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Title: Chantemerle : A romance of the Vendean War
Author: Broster, D. K. (Dorothy Kathleen), Taylor, G. Winifred (Gertrude Winifred)
Language: English
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CHANTEMERLE
First edition, . . . _August_ 1911.
_Reprinted_, . . . . _August_ 1911.
_Reprinted_, . . _September_ 1911.
_Reprinted_, . . . _October_ 1911.
CHANTEMERLE
_A ROMANCE OF THE VENDEAN WAR_
BY
D. K. BROSTER AND G. W. TAYLOR
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1911
“_Melius est nos mori in bello quam videre mala
gentis nostræ et sanctorum_”
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PROLOGUE. SAINT LUCIAN’S DAY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I. “MONSIEUR MON COUSIN” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
II. ON THE TERRACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
III. A LETTER AND A CONCLAVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
IV. PLAY AND POLITICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
V. A MENTOR FROM THE PROVINCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
VI. SOME RESULTS OF EARLY RISING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
VII. LUCIENNE LAUGHS AND CRIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
VIII. FURTHER OBSTINACY OF A CONSPIRATOR. . . . . . . . . . . 90
IX. _ET DONA FERENTES_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
X. THE VICOMTE FINISHES HIS TOILET . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
XI. “YOU ARE HIDING SOMETHING FROM ME!” . . . . . . . . . . 122
XII. GILBERT IS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
XIII. “HOURS IN THE RAIN” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
XIV. CIRCE AND ULYSSES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
XV. HAPPY REUNION OF TWO KINSMEN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
XVI. FAREWELL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
XVII. COMEDY OF A BURNT LETTER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
XVIII. THE ROAD TO POITOU. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
XIX. CONCERNING A HANDKERCHIEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
XX. A KNIFE WITH TWO EDGES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
XXI. AT THE SIGN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN . . . . . . . . . . . 227
XXII. “MONSIEUR MILET”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
XXIII. TRAVELS OF AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
XXIV. “I SENT A LETTER TO MY LOVE”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
XXV. “OÙ PEUT-ON ÊTRE MIEUX QU’AU SEIN DE SA FAMILLE ?”. . . 272
XXVI. BELEAGUERED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
XXVII. HOUSEKEEPING OF THE VICOMTE AND THE CURÉ. . . . . . . . 298
XXVIII. LAND OF EXILE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
XXIX. “LES VEILLÉES DU CHÂTEAU” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
XXX. FEARS, HOPES AND MYSTIFICATIONS OF M. DES GRAVES. . . . 336
XXXI. WAX FLOWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
XXXII. THE CUP BRIMS OVER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
XXXIII. AT THE FORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
XXXIV. SURGERY: THE PROBE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
XXXV. OUT OF NIGHT INTO THE NIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
XXXVI. SURGERY: THE KNIFE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
XXXVII. “CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME”. . . . . . . . . 401
XXXVIII. THE SWORD IS DRAWN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
XXXIX. THE FOUR ROADS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
XL. THE FIGHT AT THE BRIDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
XLI. SURRENDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
XLII. PEACE AT THE LAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
XLIII. _ULTIMA FORSAN_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
XLIV. THE SECOND CHRISTMAS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
XLV. THERMOPYLÆ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
XLVI. WRECKAGE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
XLVII. HOW A VOW WAS KEPT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
XLVIII. MANY WAYS—AND ALL STEEP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
XLIX. VIOLETS ONCE MORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
EPILOGUE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526
CHANTEMERLE
PROLOGUE
SAINT LUCIAN’S DAY
“That day of days when hand-in-hand became
Encircling arms, and with an effluent flame
Of terrible surprise we knew Love’s lore.”
—WILLIAM BELL SCOTT, _Parted Love_.
It was a large room, a room in a palace grown to be a prison in all
but name. A bright fire crackled on the hearth at one end, the
firelight danced on the walls, the dusk drew on, and a girl looked out
of the window at the whirling snowflakes.
She stood in the embrasure of the window farthest from the door,
leaning her head against the glass, and her pose suggested that she
was in a daydream. On this January afternoon of 1792 the Tuileries
seemed deserted. Outside, in the great empty garden, the trees stood
up black and bare, for the snow was not settling on them. And though
the girl’s eyes followed the snowflakes, her thoughts were probably
much further away, for she did not hear the door open, nor turn until
she was conscious of a footfall behind her.
In front of her stood a young man. His hands were full of violets. It
was light enough for her to see perfectly his handsome, smiling
face, and for him, though she had her back to the window, to notice,
if he chose, how the wild-rose of her cheek was enhanced by the
deep mourning which she wore. Apparently the two knew each other
intimately, for no greeting passed between them save a smile.
“Are those for me?” asked the girl as one who has no doubt of
the answer, and she half held out her hands. “I thought you had
forgotten.”
“Have I ever forgotten your name-day?” he retorted. “You should have
had them this morning to greet you, but I was on guard, and promised
myself the pleasure of bringing them in person.” He placed the
fragrant mass in her two hands, and as he did so he caught one lightly
by the wrist and kissed it. “Your subject offers his belated homage,”
he said gaily.
A slow, beautiful colour mounted to the girl’s cheek, and she laid her
face in the violets to cool it. “They are exquisite,” she said in a
low voice. “They are more beautiful than—than some of my gifts
to-day.”
The giver shook his head. “Those others must be worth very little,
then, if my poor flowers can surpass them. You are flattering me,
Lucienne.”
For answer the girl laid down her burden on a small table near her.
“You shall see,” she said merrily, and, drawing from her pocket a
shagreen case of some size, she opened it. “I know that I ought not to
make comparisons, but surely your violets are more beautiful than
this?”
The young man looked with a critical expression upon its contents.
“Yes,” he admitted at length. “I do not care for cameos myself,
though if size is a criterion of value it should be a magnificent one.
The Marquise, I suppose?”
The girl nodded as she snapped to the case. “She says it is an
heirloom. But I like violets better than heirlooms.”
“And what has Gilbert sent you—no, I see it on your finger. May I
look?”
She held out her hand without answering, and the firelight caught the
single magnificent ruby as she did so. Her companion did not take her
hand.
“That,” he said gravely, “is a royal gift. I wonder still more at my
presumption in making so worthless an offering, for my flowers won’t
even last, like my aunt’s cameo.” And in his tone there was faint but
unmistakable bitterness.
“But while they last they are better, and when they are dead you can
bring me some more. I sometimes think,” went on the girl a trifle
feverishly, fastening a handful of the violets in her breast, “I
sometimes think that flowers have souls as we have.”
“I don’t think that they have anything so annoying,” returned the
young man. “You would not like them so much if they had. . . . May I
have one or two back again?”
She held out a few of the dark blossoms, and he put them silently into
his coat, looking the while not at her, but at the ruby on her finger.
“You are standing all this time,” he said abruptly when he had
finished, “and it grows cold here. Shall we talk a moment by the fire?
I must not stay long.”
The girl moved away at once. A little shiver had indeed gone over her,
and she had quite lost the colour of a few moments ago, and more
besides. “You are going to the King, perhaps?” she hazarded over her
shoulder as he followed her to the fireplace.
“No; to Bertrand-Moleville, if I can find him. I hardly saw a soul
as I came up. Where is everybody—where is Madame de Fontenelle—and why
are you alone? It is very rare to find you so!”
“The Princess is in her oratory, and will probably be there for some
time. Madame de Fontenelle, poor old thing, has a bad _migraine_, and
I think that Madame de Lessay, who is in waiting to-day, is receiving
her brother.”
“I see. And what is your news from Chantemerle?”
“Nothing in particular,” replied the girl. The ruddy light from
the fire smote upwards on her beautiful, dreamy face. “The Marquise
is well, and Gilbert is building some new cottages. He writes
that—that——”
“That he would rather you did not stay here much longer,” finished the
young man, looking hard at her.
“Yes,” assented the girl indistinctly, dropping her head.
“He is perfectly right,” said Gilbert’s cousin. “Sooner or later you
will have to leave the Court. The Princess Elisabeth, too, will
insist.” His tone was almost hard, and she looked up with a dawn of
surprise.
“Oh, not yet, Louis! There is no danger; no one would harm the
Princess. Surely you do not think I need go yet?”
“You should not ask me,” answered the young man slowly in a low voice.
He seemed to pick his words from a host of others ready on his lips,
looking on the ground the while. “I have no—no right to advise you,
and . . . and . . . Lucienne!”
The name burst from him on a cry, for they had both looked up, and
with the meeting of their eyes all pretence was over between them. The
next instant she was in his arms, and her lips met his, while all the
little stucco Cupids round the cornice smiled down, in the half-dusk
and the firelight, at the foolish mortals who had resolved that they
would never betray their hearts to each other.
“Lucienne, my love, my love!” murmured the young man passionately.
“Oh, I never thought . . . I never meant to tell you. . . . Shut your
eyes, and let me kiss them . . . your hair smells of violets. . . .”
“Louis, Louis!” said the girl, trying, after a moment, to free
herself, “what are we doing?—Oh, what are we doing?”
“What we were always meant to do, my heart,” said he hardily. “No, I
shall not let you go. I will never let you go again, little love. But
we will both leave France—and in England——”
“Louis, Louis, don’t break my heart! You know we can’t!” And,
abandoning her attempt at loosing herself, and clinging all the
closer, she broke into pitiful sobbing.
His arms only closed round her the firmer. “Don’t cry, my darling! Of
course we can. The Abbé Moustier—you remember him—is in Paris just
now; I know where he lodges. He can marry us at once—to-morrow, if you
like, at the Recollets. Then, when I have procured a passport, which
is the only obstacle to getting away at once——”
“Louis . . . you know that there is another!” she gasped. “Gilbert
. . . we can’t—you know we can’t!”
A change passed over her lover’s face; it set and hardened. “My God!”
he broke out fiercely, “why should we consider Gilbert? What is his
claim compared to mine? What is his happiness compared to yours—his,
who has never known what it is to love, else he could never have left
you so long unclaimed? Gilbert is nothing to us.” And he kissed her
again.
“O Louis . . . for God’s sake let me go! You don’t know what you are
doing!”
“I do know very well,” returned the young man. “I am going to take you
away from Gilbert. . . . Have I frightened you, my heart? You know
that for Heaven itself I would not harm you. There!” He loosed his
hold, and she was free.
“Louis . . . you cannot, you dare not do such a thing!”
“Do you think that I am afraid of Gilbert?” he asked.
She put both her hands on his folded arms. “No, Louis, not of him, nor
of any man—but of dishonour.”
Something that was not the best part of him leapt into the young
man’s eyes as he looked down at her with a sudden little smile. “The
dishonour won’t be mine, Lucienne!”
She shrank away at that, and covered her face with her hands. “And he
is your cousin—your friend,” she murmured.
“What of that? Does that give him a claim to dispose of both our
lives? He is not your husband, Lucienne. What is it that you were
affianced to him since you were a child—before you were old enough to
have even a nominal choice? Is it such a crime, then, to have loved
you, when I have known you as long as he, when I have seen you
constantly for years—more often, perhaps, than he has done? Look at
me and answer!” Gently but firmly he pulled away her hands.
“It may not be a crime,” she said. “I cannot tell . . . O Louis, what
am I to say to you . . . for you know what I would give that it might
come true—but it is . . . treachery.”
Dominated as he was by his passion, the young man slowly changed
colour. “Treachery is a big word, and a disastrous,” he said after a
moment. “Will it—will my wife call me traitor?”
“She will call herself so,” said the girl faintly.
“Listen, Lucienne,” said her lover, catching her hands. “Treachery be
it, then! I do not care. I love you too much to consider honour. Of
two things one must choose the best. I choose you, and my honour shall
go.” He had her in his arms again, and kissed her hair with a
dangerous quietness. The plaster Loves smiled at each other, for they
had known that they would win, and the struggle only entertained them,
since it would grace their victory the better.
The girl lifted a white face. “Louis, I conjure you . . . he trusts
you, he trusts us. He has always trusted us, nobly, generously——”
“Are you going to sing Gilbert’s praises to me?”
“—Generously and fully. You have been boys together—we cannot do this.
It is like stabbing him in the back. O Louis, dear Louis, you know I
would come with you if I could—you do not think it is easy for me
either, do you, Louis? . . . You know that I love you with all my
heart . . . but I can’t do it. . . . Mary Mother! help me—help
him!” Her eyes closed; her hands, imprisoned as she was, joined
themselves. And for the second time the young man, now nearly as
white as she, let her go.
“I want no saints between us, Lucienne,” he said, very low. “You
are saint enough for me. . . . And you have no need to invoke
angelic protection against me; you have had it, I think, these many
months . . . else you would have known before to-day what I never
meant to tell you even now, God knows!”
The sudden agony in his voice showed the girl that the day was not yet
lost. Still there was time for the anguish of victory. But was it not
for defeat that her soul cried out? . . . Not till now did she realise
that under this strife of the heart there lay a jewelled picture in
her mind—the little chapel at the Recollets, the decked altar, the
priest bending over two figures that knelt there side by side. It
flashed up now, warm and brilliant, flashed and faded as she turned
away, falteringly crossed the room, and sank down on the brocaded
cushions of the couch.
Her lover looked up and slowly followed her out of the firelight. “Is
this to be the end of the dream, then?” he asked huskily.
