So Gaston and Valentine rode alone to the sea. They went at first through deep lanes, scarcely wide enough to ride abreast, where they lost sight of their goal, then, mounting a rise of sandy turf, came on it spread gloriously before them. A fresh breeze was blowing off the land, and the water was of a hundred vivid, changing hues—the clearest green, purple that was almost rose, and blue that was more than the blue of heaven. It was flecked with myriad little tips of foam that looked like sea-birds, for ever vanishing and reappearing, and the offshore wind ran over it in sudden violent caresses. Far out, it was the colour of a distant wood of hyacinths.
They checked their horses. Valentine drew a long breath before the pulsating wonder of it, the freedom and the joy. She stretched out her hand in silence to her husband, and he took it as simply; so they sat on their horses hand in hand like two children at their first sight of the ocean.
Then he suggested their going down to the shore, and they went down among the shelving dunes, their horses’ hoofs sinking deep in the loose blown sand. At the verge were the stem and ribs of an abandoned boat, conveniently embedded there, to which they could tether their horses, and Gaston, dismounting, did so and held out his arms to her. But Zéphyr whinnied after them; sand and rotting timbers pleased him not.
Down here, on the shore itself, the sandhills gave some shelter, and they could walk in comfort, especially when they went nearer to the water where the sand was firm and ribbed. Despite the offshore wind, the curling waves shook off from their edges a breeze of their own, the essence of the sea. Clinging to her husband’s arm, Valentine leant her head against his shoulder and half closed her eyes.
“Here,” he said softly, looking down at her, “here one forgets wars and anxieties, the past and the future—everything but the present. We were right to come.”
The breeze of the sea’s own seemed to freshen. Down here one could not see in the same way as from the verge above the whole extent of that moving field of rapture, all the rainbow thoughts that ran over its surface, but one was nearer to its incommunicable magic.
“You will be cold, my darling. Let us walk along by the waves.”
The little seas, tumbling in foam at their feet, bending in mock homage before them, racing slily to entrap them, laughed their undying laugh whose meaning the heart of man is not deep enough to seize. Starfish, fluted shells, trails of seaweed, all their careless treasures were displayed there. . . . They would laugh with just the same fresh joy to-morrow . . . when Gaston would be here no longer . . . O, terrible, that eternal youth and indifference!
“Gaston,” she said, gripping his arm more closely, “you are not going alone to La Jonchère, surely? You spoke of sending the young men back.”
“No, my heart,” said he, putting his hand over hers. “I am not going alone. M. du Ménars and another officer will meet me to-morrow on the road, with an escort as well. When we meet I shall send my aides-de-camp back to the Clos-aux-Grives. That was all I meant.”
A few paces more, and he added, “Unless I take one of them with me to La Jonchère in order to use him as a messenger to you. Which of them, in that case, would you rather have as Mercury?”
Why did he ask her that? She forgot the sea and glanced at him, but he was looking at the waves.
She answered as she would have answered in any case. “I would rather have Roland. He is a charming boy . . . I was already fond of him at Mirabel.” If Gaston meant to tell her without being asked, which was her great hope, she would make it as easy as possible for him. She paused, and went on lightly, “Mme de la Vergne, however, might prefer her own son. As for Marthe . . . well, I know Roland’s mind at least on that matter.”
Her husband stopped in his walk. “Valentine,” he said, turning his head towards her, “I have something to tell you about Roland.”
She stopped too, and loosed his arm. For a moment her heart seemed to pause also. He had paled a little, his voice was very grave and not free from difficulty, but he did not try to escape her gaze. On the contrary he looked straight at her.
(“I have something to tell you about Roland!” echoed the waves, laughing.)
And then Valentine de Trélan knew that she wanted to spare him the explicit avowal, because she saw how much it would cost him to utter to her face what was, by implication, an insult to her—though an insult twenty years old.
“I guessed it, Gaston,” she said, very quietly. “But I hoped that you would tell me. It is right that I should know . . . but I want to learn nothing further . . . I only wished it not to lie, unspoken, between us. . . . Now we need never speak of it again, save as it affects the boy himself.”
“I hate that you should know it,” he said with emotion. “And yet I hated even more to keep you in ignorance. I thought, too, that you might guess, and that was worse . . . Valentine, Valentine, I cannot wish it undone, because I love him . . . but if only I need not have given you this pain!”
Yet he was suffering more than she; she knew that. Once again, as in the arbour this morning, it came to her as strange that she should feel it so little. And, only eager for the moment to allay the deep distress in his eyes and voice, she put her hands on his arm. “It does not pain me now, Gaston. No, no, believe me! I am speaking the truth! It is so long ago, in that other life which we have forgotten. Why remember it now, in this?”
He caught her hands and raised them to his lips. “Generous! generous!” he murmured. “Why must I choose to-day to wound you so?”
“But you have chosen the right day, the right place!” she cried. The vanishing of the dread that he might not tell her had almost irradiated her. “The . . . the past—see, it can be forgotten, as a pebble would be, cast into those great waters . . . and that there is no pain now—I love him, too. Will not that convince you, my husband?”
Perhaps it did. He bowed his forehead silently upon her hands as he held them.
“But as for guessing,” she went on, “—O Gaston, my very dear, it is over now—as for guessing, the first moment that I saw him, lying in the garden at Mirabel, I was startled . . . but I thought it was imagination. And I grew so fond of him in those few days, innocent and gallant as he was. Yet I put the idea away at once because . . . because he had not your eyes . . . and now, after all . . .” She stopped; speech was suddenly failing her. “O Gaston,” she said in a breaking whisper, “Gaston, if only he had mine!”
And pull............