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The seats at the show were very hard boards, and the sun made one awfully drowsy; but about half-an-hour before lunch Lord Valmond came up again, and asked me if I should not like to go for a turn. I thought I had better, so as not to get cramp. He said he had been afraid he would never get the chance of speaking to me, I was always so surrounded.
"Perhaps she'd rather die," said the old woman. "She is unhappy." She was thinking of her own far, bitter past, remembered now after so many years. "Misery and blindness too ah! What right have I to make her blind? It's a great risk, Parpon, my dear son." "I must, I must, for your sake. Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!" cried Elise again out of her delirium. The stricken girl had answered for Parpon.
This was a custom set in memory of the old days when fires flashed intelligence, after a fixed code, across the great rivers and lakes, and from hill to hill. Far up against Dalgrothe Mountain appeared a sumptuous star, mystical and red. Valmond saw it from his window, and knew it to be Parpon's watchfire, by the grave of his brother Gabriel.
So, he was the mere impostor after all a valet! Fate had won the toss-up; not faith, or friendship, or any good thing. "All these years," Valmond continued presently, his voice growing weaker, "I fed on such food as is not often within the reach of valets.
Valmond approached the lads. "My children," he said kindly, "you have not learned your lesson well enough. You shall be taught." He took the paper caps from their heads. "I will give you better caps than these." He took the hobby-horse, the drum, and the tin swords. "I will give you better things than these."
The moon had not yet risen, but stars were shining, when the young Seigneur and the member came to Dalgrothe Mountain. On one side of the Rock of Red Pigeons was a precipice and wild water; on the other was a deep valley like a cup, and in the centre of this was a sort of plateau or gentle slope. Dalgrothe Mountain towered above. Upon this plateau Valmond had pitched his tents.
It was as if a soul leaned out of the casement of life, calling into the dark and the quiet which may not be comprehended by mortal man. "Monsieur Valmond !" Her trembling hands were stretched out before her yearningly. The Cure moved. She turned towards the sound with a pitiful vagueness. "Valmond, O Valmond!" again she cried beseechingly, her clouded eyes straining into the silence.
Valmond lay in a burning stupor; and word went abroad that he might die; but Parpon insisted that he would be well presently, and at first would let no one but the Little Chemist and the Cure come in or near the tent. The sickness had come like a whirlwind: when it passed, what would be left?
The tents had come from lumber-camps, from river-driving gangs, and from private stores; there was some regular uniform, flags were flying everywhere, many fires were burning, the voice of Lagroin in command came up the valley loudly, and Valmond watched the drill and a march past. The fires lit up the sides of the valley and glorified the mountains beyond.
The limeburner was a dry, thin man of no particular stature, who coughed a little between his sentences, and had a habit, when not talking, of humming to himself, as if in apology for his silence. This humming had no sort of tune or purpose, and was but a vague musical sputtering. He almost perilled the gravity of the oath they all took to Valmond by this idiosyncrasy.