She whispered “Yes” almost inaudibly, and catching at his hand carried
it to her lips. He pulled it instantly away, and the lace at his
wrist, catching on a bracelet, tore. “Don’t do that!” he exclaimed,
“if you want this to be the end. . . . My God, how _can_ it!”
She only said, with a little gasp: “Your ruffle is torn. I am
sorry . . .”
And he stood staring at her, as, white as a lily, she sat there
propped by the cushions, her hands idle and open on her lap, and
seemed scarcely to see him. Then he turned away without a word and
went slowly to the fireplace.
The girl sat looking with anguished eyes at the figure thrown up dark
against the firelight, and the bent brown head over which showed on
the marble the carved lilies of France. There was nothing dramatic in
his attitude; he seemed to be examining his torn lace . . . a long
time.
Suddenly all the Amorini grew grave, crowded together, and looked down
from their coigns in alarm. The young man had turned away from the
hearth. His face was very drawn; his eyes, that they and she had
always known so gay and kind, were steel-bright and hopeless. He came
straight across the room and dropped on his knees beside the girl.
“God knows,” he said hoarsely, “I never meant that you should
know. God knows I have struggled against it. If things had been
different. . . . Lucienne, at least kiss me once more!”
Unnaturally calm now, she took his upturned face in her hands.
“Louis, he trusts us,” she said simply, and stooped her lips to his.
“Now go,” she said less assuredly. “Go, Louis. . . .”
“Before you have time to repent,” said he bitterly. “I shall repent
all my life. God! what a fool I am being—and all for a word called
honour!”
“Dear, dear Louis,” said the girl, half maternal, half frightened, “it
is more than that. Oh, believe me, how could we ever be happy together
if——”
“Better than we can be happy apart!” he broke in. “But you are right,
Lucienne; it is not, after all, for a word; it is for Gilbert himself.
If it had been any other man. . . . I wish it were, I wish it were!”
“Yes, he trusts us,” she repeated again. “And he must never know.”
“No, he must never know. But I shall love you, my darling, all my life
long. And sometimes—very rarely, of course”—he tried to smile—“you
will think of me. . . . And, meanwhile, I shall still see you
sometimes.”
“But not often,” she said. “O Louis, not often! It would not be
right—I could not bear it. . . . I think I would rather never see you
again.” Two great tears ran down her cheeks and lay like dew on the
violets at her breast.
All the Cupids on the ceiling stiffened back to their places, and
pretended that they had never taken any interest.
CHAPTER I
“MONSIEUR MON COUSIN”
“ROXANE. Il faut que je revoie en vous le . . . presque frère,
Avec qui je jouais, dans le parc—près du lac !
CYRANO. Oui, vous veniez tous les étés à Bergerac ! . . .
ROXANE. C’était le temps des jeux. . . .
CYRANO. Des murons aigrelets. . . .
ROXANE. Le temps où vous faisiez tout ce que je voulais ! . . .”
—ROSTAND, _Cyrano de Bergerac_. Act II. Sc. vi.
On a certain bleak March afternoon of the year 1774 a solemn,
long-legged boy of ten or eleven sat curled up in a window-seat of his
father’s château of Chantemerle in Poitevin Vendée, and pressed his
nose wistfully against the cold panes. The rain, on the wings of a
fitful wind, hurled itself in blurring gusts against the glass, and
even hissed now and then on the glowing logs of the great hearth. But
the owner of the motionless black head, with its neat ribbon and
queue, was not watching for a chance of going out, nor even wishing
that the rain would cease; he was awaiting, between doubt and desire,
the greatest change of his short young life.
Gilbert-Octavien-Félix-Anne de Chantemerle, Comte de Château-Foix, was
an only child, and he had never left the house of his birth, nor had
he seen many persons from the outside world come into it—and never one
of his own age. To the society of his elders he was well accustomed,
owing to it the greater part of his serious demeanour. He had been
educated at first chiefly by his father, the student, the follower of
the newer lights, and latterly also by the Curé of the parish, who
held with the _philosophe_ Marquis a friendship of a very old and
tried intimacy. Gilbert was, perhaps, equally fond of both his
instructors. When he played—which was seldom—he played alone; but he
was not unhappy, and he had no idea that he was lonely. Diligent at
his lessons, obedient though not docile to authority, he had one
kingdom of which he was absolute master—that of his dreams and his
books. He desired no other.
But now everything was changed. He would work and play alone no
longer. It was a thought half sad, half delightful, but most of all
perplexing, for what would he be like, this mysterious kinsman and
playmate? Even Gilbert’s father knew very little about him. The
motherless only child of the Marquis’ favourite cousin, confided by
the latter on his death-bed to the care of M. de Château-Foix, the boy
was not altogether acceptable to the Marquise. But she had to yield to
her husband in the matter. Château-Foix did not wish the young Vicomte
de Saint-Ermay to be brought up in Paris, where his mother’s relatives
were on the way to secure over him an influence which the Marquis did
not consider desirable. Like a wise woman, Madame de Château-Foix made
in the end something of a virtue of this necessity, and she was really
prepared to give the small stranger a warm welcome.
The preparation of that welcome indeed, in the more material sense,
had but this moment engaged her when she came down the staircase to
await the travellers in the hall. The Marquis had been to Paris to
fetch his small relative and was to bring him in the diligence as far
as Pouzauges, where his own coach would meet him.
Madame de Château-Foix was a very handsome woman, to whom the term
“beautiful” had never been applied. For her years, which were short of
forty, she had, possibly, a too majestic port. Wearing her powdered
hair in the very high and narrow style of the prevailing fashion, and,
for the provinces, somewhat elaborately dressed, she came down the
staircase gently chafing her hands.
“How chilly it is!” she said, as she reached the bottom. “Are you not
catching cold there, Gilbert?”
“No, thank you, mamma; I am quite warm,” replied the boy, without
turning his head.
His mother rustled softly along the hall to the fireplace. She was
restless; the arrival of this little boy meant so much—so much,
perhaps, of change; more, she was sure, than her husband seemed to
realise.
“Come here, Gilbert,” she said suddenly.
The boy slipped obediently off the window-seat. He was not a
good-looking nor even a particularly attractive child, but he was tall
for his age, and well grown.
The Marquise put her hands on his shoulders and surveyed him for a
moment; then she kissed him. “You quite understand, do you not,
Gilbert, about your cousin? He is to be a new brother for you, and you
are always to treat him as if he were your own younger brother, and
make him feel that this is his home. But . . . remember, my dear boy,”
her voice trembled a little, “remember that your father and mother
love you none the less dearly because—because your cousin Louis is
coming to live here; and remember, too, that he has no father nor
mother of his own.”
“Yes, mamma,” said the boy, making no allusion to the thousand
queries and surmises with which his own mind was filled. His mother
kissed him again, and, released, he went slowly back to his post.
But hardly had he got there before he called out with real boyish
excitement: “Here they come! here they come! They’re in the straight
bit of the avenue—and Jean-Baptiste is so wet. I can see the rain
running off his hat in a stream!”
A moment or two later the domestics were opening the heavy doors to
admit, from a background of torrential rain, a tall man leading by the
hand a small figure wrapped about in a cloak. Muffled as this was, it
extricated a hand on the threshold, and punctiliously plucked off its
hat, revealing a curly, golden-brown head. The Marquise swept to meet
the two.
“Here we are,” said her husband cheerfully, uttering the instinctive
banality of most arrivals. He kissed Madame de Château-Foix’ fingers,
and then her cheek. “And here is the celebrated traveller,” he added,
putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder and bringing him forward.
“Louis, here is your aunt, who is very glad to see you.”
A little to the Marquise’s discomfiture—for she was prepared to clasp
him in her arms—the small newcomer made her a profound bow. As he
raised himself from his salute she saw, with a pang at her heart, that
he was without exception the most beautiful boy on whom she had ever
set eyes. He had to the life the head of Greuze’s “Espièglerie”—a face
of beauty and mischief—and as Madame de Château-Foix met the gaze of
the sparkling grey eyes with their dark lashes, and saw the curves of
the youthful mouth, she realised that the Fates had assigned to her
lot that difficult if attractive task, a high-spirited child. But, as
with most of her sex, the charm of childish beauty was too strong
either for maternal jealousy or for premonition of future struggles,
and she went down on her knees, and, clasping the boy to her breast,
kissed him warmly.
Gilbert had stood in the background, a silent spectator, but as his
mother rose he came forward of his own accord, and half shyly, half
composedly held out his hand, and said: “Welcome, Cousin Louis.”
When the child had been taken upstairs, and Gilbert had vanished in
the same direction, the Marquis looked enquiringly at his wife.
“He is a beautiful boy,” said she slowly.
“And a very bright one,” returned M. de Château-Foix. “I assure you,
he has proved an excellent travelling companion.”
“And as a companion for Gilbert?” queried the Marquise.
“He should do him all the good in the world,” responded her husband
promptly. “Gilbert wants rousing; you know my views about him,
Félicité. Louis is—let me see—just about two years younger than he. I
don’t know what sort of an education he has had—probably a somewhat
fragmentary one, since his father died, at least—but if it is at all
possible for them to have lessons together, the stimulus may be of
great gain to Gilbert. We must see what M. des Graves says.”
The Marquise gave a little sigh. “It will all be so different,” she
said regretfully.
“Of course it will, my love,” said the Marquis cheerfully. “I hope
it will also be better. It is not good for children to play alone.”
And, taking his leave of his wife, he went to change his travelling
clothes, while Madame de Château-Foix slowly made her way to the
apartment of the new arrival. She found him, perfectly undisturbed by
the grave and speculating gaze of Gilbert, chatting confidentially to
the old nurse who was brushing out his curls.
* * * * * *
Between ten and eleven the next morning Madame de Château-Foix espied
from the window the cassocked form of M. des Graves coming up the
avenue, and she also saw her husband go to meet him, as he often did.
From the time of their marriage the Marquis had been wont to speak
with pride of a long-trusted friend, who was at once a priest and
a man of the great world. His name, she knew, promised to be an
illustrious one, and it was whispered that the Papal Court had more
than once offered him preferment. But she had never met him until the
influence which she had always vaguely felt became a reality. When
Gilbert was a boy of six or seven this courtier-priest—for such she
had always pictured him—accepted, to her amazement, the living of
Chantemerle. For what reason Sébastien des Graves had been content to
take upon himself the duties of an obscure village curé she could not
guess, and her husband, whom she naturally suspected of knowing,
preserved an impenetrable silence on the point.
The Marquise suddenly unfastened the window and stepped out on to the
flight of steps which led down to the garden. The two men saw her,
and, leaving the gravel, made their way over the wet grass. A clear
sky had followed on yesterday’s rain, and the birds were singing.
“Good-morning, Father,” she said as they began to ascend the steps.
“Your new pupil is already in the library with Gilbert awaiting you.”
“Not with apprehension, I trust,” returned the priest, smiling. His
clearly-cut features were of the type generally associated with the
statesman-ecclesiastic. The lines about his mouth, stern almost to
harshness, seemed to denote the churchman of high place; it was only
the depth of kindness in the eyes which betokened the parish priest to
whom no one ever looked in vain. Of middle height and powerful build,
he betrayed his forty-two years only by a slight sprinkling of white
on his hair.
The Marquis de Château-Foix laughed. “I don't think, Sébastien, that
you will find Louis unduly timorous.”
The preceptor found him, on the other hand, endowed by nature with a
very healthy aversion to Latin grammar. However, he was quick, and
quite reasonably docile, and M. des Graves announced, to the Marquis’
satisfaction, that, at the price of a little extra attention, the two
boys could do the same lessons.
A week, a fortnight passed away in great harmony. Gilbert gave his
new playmate a much-valued puppy, and lent him his pony. Madame de
Château-Foix began to relax her slightly jealous maternal attitude
and to feel that all was for the best, since the two got on so well
together.
Announcement of a disagreement, however, was formally made to her one
morning. “If it please Madame la Marquise, Monsieur le Comte and
Monsieur le Vicomte are fighting in the Italian garden. We cannot find
Monsieur le Marquis, and Monsieur le Curé has not come up yet.”
Annoyed and a little apprehensive, Madame de Château-Foix went down
to separate the combatants, but found the conflict virtually over.
Gilbert, looking very hot and untidy, but not particularly elated or
vindictive, was standing, in shirt and breeches, watching his cousin,
who, sitting on the curved stone bench amid the empty flower-beds, was
holding an ensanguined handkerchief to his face. Stains of the same
hue were discernible all down the front of his shirt.
The Marquise was seriously alarmed. “Gilbert! what have you done?” she
exclaimed.
“It’s only his nose,” replied her son callously. “It makes a mess, but
it doesn’t mean anything, you know.”
“I am ashamed of you,” said Madame de Château-Foix severely, “bitterly
ashamed. How can you ill-treat a boy smaller and younger than yourself
in this disgusting fashion?”
“He hasn’t been ill-treating me,” expostulated Louis through his
handkerchief. “I have hit him too, haven’t I, Gilbert? Look at his
eye!”
The Marquise did look, but her inexperience received more enlightenment
a day or two later, when her son was going about with an eye round
which many shades strove for the mastery, and when Louis’ shapely
little nose also retained a decidedly swollen appearance. The
Marquis laughed when he saw these signs, and pooh-poohed his wife’s
remonstrances.
