drop leave the weakening body, feeling her own strength drop slowly away like the blood of the dove.
“What would you have me do?” she asked at length. “The truth is only the truth. I cannot change it, if I would.”
The old woman turned her head without lifting her shoulders, still leaning forward heavily above her square, heavy lap. Her face was much more lined than in the days when Bertrande had first known her. There were creases above and below her lips, parallel with the line of the lips, as well as creases at the corners of the mouth. Her forehead was scored with lines that arched one above the other regularly, following the arches of the eyebrows. There were fine radiating lines about her eyes. The skin was brown and healthy, with ruddy patches on the cheek bones, but nevertheless the face was worn.
“I, Madame?” she said.
Bertrande looked into the tired affectionate brown eyes and nodded.
“Ah,” said the housekeeper, turning once more to the dove which now lay still in her hands, “Madame, I would have you still be deceived. We were all happy then.” She laid the dead dove with the others, and stooped to pick up the dish of blood.
All the way to Toulouse the echoes of these three conversations rang through the mind of Bertrande de Rols, making a slow, confused accompaniment to the clop-clop of the horses’ hooves. The housekeeper rode behind her, Uncle Pierre before. They descended the valley of the Neste, the road running close to the stream, until the valley closed about them narrowly, leaving barely room for the passage of the torrent and the path above it. The woods were yellowing, but were still rich in leafy shadow. They came from the deep gorge to the wider valley of the Garonne, the stream coming in swiftly from the right, from the valley of Aran, saw St. Bertrand de Comminges with its narrow buttresses rising from its stony pedestal far below them in the green cup of the hills, crossed the Garonne and came into the more spacious country where the heavy-laden vines were trained from maple tree to maple tree in natural festoons. They passed St. Gaudens and St. Martory; they approached Muret. It was the journey which Bertrande had taken in imagination with Martin that autumn when he had first left her, and it was all rich and lovely, the wild mountain scenery giving way gradually to more thickly clustered farms, thorn hedges around the autumn gardens, and fruit trees set about the houses, medlars, plums and cherries, and always the fresh running of the water beyond the road; but now she traveled in great bitterness of heart, hearing through the noise of the hooves and the splashing of the Garonne, only the reproaches and prayers of those dependent upon her.
It had come to be a fixed idea with her that Martin was dead. It was incredible to her that any man could stand so calmly to face the extravagant charges brought against him as Arnaud du Tilh had done, if he had not certain knowledge that the man was dead whose place he usurped. Justly or unjustly she believed also that du Tilh had had something to do with Martin’s death. Being so bereaved, and so unjustly blamed, herself, she would have welcomed almost any plan that would have given her back the sympathy and understanding of those she loved. And they had entreated her to withdraw the charges against du Tilh. Well, and if she did? Was it too late? Might she not restore to them the happier days?
“I, Madame? I could wish you still to be deceived.”
The words recurred to her again and again. Might she not purchase for her people with this one secret weight of shame against her soul the peace and happiness which she desired for them, and for herself their forgiveness and gratitude?
Again, if the court of Toulouse should reverse the decision of the court of Rieux, what then? Might she not feel released from this necessity of pursuit and revenge? The judges of Toulouse were very learnèd men and very near to the king in authority. The king, in turn, was appointed of God. Might she not consider it in some sense an indication from heaven, if the court should command her to receive this man as her husband, and might she not thereby find peace?
She had not seen the man whom she accused since the day in court when she had cried out against the sentence of death. His face had grown a little shadowy, the whole quality of his person a little unreal. Riding in the late afternoon under the shadow of trees, and out from that shadow into the light of a meadow, then again into the shadow of other, farther trees, she let herself slip for a time into a dream of surrender, and drooping over the saddle-bow, giving herself easily to the slow motion of the horse, she thought only of the restored tranquillity in the big kitchen, the contented faces bent above the evening meal—little of the man seated in the chair by the hearth, and, for the time being, nothing of herself in that new and impossible relationship. Meanwhile Pierre Guerre rode before her, and when she lifted her eyes from the roadway, or from the contemplation of the roadside grass, she saw his broad and honest back going steadily on.
She remembered then that he was not only her one supporter in the task which she had undertaken, but that he was also the one remaining defender of the old authority of her husband’s house. He was that authority, simple and direct, without need of subterfuge or of superfluous charm, which before the coming of the stranger had kept them all in a secure and wholesome peace. He was for her that day a tradition more potent than the church. In her country the church had sometimes been denied, but even the Albigenses, hunted from town to town, from town to mountain cavern, and mercilessly destroyed for that denial, had never denied the tradition of which Pierre Guerre was the symbol. When she lay down that night in a strange bed in a strange valley, it was with a fatigue which overwhelmed body and soul, so that she felt she would have been fortunate never to waken.
On the third day of their journey they had come to the lowlands, and the September heat was excessive. There were no more cool ravines with belated shadows, where the water dripped from rocks, and where ferns grew. Now the fields lay parched and dusty. A white dust rose constantly from the road under the horses’ hooves, and the leaves of the plane trees were dulled by dust. Earlier in the day they traversed the waste lands, filled with rocks and patches of wild lavender. At noon the heat was so great that they stopped to rest for nearly three hours under a grove of plane trees. Here there was shade for them and for their beasts, but the cicadas, boring into the bark of the trees for cooling drinks in the hot weather, beat their cymbals so loud in their great content, at the heat, at the sweet liquid which they sucked all day, that the whole grove rang, harshly reverberant. The air seemed to tremble to the sound, and for Bertrande they were a torment made audible. She was glad to resume the way, although the noise of the cicadas accompanied them still, now near, now far, as they passed other groves.
The Garonne ran, broader now, no longer splashing and sparkling, but sullenly, a yellow flood weighted with earth from the mountain-sides where the goats browsed. They crossed it toward evening over a wooden bridge into the city of Toulouse. Farther downstream, the first four arches of the Pont Neuf, the new stone bridge which was to be so well and so cleverly constructed that it would withstand even the most violent of the spring floods, projected its incompleted ramp less than half way across the yellow tide. Before them on the quay, the western sunlight shone full upon the whitened brick façade of Notre Dame de la Dalbade, and behind them the Pyrenees, of which a long spur had accompanied them almost to the city, retreated range upon snowy range, now turning slowly rose-color, far away, even into Spain. Behind La Dalbade lay Toulouse, a huddle of buildings of a dusty, rose-colored brick, intricate, noisy and odorous. The mountain peasants crossed the quay, passed the white façade of the church, and plunged into the network of echoing streets.
They found an inn and ordered supper, after engaging lodging for the night. The ordinary was full of guests, mostly merchants from the neighboring small towns, with a sprinkling of city men. Bertrande found a place in a corner, and, leaning back against the stained plastered wall, took refuge from herself and her companions in the public confusion of the room. Gradually, through the fog of personal misery which enveloped her, she observed that the talk was not general and easy, as one might have expected it to be, but that a group of men was giving great attention to a small number of travelers, and that there was a great deal of head-shaking, and of sober looks. When the hostess
