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This had come before, whatever it was, without their trying, and nothing came now but the intenser consciousness of their quest and their subterfuge. The strangest thing of all was what had really happened to the old safety. What had really happened was that Sir Claude was "free" and that Mrs. Beale was "free," and yet that the new medium was somehow still more oppressive than the old.
For several years already La Constantin and Claude Perregaud had carried on their criminal practices without interference. A number of persons were of course in the secret, but their interests kept them silent, and the two accomplices had at last persuaded themselves that they were perfectly safe. One evening, however, Perregaud came home, his face distorted by terror and trembling in every limb.
The whole track showed marks of constant use, which the priest explained to Claude as being caused by droves of cattle, which were constantly being sent from Grand Pré to Louisbourg, where they fetched a handsome price. The Indian trails in other places were far rougher and narrower, besides being interrupted by fallen trees.
Believing it to be a demon, they crossed themselves in terror, and as Claude disappeared from their sight they were convinced that it had gone in search of him, and dragged him down into the infernal world. Meanwhile, Marguerite sat on the shore, with Claude's pale face in her hands, kissing his lips and eyes, and praying the Holy Virgin to restore him, and not to take her last hope from her.
They were crossing the Wanhope lawn as he spoke, on their way to the open French windows of the parlour, gold-lit with many candles against an amethyst evening sky. Laura, in a plain black dress, was at the piano, the cool drenched foliage of Claude Debussy's rainwet gardens rustling under her magic fingers. Bernard was talking to Mrs.
"Bowie, bring these gentlemen some sherry!" cried Claude, turning over his portfolio. "Now then, my worthy friends, is that the sort of thing you want?" And he spread on the table a water-colour sketch of Grace. The two worthies gazed in silent delight, and then looked at each other, and then at Claude, and then at the picture. "Why, sir," said Willis; "I couldn't have believed it!
Like many long-married men he had fallen into the way of withholding neighbourhood news from his wife. But since Claude went away he reported to her everything in which he thought the boy would be interested. As she laconically said in one of her letters: "Your father talks a great deal more at home than formerly, and sometimes I think he is trying to take your place."
"Do you think me far below Claude from the moral point of view?" she added, with an attempt at laughing lightness. "It isn't that either. But I think he has let out an anchor which reaches bottom, though perhaps at present he isn't aware of it. And I'm not sure that you ever have. By the way, I've a message from Adelaide for you." "Yes?" "She wants to know how your rehearsals are going."
"Come into my sitting-room for a minute," she said, when they were in the narrow gallery which ran round the drawing-room on the upper story of the house. Next to her bedroom Charmian had a tiny room, a sort of nook, where she wrote her letters and did accounts. "Well, what is it?" Claude asked again, when he had followed her into this room, which was lit only by a hanging antique lamp.
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