And indeed the two boys, considering their great dissimilarity of
character, were unusually good friends. The small Vicomte, as his
relatives soon discovered, was endued with a temper which was rarely
ruffled. He never sulked, as Gilbert sometimes did, nor, in spite of
his high spirits, did he often fly into a rage—partly, perhaps,
because he seemed to get what he wanted with so little trouble. For in
a quite unassertive and natural way he tyrannised over Gilbert, who,
finding himself in the position of a host, continued to bestow on him
delightedly many of his choicest treasures. It was the same with the
menials, who adored Monsieur le Vicomte with a worship which their
sense of what was due to Monsieur le Comte obliged them to keep within
bounds.
Conscious of the bondage into which the household was gradually
falling, and having approached her husband with small satisfaction,
the Marquise one day confided to M. des Graves her fear that Louis was
getting spoilt.
The Curé asked her for a definition of a spoilt child.
“I mean a child to whom every one gives way,” she answered. “Now Louis
is so attractive that one gives him all he wants—and surely that is
not good for him, Father?”
“Does he seem to you any the worse for it, Madame?” asked the Curé,
with a little smile.
Madame de Château-Foix was constrained to confess that he did not, but
added that she could not suppose that he would remain indefinitely
unharmed.
The priest took a turn about the long library, where his pupils’
lesson-books were still scattered on the table. “I have a theory about
Louis, Madame,” he said, looking at her in his rather masterful
fashion. “Time may show me that I am wrong, but I believe the boy to
be one of those rare—those very rare—natures, for whom it is good to
be happy.”
The Marquise was shocked. “Good for children to have what they want!”
she exclaimed, bringing the particular down to the general.
“And for grown-up people too, Madame,” returned the priest with
hardihood. “Sometimes. But such people are rare.”
“Fortunately!” ejaculated Madame de Château-Foix indignantly, and did
not pursue the conversation, but retired to reflect on the ridiculous
ideas possessed by the two members of her court of appeal—the
doctrinaire and the celibate. She must take her own stand, and Louis
should not be spoilt. But spoilt he was, for all that.
* * * * * *
And thus the days went on to late summer, when a third person, as yet
mute, or practically so, appeared upon the stage. Like most landowners
in Vendée, the Marquis de Château-Foix possessed a home farm close to
the Château, much frequented by his son and nephew—for as such Louis,
though strictly his cousin, was always considered. One afternoon, when
the corn was being threshed in the great courtyard of this building,
Gilbert, with his hands in his pockets, and something the air of the
future owner, was standing very seriously watching the operation. The
flails rose and fell rhythmically, the farm hands carried off the
chaff in cloths and piled it in a great heap, occasional chickens made
assaults upon the grain, and the golden afternoon air enshrined
everything. Gilbert looked up at a shout. Another laden ox-cart was
coming in under the archway, and it was Louis, in the enjoyment of a
seat more precarious than comfortable on one of the oxen, who had
hailed him.
“Ah, get down now, Monsieur Louis!” said Beaudrier, the Marquis’
farmer, as the teamster put his long goad in front of the beasts’
noses and brought their leisurely progress to a stop. “You’ll be
killing yourself one of these days, and the bullocks aren’t accustomed
to it, neither!”
“I can’t,” retorted the boy, laughing. “O Beaudrier, if you knew how
slippery their backs are! But I suppose you have not ridden one for a
long time.”
“Take Monsieur le Vicomte down,” said Beaudrier, himself the father of
fourteen children, with a smile to the teamster. But Louis slipped off
and ran up to Gilbert.
“Who is it that is coming this evening?” he asked. “My uncle has gone
off to Pouzauges to meet somebody, and ever so many bedrooms are being
got ready.”
“I expect,” said Gilbert, considering, “that it is Madame d’Aucourt.
It is about the time that she generally comes.”
“Does she always come?” enquired his cousin. “Who is she? Will she
stay long?”
“She is a friend of mamma’s,” Gilbert informed him. “Yes, she comes
every year, and she stays about two months. Last time she brought a
baby.”
“A what!” exclaimed Louis. The young hen that he had just captured
uttered protests against the tightness of his interested grip.
“A baby—a child.”
“Why?”
“Why?” repeated his senior scornfully. “How stupid you are, Louis!
Because it belongs to her, I suppose, and she likes to have it with
her. I shouldn’t. It only cries.”
Louis released his chicken. “Do all babies cry?”
“I don’t know. Yes; the one Madame Beaudrier has just now does.”
“Then that’s why people don’t like having babies,” said Louis, with
the air of having solved a long-standing problem. “I have so often
wondered why M. de Larny—my uncle in Paris, you know—was so very angry
when Mademoiselle Claire, his sister, had one. He talked about it a
lot, and said it was a disgrace, and sent it away, I think.”
“That is nonsense,” said Gilbert loftily, “because only married people
have babies.”
“It’s not nonsense,” retorted Louis earnestly. “It’s quite true.
Mademoiselle de Larny cried, and my aunt too. I remember it quite
well.” Indeed the reminiscences with which the Vicomte, occasionally
and quite innocently, regaled the family dinner-table had sometimes to
be checked in mid-career. That tendency afforded the Marquise deep
cause for thankfulness at her husband’s act in removing him from his
Parisian surroundings.
“You can’t remember what’s impossible,” said Gilbert with decision.
“You made a mistake—or else you’re inventing. You were only a little
boy then.”
“I was not a little boy!” retorted Louis, flushing. “It was only last
year. I shall ask my aunt.” He went off whistling, tried to induce one
of the men to lend him a flail, and then returned to his cousin to
announce confidentially that he intended to teach the baby to ride a
bullock.
It was fortunate for the Comtesse d’Aucourt that her daughter was as
yet too young really to run any risk of undergoing this instruction.
Louis found to his annoyance that a child of two years old is scarcely
steady enough on its legs to be a reliable playmate, and is, moreover,
never to be met without a nurse in attendance. Yet for a time
Mademoiselle Lucienne was as interesting as a new kitten, and he
smiled on her even when she plunged tenacious hands into his curls.
Since, after all, she cried very little, he was once more reduced to
speculation as to the grounds on which the possession of so pleasing
a toy could ever be deprecated. Having no fear of strangers he applied
to Madame d’Aucourt for enlightenment, but she referred him to the
Marquise, and Madame de Château-Foix put him off with that annoying
evasion that he would “know when he was older.” Louis then tried to
pin down his aunt to a statement of the epoch when he should be
considered to have attained the desired longevity—next year, when he
would be nine?—the year after, then? He failed in his attempt, but not
until the Marquise had been driven nearly desperate in her efforts to
elude him.
The Comtesse d’Aucourt, lady-in-waiting to the Princess Adelaide, the
new King’s aunt, had been a friend of Madame de Château-Foix since
convent days. If she were able to leave her post at Court she paid the
Marquise a visit every year. It was by her that intimate news of
Versailles came to the Château, and she had this year a budget of more
interest than usual—all the particulars of the old King’s death in
May. The two boys, quick to realise that she came from a world other
than theirs, would demand to be told again how the beautiful Austrian
Dauphine looked now that she was Queen of France, or how M. d’Aucourt,
at present away as envoy at one of the smaller German courts, had
escaped from the Indians when as a young man he fought in Canada with
Vaudreuil and Montcalm. The Comtesse became in some sort installed as
a story-teller to them, in the September evenings, round the fire,
with Louis cross-legged on the floor and Gilbert leaning against his
mother’s chair; or under the mulberry tree in the afternoon, when
Louis would be flat on the grass at her feet, his own kicking
occasionally in the air and his lips black with mulberries. The
faint, rather wearied air that always clung to her, the little
gestures of her beautiful hands, her clear, delicate enunciation with
its undertone of fatigue, remained for years with Gilbert as a kind
of embodiment of a life that seemed so far away and at times so
attractive.
Then the Comtesse left, and it was winter, with fresh delights; when
the execrable, lane-like roads of Vendée were impassable, and with the
coming of the snow one could play, with much semblance of reality, at
being besieged. Then the days began to get longer, and the birds sang
again, and it would soon be summer once more, the best time of all.
And the days were like the year: the morning, when one did one’s
lessons, was the Spring, because, though it was pleasant, there were
more agreeable things to come; and those things happened in Summer,
which was the afternoon; and the evening was the Autumn, because,
though warded off with stories, bed-time was approaching; and bed,
which meant night, was Winter. And the morning was Spring again. . . .
But who can compile the almanac of a happy childhood? Day followed
day, week fled after week; where the fields had been crowned with
rippling yellow they stood shorn, were brown to the ploughshare, were
white with frost, were green again with young life. Then, suddenly as
it seemed, it all came to an end, for Gilbert was sixteen, and it was
high time for him to begin the military education usual to his age and
rank.
Though a dreamy boy, he had grown up not unconscious of his own claims
upon the world or of his position as one who would some day exact
obedience. With powers of thought developed beyond his years, he had
not so much the making of a scholar as of a student and lover of men.
Under a heaviness which might almost have been mistaken for sullenness
of disposition, there lurked possibilities of imagination and of power
which none but M. des Graves guessed, and he kept his own counsel. But
those who had eyes to see might have noticed that Gilbert received
severer censure for any show of idleness in his studies than ever did
Louis for a similar (and infinitely more frequent) offence. The priest
was very thoughtful on the day that the marquis told him how few weeks
more were left to him of his elder pupil, although he had always known
of the career for which Gilbert was destined.
Gilbert, as well as M. des Graves, had long been aware that he was
going to the military academy at Versailles. Of another arrangement he
was still ignorant. His parents had already selected his future wife
in the person of the little girl, now aged seven, with whom he had
sometimes played. The match had made itself. The Marquis had always
an affection for Lucienne, and the now widowed Madame d’Aucourt
desired a closer union with the family of her old friend. The nine
years’ difference between the ages of the prospective bride and
bridegroom was approved, and Lucienne’s dowry, as an only child, was
satisfactory. Gilbert received the news with equanimity; the day when
he should marry seemed very far off, obscured behind the peaks of the
new life upon which he was entering. For the rest, he was fond of the
child.
For a little while Louis remained behind at Chantemerle to struggle
with the Latin authors, to plague and charm the servants as of yore,
and to look enviously at his cousin when he came home in his new
uniform. Then the influence of his mother’s relatives procured him a
place in the royal pages, preparatory to his entering the bodyguard,
and the Château fell into a quietude which it had never known since
his advent on that March afternoon seven years before. A child,
however, still woke the echoes in the garden every summer. Till her
tenth year Gilbert’s destined bride paid annual—sometimes even more
frequent—visits with her mother, and once or twice these visits
coincided with the leave of one or other of the boys of whose own
childhood she had formed a part. She was now an extremely pretty
child, but at this epoch the cousins were both too much absorbed in
their new worlds to pay her particular attention, and her future
husband took, if possible, less notice of her than did Louis. At ten
her mother sent her to be educated in a convent.
A year later Gilbert finished his military studies at Versailles, and,
in accordance with his father’s wish, went over for some months to
England, where he had relatives, the Marquise’s dead sister having
married a Suffolk squire. It was not solely the claims of kinship
which had prompted this visit. The Marquis de Château-Foix was deeply
imbued with the ideas then prevalent among the Liberal _noblesse_
in France. Like them he desired to better the position of his
tenantry; like them he sought help in English methods of agriculture,
introducing these not only at Chantemerle, but in the small, distant,
and not often visited estate near Lyons from which he took his title
of Château-Foix. His father’s projects had been familiar to Gilbert
ever since he was old enough to understand them, and, a native of
that unique province where the curse of a non-resident nobility was
scarcely known, and where _seigneur_ and peasantry were on almost
patriarchal terms of intimacy, of mutual respect and often of
affection, the young man considered them the outcome of a very natural
instinct. He had, therefore, every sympathy with the Marquis’ views;
he meant, when he had made his own career, to settle down and carry on
his father’s work after the latter’s death, and though this event
would not, he trusted, take place till a remote period—for the Marquis
was only five-and-forty—Gilbert was pleased to think that if his
sojourn in England proved profitable he might even now be of use to
him. With these virtuous intentions he embarked for England, and
found his stay under the hospitable roof of his English uncle
agreeable as well as valuable. Sir William Ashley was pleased to
approve of him, saying, indeed—than which there could be no higher
praise—that he was almost like an Englishman; his cousin, George
Ashley, of about his own age, was at hand to pilot him round
neighbouring estates or about London, his younger cousin Amelia to
welcome him when he came back. Hither also came Louis for a short
visit, to make violent, half-teasing love to Amelia and to embitter
the hearts of youthful country gentlemen by his elegance and good
looks, and—chiefly for that reason—to create a certain relief in
Gilbert’s mind when he departed.
The English turnip, that supremely important root, was receiving
Gilbert’s attention when the messenger brought him the news that was
to change his whole career. The Marquis de Château-Foix had died in
two days of a chill contracted while superintending some building
operations on the estate. Voltairean and sceptic, he had given his
life for his ideals, and the young man of twenty, whose feet, indeed,
were at the moment heavy with the soil of a Suffolk turnip-field, but
whose hand was always, in idea, on the hilt of the sword which was to
make him a glorious name, was left to reign in his stead—if he chose.
