe him to be other than the rogue, Arnaud du Tilh.”
Her cheeks had flushed, as if with a fever, and to the priest her eyes held a strange luminosity. He lifted his hand and then, helplessly, dropped it upon his knee. He said:
“There is a doubt, nevertheless. While there remains a doubt you run the risk of unwillingly, unwittingly, assisting at the destruction of your own husband. I counsel you to withdraw the charges before it is too late. Those who love you, and him, have given you an opportunity of retreating from this whole affair.
“Is it for you to assume vengeance? You believe that you have sinned. You are in danger of sinning far more greatly. If there is evil in the matter, God will unravel it in His own good time. No, do not answer now. I advise you to withdraw the accusation. If you cannot do this, if your heart will not permit you to do this, then I shall pray for you that you may be prevented against your will from so harming, not only yourself, but all who love you.”
He left her sorely shaken, as he had meant to do, not in her opinion of the man’s guilt, but in her belief in the wisdom of her action. The event had gone beyond her plan. “I did not demand his death,” she reminded herself; “but now I must demand it.”
After the priest came Martin’s youngest sister. She knelt in front of Bertrande and, covering Bertrande’s two hands with her own, looked up into the face of her sister-in-law, and said most pleadingly:
“Bertrande, my dearest sister, we were always good friends. Do not be angry with me now. When you come before the judges of Toulouse, say to them, ‘I withdraw the charges made against my husband. I do not know how it happened—I think that I was mad.’ Our uncle will not press the charges, if you do not. Martin will forgive you. We shall all be happy again. Dear God,” and she suddenly began to weep, “we cannot have him killed before his own house.”
She bowed her head on her hands, and Bertrande felt upon her own cold fingers the warm tears.
“Little sister,” she answered in despair, “how can I deny the truth?”
“It is only the truth for you, not for us,” returned the weeping girl. “For the truth, that none of us believe, you would destroy us all. We shall never be happy again. The farm will never prosper again.”
“Your uncle believes as I do,” said Bertrande.
“Ah, but he is old. He wants nothing to be changed that was not just as it was when our father died. He would not change a cobble stone. And Martin changes everything, and is changed himself, so that we all love him more.”
“Well, then,” said Bertrande, “if the man be Martin, as you would have me say, why does not Arnaud du Tilh come forward and declare himself? Why should he let an innocent man suffer in his name?”
“He has enough to answer for with the law,” replied the girl with some impatience. “It is to his advantage to be considered dead. The law will cease to seek for him. And why should a rogue put his neck into a halter for the sake of another?”
Bertrande sighed and laid her hand gently on the girl’s shoulder.
“I am so sorry,” she said, “so sorry.” But she promised nothing.
September came, reddening the vines, making the mornings and evenings cool. Bertrande, returning from church the evening before her departure, whither she had gone in preparation for the journey to Toulouse, crossed the courtyard toward her house, wearily. She saw the housekeeper sitting near the doorway killing doves, and sat down beside the old woman.
“You have made your prayers, Madame,” said the old woman.
“Yes.”
“I wish that you had made them for a better cause.”
“How can you know what prayers I made?”
“I cannot know, Madame. I only know that since you have had this strange idea of yours, nothing goes well for us. And all was well before. So well.”
She sighed, leaning forward, holding the dove head down between her hands, the smooth wings folded close to the smooth soft body, while the dark blood dripped slowly from a cut in the throat into an earthen dish. The dish, already filled with blood, darker than that which was falling into it, spilled over slightly, and a barred gray cat, creeping cautiously near, elongated, its belly close to the ground, put out a rasping pale tongue and licked the blood. The housekeeper, after a little, pushed it away with the side of her foot. A pile of soft gray-feathered bodies already lay beside her on the bench. The living dove turned its head this way and that, struggled a little, clasping a pale cold claw over the hand that held it, and relaxed, although still turning its head. The blood seemed to be clotting too soon, the wound was shrunken, and the old woman enlarged it with the point of the knife which she had in her lap. The dove made no cry. Bertrande watched with pity and comprehension the
