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"You will regret it if you don't start with me;" so said Gustave de Berensac. The present was one of the moments in which I heartily agreed with his prescient prophecy. Human nature is a poor thing. To speak candidly, I cannot recollect that, amid my own selfish perplexities, I spared more than one brief moment to gladness that Marie Delhasse had eluded the pursuit of the Duke of Saint-Maclou.
But, finding that I could hardly write with my right hand and couldn't write at all with the other, I contented myself with scrawling laboriously a short note to Gustave de Berensac, which I put in my pocket, having indorsed on it a direction for its delivery in case I should meet with an accident.
"Then let us sup," said the duchess, and she took the armchair at the head of the table. We began to eat and drink, serving ourselves. Presently Gustave entered, stood regarding us for a moment, and then flung himself into the third chair and poured out a glass of wine. The duchess took no notice of him. "Mlle, de Berensac was called away?" I suggested.
She moved with extraordinary grace and agility, and seemed never at rest. "It is most charming of you to come, Mr. Aycon," said she. "I've heard so much of you, and you'll be so terribly dull!" "With yourself, madame, and Mlle. de Berensac " "Oh, of course you must say that!" she interrupted. "But come along, supper is ready. How delightful to have supper again!
And he ended in a miserable laugh, and then fell again to tugging his mustache with his shaking hand. "You know," said I, "what's bad in both; and no doubt that's a good deal." In that very room the duchess had called Gustave de Berensac a preacher. Her husband had much the same reproach for me. "Sermons are fine from your mouth," he muttered. And then his self-control gave way.
If the hints she gave were to be trusted, her husband deserved little consideration at her hands, and, at the worst, the plea of reprisal might offer some excuse for her, if she had need of one. But she denied the need, and here I was inclined to credit her. For with me, as with Gustave de Berensac before the shadow of Lady Cynthia came between, she was, most distinctly, a "good comrade."
By this time a covered conveyance had been procured, and when the duchess, having fired her last scornful remark at me, walked to the door of the inn, the body of the duke was being placed in it. Gustave de Berensac assisted the servant, and their task was just accomplished when Jacques Bontet was carried by two of the police to the door.
And I got up beside the driver not, luckily, the one who had brought Gustave de Berensac and myself the day before and the carriage resumed its slow climb up the hill. We stopped at the door. I jumped down and assisted my new master. The door was shut. Nobody was to be seen; evidently we were not expected. The duke smiled sardonically, opened the door and walked in, I just behind.
The matter, however, was not left in my hands; no, nor in those of Gustave de Berensac, who called out hastily to the driver, "Ready! Go on, go on!" The duchess called "Wait!" and then she turned to Marie Delhasse and said in calm cold tones: "You ask where your mother is. Well, then, where is the necklace?"
And if that were so, then indeed had the finger of truth guided the duke in the penning of his epitaph. We three, who were standing round the body, seemed sunk in our own thoughts, and it was Gustave de Berensac who went to the servant and bade him bring the carriage nearer to where we were; and when it was come, they two lifted the duke in and disposed his body as well as they could.
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