Gilbert de Château-Foix did choose, and at once. It was a real and no
forced choice, for, except his father's wishes, not expressed in any
document, but clamant in his own heart, there was no binding reason
why he should reside on his estate. Throwing up the commission—the
result of studies more than satisfactory—which awaited him in
Royal-Aunis, and with it his dreams of military glory, he announced
his intention of devoting himself to the care of his tenantry. He was
not yet twenty-one, but if he knew regrets and distastes, he shared
them with no one. His comrades and his friends in Paris thought
him bereft of his senses, and stigmatised him as an eccentric.
The very handsome youth in the blue, scarlet, and silver of the
_gardes-du-corps_ who held an amazed conference with him one afternoon
in the Allée du Mail at Versailles was half incredulous, half amused.
“I had hoped, before I died,” he said, “to be pointed out as the
kinsman of a marshal of France. You should consider, Gilbert, that you
are wrecking the ambitions of other people as well as your own.”
The young Marquis tried to explain that he was not wrecking his
ambitions, or, at least, only some of them.
“Then I suppose,” said Louis, “that you are going to be a sort of
philosopher, like the late M. Voltaire, in his retreat at Ferney. My
cousin, the celebrated philosopher,” he repeated softly to himself.
But though the Vicomte ended, as usual, on a jesting note, Gilbert
fancied that he was sorrier, or more sympathetic, than he cared to
own. Years afterwards he learned that Louis had subsequently called
out a subaltern of Royal-Aunis for saying that the regiment was well
delivered from such a milksop as M. de Château-Foix.
CHAPTER II
ON THE TERRACE
“There must be some misunderstanding,” said the Marquis.
“I am afraid,” rejoined the Curé, “that there is something worse.”
They were pacing slowly up and down the terrace at Chantemerle among
the roses of the late June of 1792. The little river Lay, curled about
the foot of the hill, and hugged by the wooded slopes which clung
above it, caught the eye with an occasional sparkle of its shallows,
for the south façade of the house, dominating the slightly sloping
garden, owned a bolder prospect than many in the province. On the
other side, indeed, where the avenue approached it on level ground,
the topmost windows of the château showed only the characteristic
Vendean expanse of view, which gave the look of a flat country to a
region that was not really flat, but which had nothing to catch the
eye, among the innumerable stunted trees which bordered every field,
save a roof or two with its red and curving tiles. But the garden
front looked down on what was almost a ravine.
As they turned at the end of the path the Marquis glanced up at the
house, and at that moment Madame de Château-Foix emerged from the
structure in the Palladian style by which the Marquis Octavien-François
had, in the days of Louis XIV., somewhat disastrously enlarged his
semi-Renaissance dwelling-place. She stood for a moment on the level
stone space at the head of the flight of steps running down to the
terrace, then, smiling at her son, seated herself in a low chair set
in the shade of the incongruous pavilion, which was in fact her
boudoir. Gilbert and the priest continued their leisurely and absorbed
promenade.
Beside the Marquise, on a table, lay some unfinished needlework, and
in its bright folds a dingy little volume, to which her hand went out
mechanically. But she did not read it; her eyes strayed to the figure
of her son, as he passed with bent head and a puzzled expression in
the gaze which now and again met her own, but hardly saw her. She
glanced quickly at his companion. At that instant the Curé leisurely
folded up the letter which he had been reading, and handed it
back to the Marquis. In his face, at least, there was no lack of
comprehension, no hesitation. But M. des Graves would not attempt more
than the bare expression of his thoughts; he would neither urge nor
persuade. That was not his way. If it had been, Gilbert de Chantemerle
would not have been down there with him now; that his mother knew very
well.
She recognised—was rather proud of—the unyielding character of her
son, his insusceptibility to influence, his inflexible adherence to
his own standards of conduct—and these were high. She realised, though
less clearly, how little M. des Graves tried to influence him. Devout
Catholic as she was, it was only given to her in rare glimpses to see
that the priest had a settled policy of holding his hand, not from
the impossibility of accomplishing anything, but from principle. She
knew that he held strong views on the abuse of power. There was
always about this old friend of her husband’s a sensation—to her
uncomfortable—of force voluntarily withheld from exercise. Sometimes
the sensation affected her with almost physical irritation. And deep
down in her soul, beneath the occasional mild exultation at her son’s
untrammelled state, lay the regret that M. des Graves had not brought
his influence to bear on Gilbert’s spiritual life. For Gilbert’s
somewhat devout boyhood had merged into a manhood of indifference; his
preoccupation with Catholicism was ethical, his creed a joyless
allegiance to a system of morals. He had never openly broken away from
the Church as his father had done, and to her ordinances he paid the
bare outward homage that she demanded—but it was less than a minimum
payment. Not without reason, as she suspected, did he always absent
himself from Chantemerle at Easter, timing his annual visit to his
less exacting Southern tenantry to coincide with that critical
festival. The Vendean peasantry were thus free to draw the charitable
but untrue conclusion that he went to his duties at Château-Foix.
Yet in any other part of France his conduct would have passed as
exemplary, but here, in the midst of a people ardently faithful, it
had not that complexion. And this, with a priest always at hand as
counsellor!
Counsellor, indeed, M. des Graves had been, and what a good one!
Indeed, it sometimes seemed to the Marquise that almost all through
her married life he had been explaining something to some one of
them—her husband, herself, her son. Eight years ago, in that episode
of supreme joy which shone out amidst her grief, when Gilbert had
taken the resolution of living on his estates, it was to the Curé that
he had turned for help in his unfamiliar task. And the priest had
given him the most unstinted aid. But it was not difficult to see his
capacity for assistance in matters of larger import, and Gilbert had
discussed with him every political crisis of which the last three
years had been so prodigal, from the calling of the States-General in
’89, at which, as a good Liberal, he had rejoiced, to the declaration
of war against Austria in the spring of the present year, which had
not pleased him at all.
There was, indeed, in recent events material enough for many and many
a conference on the terrace walk. In the great flood which was
changing the face of France there ran a tide bearing the provinces
of the West to a destination which no man could see—a tide whose
waves threatened, with the submerging of every familiar landmark, to
engulf more particularly M. des Graves and all his caste. Since the
suppression of the religious orders, the sales of ecclesiastical
property, and the promulgation of the civil constitution of the clergy
in 1790, no part of France had suffered more severely from the
anti-clerical policy of the Government. Hundreds of parishes had been
deprived of the priest who refused the civil oath. In some the
“constitutional” curé, the “intrus,” celebrated Masses which the
faithful would not attend; in some the church had been devoted to
other uses, while the non-juror, if he were not in hiding, or in a
foreign country, was probably eating out his heart in the _chef-lieu_
of the department, cut off from his people, and forced to report
himself every morning to the authorities. For the Vendean peasant,
with his fervid piety, no more cruel persecution could have been
devised. But though hundreds of priests were interned at Angers, in
order to prevent them from preparing their flocks for the Easter
communion, Vendée proper had not suffered to such an extent as the
neighbouring departments until, in the early spring of 1792, the
authorities decreed that all non-jurors residing there for less than
a year, should leave it in a week.
It was the first step of purely local persecution. The municipality of
Chantonnay, the little town in whose district lay the village of
Chantemerle, had been very slow indeed to take any anti-clerical
action. No “constitutional” priest had ever been installed at
Chantemerle, and M. des Graves was accustomed to proceed with his
ministrations as calmly as though he were ignorant of what was hanging
over his head. But he knew well enough—and his flock, too—that he was
a favoured exception. His parish was like a little island which the
encroaching tide is bound in the end to submerge. Neither château nor
village had yet recovered from the horror with which they had heard of
Vergniaud’s proposal in the Assembly on May 27th for the deportation
of priests to foreign parts, when orders came from Fontenay that all
non-jurors not born in the department were to leave it at once. And
M. des Graves was not a Vendean born.
Yet, though the thunderbolt had fallen in the first week of June, on
this, the 25th of the same month, the Curé had said his Mass as usual
in the little church, had visited his parishioners, and was now pacing
sedately up and down with the master of the Château, who, as a noble,
was only a shade less obnoxious to the Jacobin Directory than himself.
The explanation lay in the priest’s resolution, and in the fact that
Fontenay-le-Comte, the _chef-lieu_, was a good deal further away than
Chantonnay. The municipality had not moved. Neither had M. des Graves.
On all these things did Madame de Château-Foix reflect as she watched
the two figures. She did not allow herself to dwell on what would
happen if M. des Graves were actually turned out of his cure. The
prospect was too terrible. It had naturally been discussed ere this,
and she knew that Gilbert was determined to shelter the priest, as
long as possible, in the château itself, turning the chapel into a
resort for the villagers, as had been done the previous September,
with temporary success, at Saint-Mars-la-Réorthe. To have the Curé
permanently in the house would not be so great a change after all.
From this consideration the Marquise passed to that of another
imminent change which would, on the other hand, make a vast difference
to her. Fate had preserved her son to her long unmarried. Lucienne
d’Aucourt, who had left her convent at the age of fifteen nearly four
years ago, had spent the ensuing years with her mother—transferred in
1778 to the newly-formed household of the Princess Elisabeth—in her
apartments at Versailles, and, afterwards, at the Tuileries, whither
Gilbert went twice a year to pay his respects. But the shock of the
disastrous flight to Varennes had killed Madame d’Aucourt within
three months. Her death would have seemed the signal for Gilbert to
claim his bride, but the Comtesse’s last wish was that her daughter
should not be married until she had reached the unusually late age of
nineteen. Respect for this desire and the friendship which the
Princess Elisabeth extended to the daughter of her lady-in-waiting
induced Gilbert, unwillingly, to postpone the ceremony, and Lucienne
remained at Court under the technical chaperonage of an old cousin of
her mother’s, Madame de Fontenelle. But her nineteenth birthday was
advancing; by the autumn the château would know a new mistress. It was
the plain duty of the present châtelaine to school herself to the
thought; repugnance, as she recognised, was insensate, for she was
genuinely fond of Lucienne, who was, moreover, the bride of her own
choosing. She took up again the little book of devotions as if to find
there a corrective for her own rather jealous thoughts.
A moment later the volume was again in her lap. Gilbert was reading to
the priest a portion of the letter which he held in his hand. He was
too far away for Madame de Château-Foix to hear the words, yet a frown
of impatience creased her brow, for she knew from whom the letter
came. For perhaps the hundredth time she was submerged in the
bewildering rush of affection and annoyance, familiar enough in the
years that had passed since Louis de Saint-Ermay had come to amaze
them with his naughtiness and hold them captive with his audacious
joy. She was as sure as if she had read it that his letter was the
harbinger of annoyance. And Gilbert would give him his time and his
advice, just as in old days he had given up to him his toys. Life, it
seemed, was consistently unfair—always ready to heap fresh gifts on
the spoilt child. Louis had always had what he wanted, and there were
always to be found persons holding that ridiculous opinion enunciated
years ago by M. des Graves—that it was good for him to be happy. And
what sort of happiness was his? The Marquise had never closely
enquired into the manner of the Vicomte’s life in Paris, but she had
every reason to believe that he amused himself somewhat over-well. His
modest estate near Poitiers was hopelessly mortgaged; she suspected
Gilbert of having more than once paid his debts for him. Now that the
King’s constitutional guard, the successor of the bodyguard, had been
disbanded also, she might have wondered what kept him still in Paris,
had she not known his fervid loyalty—and that, too, of a type rather
rare when almost every extreme Royalist conceived it to be his duty to
emigrate. This devotion Madame de Château-Foix considered to be the
best thing she knew about her nephew; she set it over against his
unconquerable levity and extravagance. It was not, in her eyes, a
count against him that his reckless temper sometimes got the better
of the nonchalant frivolity beneath which it was buried, for she
infinitely preferred the volcanic to the surface stratum. He had, for
instance, as a _garde-du-corps_, been at Versailles on the great night
of the 5th of October 1789, and, so far as his family had been able to
elicit, had had on that occasion a narrow escape of sharing the fate
of his massacred comrades, MM. de Varicourt and Deshuttes. The Marquis
de Lafayette told Gilbert that his cousin was only saved from the
effects of an entirely useless defiance of the mob, as the whole
cortège started the next day for Paris, by a fishwife from the Halles,
who threw her arms round him and declared that no one should touch
_un si bel enfant_. The Vicomte always denied this tale, which was
galling to his dignity—for what youth of twenty-three (as he then was)
is pleased to be termed a child?—and doubly so because, in common with
most of the extreme Royalists, he hated and distrusted the narrator.
When Château-Foix first asked him about it, he replied that the
incident was undoubtedly one of the dreams which came to Lafayette in
that inopportune and much-derided slumber on which the opposite party
laid so much of the blame for that night’s events.
But Louis’ scrapes were not always political.
It was no mitigation of the Marquise’s annoyance—rather it was an
addition of fresh fuel—to know that if Louis had come himself instead
of writing she would have denied him nothing; there was no resisting
his personal charm. But her principles, her prejudices, and her
maternal jealousy, all of which the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay could
vanquish when he was present, were apt, in his absence, to clamour
the louder for their temporary extinction. It was so this evening.
CHAPTER III
A LETTER AND A CONCLAVE
“C’est le caractère du Français, né malin, mais léger et bavard, de
conspirer dans les endroits publics.”
—FRANÇOIS COPPÉE, _Toute une Jeunesse_.
Had the Marquise de Château-Foix been able to overhear the conversation
between her son and M. des Graves she might perhaps have held her
surmises to be in a measure justified. To M. des Graves’ conjecture of
“something worse than a mistake,” Gilbert de Chantemerle had indeed
made no immediate reply, but glanced thoughtfully at the letter in his
hand.
“You mean?” he asked at length.
“I mean that there is more information in the Vicomte’s letter than he
is himself aware of.”
The younger man looked puzzled. “Naturally I see that Louis is under
some misapprehension,” he said slowly, “since I have never, as he
imagines, given in my adhesion to this scheme of which he speaks.
Indeed, how could I, when his letter gives me the first hint of its
existence?”
They had reached the end of the terrace.
“Will you read me the letter again?” asked the priest. “Or read, at
least, the part relating to the plot, if so it is to be called.”
His companion complied at once, turning to the first page of the fine,
closely-written missive.
“‘. . . I am extremely glad, my dear Gilbert, that you have allowed
your name at least to be used in our plans, whether or no you mean to
take any personal action. Any adhesion from Vendée will be of immense
service to us. Between ourselves I am a little at a loss to think how
you can have heard of our designs, but that is neither here nor there,
since I have the important fact on good authority. I had meant soon to
write to ask your opinion on the point, for, Liberal though you
are . . . or were? . . . you cannot fail to see the possibilities of a
strong Royalist-Girondin alliance, with possible assistance from the
_émigrés_. The King is as passive as ever (it is a quality in which he
excels), and we have not as yet communicated with Coblentz. I could,
however, give you a goodly list of names on our side, were it not
wiser to refrain. It seems strange, does it not, that the offer of
alliance should have come from the enemy’s camp?’”
The reader paused.
“_Et dona ferentes_,” said M. des Graves softly. “But I fear me Louis
has long ago forgotten the Virgil we did together. May I also have the
passage relating to Madame d’Espaze?”
“It is further on, I think.
“‘I am sure that you must know how there was never yet a successful
conspiracy without a woman in it. We too have a divinity who holds
the threads of our destinies, and (we hope) those of France. When I
tell you that she is as charming a hostess as she is a plotter, you
will guess that her salon is always well attended. Indeed, it is
the possession of that same salon which makes Madame d’Espaze so
useful. And if rumour has coupled her name somewhat too closely with
that of Lecorrier, the Girondin, M. des Graves will tell you that
calumny generally dogs the footsteps of the good, as from my own
experience I know that it tracks those of the fair. The other day, for
instance. . . .’
“The rest, as you know, is not pertinent,” concluded the Marquis
drily.
“Yet I am inclined to think that there is more pertinence in the
remark about a woman’s rôle in a plot than the writer knows,” muttered
his listener.
“I wish to goodness that Louis would think less about a woman’s
rôle in any capacity,” returned the Marquis, with a slight show of
impatience.
“Can the boy for a moment,” said the Curé, ignoring Château-Foix’
remark, “believe in the sincerity of this divinity, as he calls her?
Surely he must know that there was a suspicion of her being implicated
in the affair of the Necklace? If the idea of a Girondin-_émigré_
alliance were not on the face of it an impossibility, the mere
presence of a woman ought to be enough to rouse suspicion. The game
is as old as Delilah and Jael.”
“Then what do you make of this project of Louis’?” asked Gilbert.
“It is a trap,” returned the Curé, quickening his steps and his
speech. “I have not a doubt of it. Can a leopard change his spots?
No; and can the deputies of the Gironde, who have spent their time
since the autumn in passing laws against the _émigrés_, now be
desirous of an alliance with them. The idea is preposterous.”
“If they are,” said the Marquis, “their conversion must certainly
have been speedy, for it is less than a month ago that the King’s
constitutional guard was dismissed, and less still since Servan’s
abominable proposals for the formation of a camp of scoundrels
outside Paris passed the Assembly.”
“And if our last news is true—as seems likely—that the King refuses
his assent to that, as he has done to Vergniaud’s iniquitous scheme
for deportation of priests, you may be quite sure that the Gironde
will never forgive him.”
“But if it is only a trap, a bogus conspiracy, what do the Girondin
party hope to gain by it?” asked the Marquis, knitting his brows.
“This,” answered the priest. “The Gironde has long been hinting that
the Court wishes for nothing less than the invasion of France by the
Emperor, and that it communicates its desires by secret messages to
Coblentz. But they have no proofs to show to the people. Very well,
then, if they can persuade a certain number of young hotheads about
the King to believe in their sincerity, they will have their names
and signatures, most probably, as evidence, when the time for
denunciation is ripe. That these ‘conspirators’ are unimportant does
not matter a straw—they are Royalists. For all we know, a list of
false names may be in circulation also, which would account for the
appearance of yours.”
“If this explanation be anything like the truth,” said Château-Foix,
“then not only the King and the Court are imperilled, but Louis
himself is in the gravest danger. I had better start for Paris
to-night.”
“I think you would be wise to do so,” said the priest quietly.
“Young fool!” muttered the Marquis somewhat irritably. “How could he
be so blinded? He has a good enough head on his shoulders as a
rule. . . . And, Father, what about you? I cannot bear the thought of
leaving home when matters are so critical.”
“We are in God’s hands,” replied M. des Graves tranquilly. “When He
permits it, but not before, the municipality will move. You cannot
deny, Gilbert, that they have proved miraculously tolerant.”
“Yes; because no pressure has yet been brought to bear on them from
Fontenay,” returned Château-Foix. “Directly that happens, we shall see
the worth of their tolerant spirit. I tell you frankly, Father, I fear
the worst. And if you are turned out there will be a riot in the
village, and we shall have the scenes of last year at Apremont and
Saint-Christophe-du-Ligneron over again.”
“Not if I can prevent it,” said the Curé firmly. “And, should I be
ejected, I shall obey your wishes, and take up my residence in the
Château.” It was not in his mind, any more than it was in his host’s,
to consider the odium and danger in which such a course would involve
the inhabitants of the Château, for the matter was not one of safety,
but of duty.
The Marquis looked at him. “I shall leave full instructions,” was all
his comment. “It seems a sorry trick of fate,” he added, “to drag me
away at this juncture. However, it is evidently a pressing matter. I
can satisfy myself also as to Lucienne’s well-being.” His voice had
grown softer, and he paused for a second. “Well, I had better tell my
mother. I am sure that you are right about my going, but I do not go
willingly.”
The priest stood looking after him as he went towards the steps, and
there shone on his face, for a moment, something of the love which he
bore him.
“You have had a long conference down there,” said the Marquise
cheerfully, as Gilbert mounted the steps. “Am I to share the secret?”
“Certainly,” replied Château-Foix. “We were discussing Louis’ affairs.
He has entered into some exceedingly rash political relations, and,
though he is evidently not aware of it, is at this moment most
seriously compromised by them.”
He stood there looking down on her with a little frown, rather as if
she were the offending entanglement.
At Saint-Ermay’s name the smile left Madame de Château-Foix’ lips, and
a certain tightness came about them. “Oh, Louis . . .” she murmured,
and took her embroidery and a skein of silk off the table. “Well?” she
asked, bending her head and selecting a needle from her case.
“I am going to Paris to see him,” announced her son succinctly.
There was a moment’s pause, ere Madame de Château-Foix slowly raised
her head. “You do not really mean that, surely?”
“Yes. Why not?”
The Marquise made a gesture with her still beautiful hands. “What sort
of a scrape is in this time?” she demanded. “Debts, or a woman?”
“Neither,” said Gilbert. And, leaning against the stone balustrade, he
gave her an outline of the situation, omitting all reference to Madame
d’Espaze. At the end she took the embroidery and put it back on the
table. Her colour was perceptibly heightened.
“I have no patience with Louis—nor with you, for the matter of that,”
she observed, and there was more than irritation in her voice. “But it
has always been the same. Surely Louis is old enough to look after
himself. Who made you his keeper?”
“You yourself,” returned the Marquis, and there was the glimmer of a
smile on his face. “Exactly eighteen years ago last March it was. Have
you forgotten?”
Madame de Château-Foix gave vent to a monosyllable that sounded like
“Pshaw!”
“My dear mother, you make yourself out a perfect Gorgon of
hard-heartedness. Who would be the first to fly to Louis’ bedside if
he were ill? Why, you, of course!”
“That is very different,” replied the Marquise, unmoved.
“Well, the difference lies in this, that Louis has never had a
dangerous illness in his life, and that this affair is—dangerous.”
“Other things,” said his mother, “are dangerous, too—for other people.
It is dangerous for you to go away now, when we do not know from day
to day what the Directory at Fontenay may do next, when the village is
on the point of revolt against them, when——”
Château-Foix got up from the balustrade. “Yes, I know all that,” he
replied gravely, “and therefore nothing but an affair of life and
death could persuade me to leave at this juncture. But I must go, and
to-night.”
“Well, I hope we shall not all live to regret it,” said Madame de
Château-Foix. “It is perfectly scandalous that you should be dragged
away like this. And does M. des Graves approve of your going, may I
ask?”
“He does,” said her son. “Try not to be so unjust to Louis, ma
mère! You know what an ardent Royalist he is, and you are far from
disapproving of him on that score. If he chooses to play his head for
the cause, as he is doing now, it may be foolish of him, but it is
hardly scandalous.”
The Marquise got up and gathered together her silks. “As you like, my
dear boy,” she said, with an air of resignation. “I do not want to
dictate to you. Dear me, what a singular hurry M. des Graves appears
to be in!”
For the priest was now hastening along the terrace walk with a
newspaper in his hand. He did not speak until he was nearly at the top
of the steps.
“The courier has just brought the Paris paper,” he said, a little out
of breath. “There is very serious news in it. The mob has invaded the
Tuileries.”
“Invaded the Tuileries!” exclaimed the Marquise with incredulous
horror. “Then—— O mon Dieu!”
“No one was injured, Madame,” put in the priest quickly. “The account
most expressly says so.”
A heartfelt “Thank God!” from Gilbert, who had perceptibly paled,
accompanied the Marquise’s sigh of relief as she sank down again into
her chair.
“The paper merely says,” went on the Curé, glancing at it, “that
several thousand armed persons from the Faubourgs Saint Antoine and
Saint Marcel——”
“The worst quarters of Paris!” ejaculated the Marquise.
“—Accompanied to the Assembly a deputation demanding the recall of the
Girondin ministry dismissed by the King on the 13th. Afterwards they
forced an entrance into the palace, threatening to bring cannon to
bear on the great gates if they were not opened. The newspaper—which
is Jacobin—states that calm and order prevailed throughout, and that
great enthusiasm was manifested when the King himself put on the
_bonnet rouge_.”
“The King put on the cap of liberty!” exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix.
“It is impossible!”
“Was the mob in Madame Elisabeth’s apartments?” asked the Marquis
quickly. “Does it say anything about the Princess and her ladies?”
“I can see nothing specific,” replied the priest, holding out the
newspaper, “except that Madame Elisabeth was with the King, while the
Queen appears to have been in another room. But you had better read it
for yourself. As far as I can gather, the crowd roamed for hours all
over the palace—the gates were opened at half-past eleven, and the
invaders were there till half-past eight at night. So it is probably
useless for us to hope that Lucienne was spared the sight of them.”
Gilbert dashed the paper down on the balustrade. “It is monstrous!” he
cried. “I am as good a Liberal as any man, but this outrage! . . .
Now, at all events, I must start for Paris!”
“Poor, poor darling!” exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix, referring not
to her son but to his betrothed. “Bring her back as quickly as you
can, Gilbert—you will, of course, have to bring Madame de Fontenelle,
too—though I do not know how you will manage, for she is very old.
Perhaps I——”
“No, ma mère,” interposed the Marquis quickly, “I must go alone. And
as to bringing Lucienne back here——” Instead of finishing his sentence
he looked at the Curé.
The Marquise saw the glance and its answer. “You don’t mean to say
that you are not going to bring her back?” she said in disappointed
tones. Already she had the girl in bed, surrounded with remedies
against shock. “In Heaven’s name, Gilbert, what will you do with the
poor child if you do not bring her here?”
“I shall take, or send her, for a little while to Suffolk,” replied
her son. “I do not think it desirable to bring her into the midst of
so much unrest and potential disturbance as we have here at present,
and M. des Graves agrees with me.”
“But _I_ am here!” exclaimed the Marquise, sitting up in her chair.
“Yes, but some day I may have to send you away, too,” returned Gilbert
very gravely. “However, we will not discuss that now. I hope the time
may never come. If it should, you will go and take care of Lucienne
for me till I claim her, will you not, ma mère?” He bent and kissed
her hand affectionately.
“I suppose I shall always do as you ask me, Gilbert,” answered Madame
de Château-Foix, her unmistakable surprise at his last announcement
softening a little. “But leave Chantemerle! . . . However, as you
say, the time has not come for that. Now, will you tell Antoine what
clothes to pack for you, or shall I?”
CHAPTER IV
PLAY AND POLITICS
“Ces hommes étaient doués d’une étrange souplesse vitale: pour eux
l’apprentissage avait été nul, et la tache fut terrible. Au cours de
la tempête révolutionnaire, ils firent preuve d’un courage, d’une
fierté, d’un stoicisme qu’on s’étonne de rencontrer chez des hommes
qu’une existence frivole n’avait préparé qu’au plaisir et à la
mollesse.”
—G. LENOTRE, _Le Marquis de la Rouërie_.
Eight o’clock had just struck from the great timepiece whose dial had
the privilege of being upheld in the arms of two hooped and painted
china shepherdesses. The dying daylight fought a losing fight with the
host of candles in the large, well-furnished room. These stood on half
a dozen tables, where they lit up the players’ faces and their gold,
and from their silver sconces on the walls they chiefly joined issue
with the few shafts of daylight slipping between the heavy window
curtains. Behind those same curtains lay, shut out from view alone,
the turmoil of the Rue Saint-Honoré. It must be confessed that, if
this was loud, it was occasionally equalled by the noise within the
room itself, when a group of talkers burst into laughter over an
anecdote, or an unlucky player declared with vehemence, and amid
expostulation, that he would stake no more.
There was no woman present, and the general appearance of the room and
the occupation of its inmates might have led to the supposition that
it existed for the sole purpose of gambling. Nevertheless, it was
really an apartment in a private house, and, as such, it testified
merely to the Comte de Larny’s method of entertaining his friends.
Were the monarchy going swiftly to perdition, and its supporters
involved in the same downfall, the latter must amuse themselves; and
if the host and every one of his guests knew that each card-party
might be his last, the knowledge apparently added zest to the game.
The gathering numbered scarcely a score. Amongst it were visible a few
black figures, those of the _noirs_, the _aristocrates enragés_, who
affected to wear mourning for the monarchy which they considered—and
very truly—to have breathed its last when its holder was brought from
Versailles. The greater number, however, wore a less sombre style of
dress, and several were in uniform. This was, like Coblentz, the camp
of ultra-Royalism, the last stronghold of a loyalty pushed to the
point of fanaticism, where the champions of a lost cause brought to
its defence a zeal far more ardent than their leader’s own. Leader,
indeed, the King was not; his name served as a rallying-cry, his
person as a symbol, but the passive and patient Louis XVI. was neither
chief nor divinity to these his most fervent partisans. They were all
of them very literally _plus royalistes que le roi_. For them the King
was almost a traitor to himself. He had stripped himself of what he
had no right to lay aside, but above him still burnt the throne from
which he had been dragged, and it was on the steps of that desecrated
altar that their lives were offered up. They were many of them young,
and most of them doomed; they were gay with a gaiety which was
spontaneous if it was extravagant, and brave with a courage no less
real for its utter futility. And if the stake for which they played
was the existence and the privileges of their own order as well as
those of their King, if they sometimes condemned the sovereign in
whose name they held the dice, if they cast the last throws with
defiant recklessness, theirs was none the less a tragic and a
desperate devotion. But certainly none of the company seemed in the
slightest degree conscious of this. They talked, they laughed, they
lost or won; and the Comte de Larny, who prided himself on his
personal resemblance to the King, went round the room at intervals,
exchanging a jest with the talkers and bestowing an occasional word of
advice on a player if he overlooked his cards.
The table nearest to the door was unoccupied, but round that beyond it
sat four gentlemen playing quadrille. One of them was a _noir_, whose
peculiarly cadaverous appearance was heightened by his black dress.
He had on his right a Chevalier de Saint Louis, and on his left a
personage, no longer young, whose dark features bore the stamp of
mingled sensuality and cynicism.
The fourth player was a young man of exceptional good looks, wearing
the somewhat extravagantly cut fashions of 1792, but with no trace of
the amazing war of colours by which the young bloods of the Court
party usually protested against the levelling tendencies of Jacobinism
in sartorial as in other matters. The protest, however, was visible
enough in the striped pearl-grey satin which glimmered upon his
handsome person, and in his carefully dressed and powdered hair,
becoming unmistakable in the silver buttons with the fleur-de-lys,
which testified to his political opinions in a manner more courageous
than prudent. A half-amused expression seemed habitual to him, and he
staked with great nonchalance from a rapidly diminishing heap of coins
in front of him. Eyes of the darkest grey, a straight nose neither
long nor short, and an unusually well-turned mouth and chin made up a
face instinct with life and vivacity. The eyes had that rare setting
so full of charm, when the outer corner is at a slightly lower level
than the inner—the slope which stamps a face sometimes with hauteur,
sometimes with dreaminess, but always with a nameless fascination. In
the present case it seemed impossible that melancholy should sit
there; the glance was too direct and keen, too little likely to
be veiled in introspection—a look at once indolent and daring.
Despite their beauty and their delicacy, the features were scarcely
effeminate. They were those of a man who could at need both think and
act; and yet there were strong indications that the hour for either
necessity was never a very welcome one. An inborn airy gaiety, an
almost ardent carelessness reigned in them at present, and by too
clear a natural tenure ever to be wholly dethroned.
A diamond sparkled on one of his hands as, tilting back his
spindle-legged chair, the young man clasped them at the back of his
head, looking with a smile and a raising of the eyebrows at his
partner, the _noir_. The smile was a very charming one.
“We have no luck to-night, it seems,” he remarked, as the Chevalier de
Saint Louis raked in the gains. “I should advise you to change your
partner, Comte.”
The melancholy _noir_ shook his head. “I could not find a better loser
to bear me company,” he said with courtesy, “and if you will honour me
so far, I should like to continue our alliance.”
“It is I who am honoured,” replied the young man, bringing back his
chair to its normal position; “but I hope that our opponents will not
object to my making sure that I am still solvent. I confess that I
feel somewhat doubtful on the point.” He laughed, plunged a hand into
his breeches pocket, and pulled out five louis d’or.
“Then we shall make your pockets as empty as Vergniaud’s last speech,”
said the Chevalier de Saint Louis, with the air of one contributing a
witty remark.
But his partner was recounting his gains, the _noir_ was dealing very
slowly and methodically, and the player in grey, with his hands in his
depleted pockets, was looking a little abstractedly round the room.
“A thousand pardons!” he exclaimed, as the Chevalier touched his arm;
“I did not know that you were ready. Is it my turn to stake?”
The _noir_ nodded, and the possessor of five louis pushed three of
them towards the centre of the table. The slim hand, however, never
reached the little rosewood centre of its goal, for it was arrested by
the sudden opening of the heavily gilded folding-door.
“Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix!” announced the strident voice of
a lackey.
The arrival sufficed to divert most people’s attention. As for the
_noir’s_ partner, he had sprung to his feet, upsetting his chair, his
gaze riveted upon the newcomer. “Gilbert! as I live!” he exclaimed in
accents of the profoundest astonishment.
For the handsome player in grey was no other than Louis-Adrien-Marie-Hyacinthe
de Chantemerle, Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, and a visitor from the shades
could not have surprised him more.
For a moment the Marquis stood on the threshold, a tall dark
figure, glancing swiftly round the company with an air of quiet
self-possession. Then he moved forward to take the outstretched hand
of the Comte de Larny, who had hurried from the other side of the
room.
“This is indeed a surprise,” said the latter—“and a pleasure!” he
hastened to add with effusion. The Marquis bowed slightly. He was
perfectly aware of the falsity of the last statement. No one of his
Liberal views was likely to be popular in the present assembly—nay,
would probably be regarded as something worse than a Jacobin. Since M.
de Larny was also aware of this fact, his usually suave manner became
a little flustered, but, as he had every wish to be polite to the
cousin of his kinsman Saint-Ermay, he caught hold of the two nearest
guests and presented them to the newcomer.
By this time the Vicomte had definitely abandoned his game (which at
one moment he had seemed to have a wish to continue) and had advanced
to greet his cousin. The Marquis was exchanging civilities with an
acquaintance, but as the young man approached he broke off, and held
out his hand with a smile. “I want a word or two with you presently,
Louis,” he said carelessly, and resumed his conversation.
The Vicomte de Saint-Ermay nodded rather disconsolately, and strolled
back to his fellow-players. But they had broken up and the table was
deserted. He threw himself down in his former chair, crossed his
legs, put an elbow on the table, and waited. He was not sure that
he was glad to see his cousin in the present company. In spite of
temperamental gulfs, there subsisted between them a very sincere if
limited affection, and he knew how far from friendly to the Marquis
were the dispositions of most present. And though he permitted himself
free criticism, not to say mockery, of his kinsman’s views and
actions, he very rarely indulged in it except to Gilbert’s face, and
at no time encouraged it in others. The smiles and glances around him
were therefore highly galling to the feeling of mingled affection,
amusement, and family pride with which he regarded Château-Foix.
“You appear to be sulking, Saint-Ermay,” said a voice suddenly behind
him. “Can it be that you are bankrupt?” And the speaker, a young
exquisite like himself, powdered and point-devise, but lacking his
own good looks, perched himself on the table and leant towards him.
“Are your pockets quite empty?”
“Very nearly,” responded the Vicomte, with a shrug. “You are in the
same condition yourself, I expect, De Périgny, if what I hear is true.
But if you think I was sulking (which I was not), favour me with a
little of your conversation.”
“I see—I am to enact David before Saul,” retorted the newcomer,
slipping off the table. “Or rather, since I find myself so scriptural,
I fancy that it is a case of ‘Occupy till I come.’” He punctuated his
remark with a glance at the other side of the room, where Château-Foix
was visible in conversation. “Monsieur le Cousin will want a word with
you presently, I suspect.”
“I suppose so,” said Saint-Ermay resignedly. “Meanwhile you can tell
me all you know about the Lafayette affair. The accounts are so
confoundedly conflicting.”
For answer his companion hailed a passing friend. “We want news of
General Morpheus,” he called out. “D’Aubeville, you will know. Has he
gone back to his army—is he going back at all? Has the Assembly hanged
him or the National Guard made him dictator?”
The young man addressed shook his head, and a smile flickered for an
instant over his kindly and melancholy visage. “I am probably little
wiser than you, gentlemen. You know that their Majesties received the
Marquis very coldly the day before yesterday, and that the Queen is
reported to have said that she would rather perish than be saved by
Lafayette.”
“Wherein I applaud her,” observed the Comte de Périgny.
“He could have closed the Jacobins that day, for most of the National
Guard were eager to do so. But he dismissed them, and lost his chance,
for at the review which he held yesterday in the Champs Elysées only a
hundred or so put in an appearance.”
The others laughed, for they were emphatically of the Queen’s opinion.
“So the hero has gone back to his camp with his tail between his
legs?” asked M. de Périgny amiably. “I only regret that Guadet’s vote
of censure on him for leaving it was lost.”
“Yes; he went back this morning,” answered D’Aubeville gravely. “His
life would probably not have been safe in Paris a day longer—so much
has his coming excited and alarmed the Jacobins and Orleanists.”
“Then we shall see him burnt in effigy yet,” remarked De Périgny with
satisfaction.
“Ma foi, that would be something to live for!” exclaimed Louis de
Chantemerle. “We will all go and dance round the pile.”
“Too late, Messieurs,” interposed a fourth young man, stopping as he
passed. “I have just come through the Palais-Royal, and there was M.
Marie-Jean-Paul-Roch-Yves-Gilbert du Mottier blazing away merrily in
the middle of the garden.”
“I suspect your cousin does not share your views on bonfires,
Saint-Ermay,” put in D’Aubeville quietly. “Look at old Du Mesnou’s
long face; M. de Château-Foix is probably telling him that he
considers Lafayette the one man who could have saved us.”
“My cousin,” said the Vicomte ruefully, “has the misfortune to possess
the same Christian name as General Morpheus—a fact of which you have
just reminded me, M. de Monroux. Perhaps that accounts for it.”
“Honneur à Lafayette,
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,”
hummed the Comte de Périgny, and continued:
“Sa tête est toujours nette
Car il ne pense à rien;
Aussi dort-il fort bien.”
Louis knitted his brows. “I have never been able to arrive at a clear
comprehension of my cousin’s creed,” he said. “I know that it leads
him to the erection of model pig-styes for his tenantry, and all that
sort of thing; but disobey his orders, and see what happens! The
pig-styes have not altered a jot of his authority down there, and as
for his politics, I have my suspicions that his views are changing. A
few days in Paris will change them still more. And after all,” he
concluded lightly, “these things are freaks; one has generally to put
up with something of the kind in one’s relations.”
“One has,” assented D’Aubeville. “Sometimes one has to put up with
them in oneself.”
“I had a great-aunt,” observed the Comte de Périgny sympathetically,
“who always wanted to be kind to parrots. She thought they were
unhappy in cages, and bought up all she could find, and had them loose
in her house—one of those old houses in the Marais. It was as much
as one’s life was worth to go in. But she meant well, you know; and
I expect it is much the same with Monsieur le Marquis. Only, of
course, people who do not understand take these things seriously,
and you cannot be surprised if they class your cousin with the La
Rochefoucauld and the rest of that crew.”
“At any rate, he is with us in heart, whether he knows it or not,”
muttered Saint-Ermay a trifle moodily. And having uttered this
apologia for his erring kinsman, the young Royalist abruptly excused
himself and crossed the room towards him.
His friends looked after him.
“Saint-Ermay is always _bon enfant_,” remarked D’Aubeville reflectively,
“but I fancy he is not disposed to welcome his cousin’s visit with
enthusiasm.”
“But, parbleu, it must be trying to have a near relative with Jacobin
views,” suggested the latest comer; “especially when one is so devoted
a Royalist as Monsieur le Vicomte.”
“Good heavens, man, M. de Château-Foix is not a Jacobin!” cried De
Périgny, shocked. “He’s only one of those Liberal and constitutional
people.”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said D’Aubeville with unusual emphasis.
“_Le beau_ Saint-Ermay is losing his head over . . . a certain
Royalist widow, now Girondin in her tastes and . . . alliances!”
Octave de Périgny laughed. “_Le beau_ Saint-Ermay lose his head! Not
in the figurative sense! He is only amusing himself with that lady,
and Madame d’Espaze knows it. They both understand the game.”
“H’m!” said D’Aubeville meditatively, “I have not been feeling so
sure. I almost thought the butterfly was caught at last.”
“Had you known Saint-Ermay as long as I have,” returned De Périgny,
smiling, “you would have thought that so often that you would have
learned to distrust your own opinion on the matter. Though even I
believed that last winter——”
“What? What?” cried his auditors in a breath.
The Comte de Périgny hesitated. “Considering who is present,” he
observed with a significant glance, “I should be indiscreet if I
finished the sentence. And, at any rate, I was wrong, for it never
came to anything.”
“A good thing for all concerned,” observed D’Aubeville drily.
CHAPTER V
A MENTOR FROM THE PROVINCES
“He was the finest gentleman of person and wit I think I ever saw;
but could not be long serious, or mind business.”
—_Memoirs of Sir John Reresby_.
Meanwhile the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, finding his cousin still
occupied, had drawn aside the window curtains and was looking out, or
pretending to do so, with latent impatience. At last the hand which he
had been expecting was laid on his shoulder.
“You can give me a few minutes?” enquired the voice of the Marquis.
Saint-Ermay turned round. “Half an hour if you like,” he replied
cheerfully.
As they stood together for a moment a spectator could scarcely have
divined their kinship, save perhaps in that they had something of the
same bearing. Saint-Ermay was of slighter and more graceful make than
his cousin, nor was he so tall. The Chantemerle had for generations
been noted for their fine figures and their carriage, and though
Gilbert had grown up to better looks than his boyhood had promised, he
possessed his full share of the constant racial heritage without any
portion of the beauty which his (and Louis’) great-grandmother had
brought into the family. The Vicomte had both.
“We cannot possibly talk privately here,” observed Château-Foix rather
doubtfully.
“Not here, perhaps, but in that corner we could.” And slipping his arm
through his companion’s, Louis drew him towards a sofa standing in a
small recess in the least populated quarter of the room. “You have
come about Lucienne, of course,” he began at once. Having known
Mademoiselle d’Aucourt from a child he never used any more formal
designation in speaking of her to one of the family. “She is quite
safe, and well, I believe. But perhaps you have seen her? You got my
letter of the 20th, I suppose?”
“Of the 19th,” corrected Gilbert. “Did you write on the 20th? Then it
must have missed me. I learnt about that day’s events from the papers.
But I am satisfied about Lucienne, thank God. No, I have not yet seen
her, but the Princess was so good as to grant me an interview this
evening, and she told me of the plans which she had made, with your
assistance.”
“I hope that they are what you would have wished,” said the young man
anxiously. “You see, the Princess was so distressed about her, and it
takes so long for a letter to reach Chantemerle . . . and so she did
me the honour to take me into her counsels, failing you—or rather till
you could be got at. Of course one naturally thought of England, and
then it occurred to me that your uncle Ashley would probably be only
too pleased to take temporary charge of your . . . future wife.”
“Exactly the plan that had occurred to me,” said his cousin. “You
acted extremely properly, and I am very much obliged to you. It is out
of the question to take Lucienne to Vendée just now. On the other
hand, it is preposterous that she should have been exposed to such a
scene as must have taken place on the 20th. I can only pardon myself
by reflecting that, in the provinces, one is so far from realising
what is happening in Paris.”
“And in Paris, on the contrary, one grows accustomed to such things,”
returned Saint-Ermay, “though the events of the 20th were, I
admit, a new departure. But no doubt I ought to have made stronger
representations to you about her remaining here.”
“I am not blaming you in the least, Louis,” interposed the Marquis
quickly. “I have been too much influenced by her great reluctance to
quit Madame Elisabeth. That, and the knowledge that you were near her
has made me hesitate too long. But now——”
The other interrupted him with an odd laugh. “Pray don’t delude
yourself into thinking my presence any protection! Good God! if any
one could have been more helpless that day——” The Vicomte broke off,
biting his lip.
“You refer to the 20th?” asked Château-Foix, surprised to see that
light nature so moved. “Where was Lucienne? How much did she see?”
“She was with the Princess all the time. You can have no conception
what it was like. Oh, she was safe enough—no one said a word to
her—but still——” Saint-Ermay did not say to whom Lucienne owed her
comparative immunity from insult, nor mention how, at a risk to his
own life far greater than the danger to her sensibility, he had stood
in front of her for two long hours, the only barrier between her and
the mob that flowed through the Tuileries.
“You saw it too, then?”
“Unofficially, so to speak,” returned the Vicomte, with a curling lip.
“I came in with the rabble. You know—or perhaps you do not know—that
the King sent all us gentlemen out of the palace. On my soul, I would
rather have died in the antechamber than have gone—we were enough, we
could have held it—but”—he shrugged his shoulders—“the King wished it,
and so, like thieves, we crept out by the postern gate in twos and
threes. A fine experience for the remnants of the bodyguard!”
The Marquis looked at him in astonishment. Was this Louis, the
trifler, the volatile, the easy-going? His gay indifference was
dropped like a mask, his eyes were alight for a moment with a sombre
fire, and in his voice surged a passion and a bitterness which, if
ever he had believed his cousin capable of, Château-Foix had at least
not believed he would ever allow himself to display.
“But you came back?” he asked curiously.
Louis nodded, and in a flash resumed his wonted outer self. “I came
back,” he said in his ordinary tone. “By the way, I suppose the
Princess has told you that, since Madame de Fontenelle is too old and
infirm for the journey, she has procured an escort for Lucienne, in
the person of a certain Madame Gaumont—unless indeed you mean to take
her to England yourself?”
The change of subject was significant enough. Gilbert followed half
unwillingly along the new track.
“No,” he said in answer to the last query, “I dare not spare the time
to go to England now. Madame Elisabeth told me about this lady. She
seems thoroughly to be trusted; don’t you think so?”
Louis nodded. “She is an Englishwoman herself, I understand, and the
widow of Gaumont, the banker, once dear to the Third Estate. If the
Princess trusts her I think we—that is you—may do so too. But the
difficulty is that Lucienne is so extremely reluctant to leave her
mistress.”
“I know,” returned the Marquis slowly. “But from what the Princess
told me this afternoon I fancy she has made Lucienne see the necessity
of it. And now, Louis, what about yourself?”
“I?” asked his cousin. “What about me? I am not going to leave the
King, if that is what you mean.” His tone was calm and even languid
as, crossing his silk-clad legs, he studied the effects produced by
the light on the diamonds of his right shoe-buckle. “Though he will do
nothing to help himself, it is still possible to do something for
him.”
“To try to do something—and to perish in the trying,” corrected
Gilbert.
The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders. “Qu’importe?” he said lightly.
“Personally, I do not much care. But this is gloomy talk, when we are
set at last on such a hopeful track. For now it is do or die—the last
throw—as you know.”
“Yes, but I want to hear more about your plans.”
Louis raised his eyebrows. “But surely, Gilbert, you are well enough
posted up in them?”
“Not so thoroughly, perhaps, as you imagine,” replied the Marquis with
an enigmatical smile. The situation had its humours, grim though they
were. “You forget, too, that some time has elapsed since you wrote.”
“True,” conceded Louis. “Well, things have advanced since then, as you
can guess. To put it briefly, the events of the 20th have disgusted
the Gironde.”
“Indeed?” said Gilbert.
“And, in consequence,” continued the Vicomte, lowering his voice, “we
are now so sure of them, that on the 24th letters were despatched to
Coblentz, to the Princes.”
“Joint letters from the Girondins and the Royal party, I presume?”
Louis nodded. “Letters signed by both. Naturally, speculation is very
rife as to the consequences of the unexpected combination.”
“So I can imagine,” commented his listener. Tragedy still held
Comedy’s mask before her face. “And what do you yourselves think will
be the result?”
“We hope that it will be the means of urging on Prussia’s declaration
of war, which is sure to come sooner or later. Of course, the question
is whether it will come in time. You have no doubt gathered that a
certain reaction has set in since the 20th, and that the King may
almost be said to be popular just now. If that will last, and if that
damned Lafayette will but keep his finger out of the pie—thank Heaven!
he went back to-day, and in disgrace too——”
“Well, if the King’s popularity lasts, what then?”
“My dear Gilbert, what need to ask? With that, and the support of the
Gironde, we shall have the game in our hands in a few weeks. Come now,
what do you think yourself of our prospects?”
“What do I think?” echoed the Marquis slowly. “Why, this—that for a
party in your desperate position you are astonishingly trustful. What
if the Gironde is playing you false?”
“Impossible!” said the Vicomte with decision. “They are committed too
far. Why, Vergniaud himself—— And if you think that, why the devil did
you join us?”
Château-Foix put down his ace. “Your question is very pertinent,
Louis,” he replied in level tones. “I never did.”
“You never joined!” repeated Saint-Ermay in amazement. “I don’t
understand you!”
“It is impossible,” said the Marquis calmly, “to join a plot of the
very existence of which you are ignorant. Your letter was absolutely
the first intimation that I received of it.”
None, surely, but the most exalted natures are proof against the joy
of producing a sensation. And a sensation Château-Foix had certainly
produced, for his cousin sat staring blankly at him like a man
stunned. Gilbert began to see his goal in view, for surely his proof
of treachery was overwhelming. Unfortunately the Vicomte rallied very
quickly from his consternation, profound though it had undoubtedly
been.
“There must be some mistake,” he said slowly, and with an unusual
degree of stolidity. “I am certain I saw your name.”
“Oh,” retorted the Marquis with a laugh, “I have no doubt that my
name was there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the plot is not genuine. The Gironde is entrapping you.”
The young Royalist gave a derisive laugh. “That is indeed jumping to
conclusions, my dear cousin!” he exclaimed. “And, by the way, I feel
sure that it is not your own idea. I seem to recognise in it the hand
of M. des Graves.”
“It matters very little whose idea it is,” retorted Gilbert,
considerably nettled. “There stands the fact, and you must look it in
the face. My name, you say, is on the list of adherents, and I know
nothing of the affair.”
“It was a mistake,” repeated Louis doggedly.
“A mistake with a meaning, then.”
Saint-Ermay faced round upon his cousin. “Do you seriously mean to
tell me that, on the evidence of this wretched little slip, you expect
me to believe the Gironde to be playing us false?”
“I most certainly think that it should at least make you pause and
reflect.”
“Reflect!” echoed the Vicomte. “One might fancy from your tone,
Gilbert, that reflection was the monopoly of the provinces. Give us
credit here in Paris for having considered the matter for a moment or
so before we entered upon it!”
“To say nothing, then, of the ‘mistake’ about my name,” pursued the
Marquis imperturbably, “what of Madame d’Espaze?”
A fire leapt up in the Vicomte’s glance and became a challenge. “Well,
what of her?” he demanded. “Ah, I suppose M. des Graves has educated
your morals to the pitch of objecting to her because she is supposed
to be Lecorrier’s mistress. But if I do not quarrel with her on that
score, you need not.”
Château-Foix made an impatient gesture of dissent, but the Vicomte,
ignoring it, went on with a rather feverish gaiety: “If that is so,
come with me to-night. I wager she will convert you from your
altitudes.”
At once the Marquis perceived this to be the issue on which he should
win or lose. “Good heavens!” he ejaculated, “are you going there
to-night, when you don’t know whether—— Louis, you can’t! Don’t you
know that in ’84——”
A mutinous expression came over the face of his young kinsman. “I
don’t care what she did in ’84,” he rejoined, smiling sweetly, “and I
_am_ going there to-night.”
A wiser or a more selfish man would have accepted his defeat. Not so
Château-Foix, and in proportion as his agitation and anxiety grew
greater, so did his manner become harsher. Moreover, he was painfully
aware of it.
“You are mad! he exclaimed. “Can’t you see—if there is the least
suspicion of foul play . . . You are compromised enough already;
don’t, for God’s sake, walk further into the trap! Madame d’Espaze——”
There was a dangerous glint in the Vicomte’s eye. “Pray do not
think me wanting in good manners,” he interrupted slowly and with a
slight air of weariness, “if I intimate—always with thanks for your
interest—that I can manage my own affairs.”
“In that case,” retorted Gilbert, stung to the quick, “I will leave
you to do so.” He rose, inwardly more angry at his failure to get his
own way than at his cousin’s insolence, and most of all, though he
scarcely knew it, angry with himself for having consciously bungled a
delicate task. Even then he could not check his further progress down
the path of undoing.
“I wonder,” he observed coldly, “that you care to compromise the King
in this way.”
Louis fired up immediately, and one could guess the submerged presence
of a certain very intractable temper from the pose of his head as he
frowned at his cousin.
“Morbleu! compromise!” he began angrily; then laughed a little as he
dealt a more telling riposte. “At least we try to do something,
while you—you with your supine, enlightened Liancourt and La
Rochefoucauld—you sit on a fence and dare not put out a finger in the
storm you have called up yourselves! Mon Dieu! if I was as afraid for
my precious skin as some of you are, I might think twice before I
compromised the King, as you call it!” He was on his feet, with every
mark of displeasure on his handsome visage, but he had hardly raised
his voice. Gilbert was angry too, for the taunt against his party was
grossly unfair.
“We will not discuss the matter now,” he said stiffly.
“It would certainly be wiser not to do so,” acquiesced the Vicomte,
who had regained his composure, and he gave as he spoke a quick glance
round the room.
Château-Foix saw the look and smiled rather bitterly. “I understand,”
he said. “One does not air one’s views in the enemy’s camp.”
“Oh, if you regard us as that, Gilbert——” broke in his cousin.
“I beg your pardon. Of course I did not mean it. But still . . . am I
to understand that you persist in going to Madame d’Espaze’s salon
to-night?” His tone was acridly cold, his manner galling in the
extreme. An unbiassed observer might have thought that his young
kinsman now displayed beneath it a surprising patience; indeed the
latter, completely recovered from his sudden heat, looked at the
Marquis with something like an amused forbearance in his glance. The
next moment he had summoned up a demeanour to match his cousin’s.
“I have already had the honour to inform you, mon cousin, that I
intend to do so,” he retorted with a sarcastic bow. But as he
straightened himself there was a tiny imp of laughter looking out of
his eye. “Your expression, Monsieur le Marquis, is that of the
outraged guardian saying, ‘Your blood be on your own head!’”
“My looks may possibly reflect my thoughts, then,” returned Château-Foix
drily. “Where shall I find M. de Larny?”
The Vicomte indicated his whereabouts. “You are going?”
“Since you will not be warned.”
“My dear cousin, I am warned,” retorted Louis, with a shade of
irritation. “I assure you that your forebodings are graven on my
heart. But I am not sufficiently alarmed to break my word—and, by the
way,” he added, pulling out his watch, “it is nearly time for me to
keep it.”
The Marquis made no reply, and moved towards his host. Louis,
following him, stopped to speak to an acquaintance, and when their
brief converse was over he saw that his cousin’s figure, accompanied
by the gayer and more rotund bulk of the Comte de Larny, was at the
door. He hurried across the intervening space; he was not really
angry, either with Gilbert or himself, and he did not wish the rest of
the company to divine that there had been a difference of opinion
between them. To Louis de Saint-Ermay few things in life were worth
the trouble of remaining angry about.
“Good-night, Gilbert,” he said pleasantly.
“Good-night,” replied the Marquis, scarcely looking round. He took his
hat and cane from a lackey, the folding-doors clapped to behind him,
and the Vicomte turned away with a slightly clouded brow, to find, to
his vexation, that he had become the centre of attention. A chorus of
raillery greeted him as he came back.
“What crime have you been committing now, Saint-Ermay, to bring down
so solemn a visitation?”
“Does Monsieur le Marquis preach persuasively?”
“In faith, I think so, by the results,” laughed the Comte de Périgny.
“Come, confess now, Louis, that the sermon has moved you!”
Louis de Chantemerle had the reputation of accepting a jest in the
same spirit in which he made one. “I will confess,” he returned drily,
“that the text surprised me,” and he began to move away.
“The text? We will not be ill-bred enough to ask what that was. But
the manner of the discourse?”
“Yes, yes,” chimed in another. “Do not be so ill-humoured, my dear
Vicomte, as to deprive us of Monsieur le Marquis’ periods! Faith, his
demeanour would grace the cassock.”
The Vicomte turned. “Could you not choose a better subject of mirth,
gentlemen?” he asked, in somewhat chilling tones. “I confess that I do
not find the present one amusing, and I must invite you to remember
that the gentleman who has just left us is my cousin, and the head of
my house.” His voice rang warningly, and those around him fell
instantly into laughing apology. But from the outskirts of the group
the late partner of the Knight of Saint Louis, lounging forward from
the hearth, saw fit to cap the young man’s last remark.
“And loyalty is, alas, too rare a virtue nowadays that we should
discourage it,” he said, in drawling tones which might or might not
have spelt intentional insolence.
A momentary gleam was visible in Louis de Saint-Ermay’s eyes, and he
seemed about to reply, but in the end merely bit his lip and turned
away. M. de Bercy, however, seemed loth to let the subject drop.
“You have my deep sympathy, Vicomte,” he pursued softly. “These
unexpected visits play the deuce with one’s arrangements . . . do
they not?”
Louis faced round quickly. “What the devil do you mean?”
“Nothing, I assure you, my dear Vicomte,” replied the other, still
with his crooked smile. “Only that the visits of our mentors—when
unexpected—are a trifle irritating. We have all felt the same.”
“M. de Bercy’s sympathy does him credit,” said D’Aubeville drily.
“Come with me, Louis; I have a word for your private ear.”
“In a moment,” said his friend. “Let me first understand why I am
thus honoured by M. de Bercy’s compassion. I am not aware of any
arrangement with which my cousin’s visit will interfere.” His glance
across the circle was a challenge.
“I am relieved to hear it,” returned De Bercy lightly. “Has any one a
desire for piquet?”
“Stop, if you please!” cried Saint-Ermay. “I have a desire for an
explanation of some sort. Otherwise I must take the liberty of calling
your observation decidedly impertinent.”
The young man’s voice and look were suggestive of a cold and growing
anger. Octave de Périgny looked at him for a moment, and then, coming
up to him, put a hand on his shoulder.
“Let the fool alone,” he whispered. “He thinks your cousin has stopped
you from going to our fair hostess to-night.”
“I know,” said the Vicomte shortly, and paid no further heed. Ruffled
by his interview with Château-Foix, irritated by De Bercy’s reference
to its supposed result, and not unconscious of the attempts which were
being made to turn the conversation, he had lost for the moment his
naturally sweet temper and his indolence. He waited frowning for an
answer.
De Bercy shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, my dear Saint-Ermay,” he
exclaimed, “in your heart of hearts you know that my remark was much
to the point. However, let us not insist upon a delicate subject.
Consider my words unsaid.”
“On the contrary,” said the Vicomte, “I insist upon knowing what you
mean by these hints.”
The other hesitated. “And if I refuse to tell you?”
“Oh, in that case,” retorted Louis, “I shall know that you are
afraid.”
De Bercy was stung. “Very well, then,” he said, coming forward with a
little laugh, “since you insist, I will tell you what came into my
mind. It occurred to me—a foolish thought, no doubt, but how can one
help one’s thoughts?—it occurred to me that you must find your
cousin’s visit extremely . . . inconvenient . . . for the progress of
your very pretty little idyll with . . . his charming bride that is to
be.”
The words, slow, gentle, and distinct, fell into the stillness with
the effect of a stone dropped into quiet water. The Vicomte went as
pale as death.
“You will answer to me to-morrow morning for that lie,” he said, in a
voice sufficiently steady to contrast oddly with his blazing eyes, and
added, with the most concentrated venom and contempt: “You hound!”
De Bercy’s hand went to the place where his hilt should have been, and
as the dusky red mounted slowly to his cheek the strained silence
broke into protest and intervention.
CHAPTER VI
SOME RESULTS OF EARLY RISING
“Pendant qu’aux lueurs du matin
La lame à la lame est croisée,
Dans l’herbe humide et dans le thym
Les grives boivent la rosée.”
—VICTOR HUGO, _Duel en Juin_.
It may be a truism, and therefore tiresome, that the night brings
counsel, but of the instances of that truism the Marquis de Château-Foix
was certainly one as he stood next morning outside his cousin’s door.
A few hours of nocturnal reflection had wrought a considerable change
in the mental attitude which had been his when he parted from the
Vicomte, and a night’s rest had worked a greater still. He had
resolved to return once more to the subject on which last night’s
discussion had somewhat disastrously split. Proofs he had none, but
there was no time even to bewail their absence, for whatever he could
do must be done at once. Indeed, the sun was already high in a blue
sky, and but for other business, and a belief, based on experience,
that it would have found Louis still a-bed—more especially as it was
Sunday—he would have paid him an earlier visit.
The correctness of this surmise was attested by the lackey when the
door at last swung open. Monsieur le Vicomte had not yet arisen, but
if Monsieur were Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix, Monsieur le
Vicomte would certainly receive him. The man still wore livery, though
that badge of servitude had been legally abolished for a year or more.
But Saint-Ermay’s servants were always devoted to him, for no reasons
that were at all tangible. The bedroom door was opened by the valet
whom Louis had had from a boy, and Gilbert went in.
It was some time since the Marquis had visited his cousin’s apartments,
and his never-failing sensation of having strayed by mistake into
those of a member of the other sex fell on him more strongly than
usual. Yet Madame de Château-Foix, though by no means indifferent to
her surroundings, had not, in her spacious bed-chamber at home, a
quarter of the silk and satin luxury which reigned in her nephew’s
room in Paris. Her toilet-table was not so garnished with costly
appurtenances, nor, in the country, was it possible to supply her all
the year round with roses. She had indeed recently replaced her huge
four-poster, solemn as the tomb and potentially quite as airless, by
the more fashionable bed of the time, with its drapery falling from
one central point. But—whether inspired by hygienic or æsthetic
considerations—her nephew reposed in a couch at once more elegant and
more airy than either. The slender fluted pillars which supported the
brocaded tester, and whose gilt was now toned down to exactly the
requisite paleness, the curtains of thin silk-apple-green and white
deftly caught to them by cords which were obviously but rarely untied,
the fine lace-bordered sheets and embroidered coverlet—whereon, too,
there slumbered at the moment a magnificent Persian cat—might very
well have enshrined some much-courted beauty of the last reign.
Possibly they had done so, for at the head was stretched a delicate
vista of painted silk covered with fluttering trains of doves and
laughing Cupids and butterflies, of which the lowest cherub had the
effect of balancing himself on the curved rim of the gilded woodwork
immediately above the pillows, while from his plump fingers a slow
rain of the palest poppies floated down, presumably upon the sleeper’s
head. A group of his fellows, sustaining themselves in their downward
flight on ludicrously inadequate pinions, tendered him fresh garlands
of the flowers. The exquisite handling of this embellishment, more
than atoning for the artificiality of its design, might almost have
surprised a spectator into an expectation of seeing, somewhere on the
bed below it, one or two of the smooth and shining poppy petals.
The present critic, however, saw nothing there beyond his kinsman’s
brown curls—which still bore traces of last night’s powder—tossing on
a broad pillow edged with Valenciennes. Their owner did not look in
the least sleepy, and at once jerked himself with alacrity from his
recumbent position on to his right elbow.
“Good-morning!” he exclaimed. “I did not expect you so early. Jasmin,
set a chair for Monsieur le Marquis, and bring some chocolate.”
The chair was brought, and set by the bedside, and as Château-Foix
took his seat, after being relieved of his hat and cane, the Vicomte
relapsed on to his pillows, and looked at his visitor with his
brilliant smile. It was evident that the slight cloud under which the
two had parted was passed from his mind, and for his part the Marquis
was content that it should be so. For a moment he was conscious of
a feeling very near akin to a rush of affection. As he lay there,
in the midst of these vernal glories, Louis looked extraordinarily
innocent and boyish, a very Prince Charming of happy fortunes and gay
auguries—yet in what dark mesh of intrigue and fate was he entangled!
And Gilbert knew that all his arguments and eloquence might once more
beat themselves in vain against that airy tenacity of purpose. But he
had braced himself to patience. Last night he had taken the wrong path
to bring about the salvation of a person who took things as little
seriously as did Louis. That characteristic had always fretted
Château-Foix in the past; it was hard now to find it taking on all the
appearance of a wrong-headed heroism in place of the more facile
flippancy it used to wear.
Meanwhile the Vicomte looked supremely at his ease, lying with his
left arm under his head, his right buried in the bedclothes. He was so
obviously waiting in expectation of a remark of some sort that Gilbert
complied by asking somewhat abruptly:
“Why are you still in bed?”
“Parbleu! because it is too early to get up.”
Château-Foix could not help smiling. “That is a matter of opinion, it
seems to me,” he retorted.
“Oh, I did not suppose that our views would coincide,” returned the
Vicomte pleasantly. “But whereas you, my dear Gilbert, are a stranger
in Paris of late, and may find enough of novelty in the present state
of affairs to drag you from your bed at unseasonable hours, I, as an
inhabitant, am far from sharing your enthusiasm. It has lost the charm
of novelty for me. But you can see your beloved _tiers-état_ behaving
here in a way you never dreamed of at Chantemerle. Go through the
Faubourg Saint Antoine. Have you been to the Cordeliers for a little
oratory? If so, and you happen to have heard Marat, Desmoulins, or
Danton, you might go to the Halles, and compare the oratory there. But
you must forgive my not accompanying you, for I assure you that the
daily repetition of these demonstrations has become excessively boring
to me.”
Before Gilbert had time to reply to this unusual view of the state of
Paris the solemn old Jasmin entered with the chocolate.
“Really, my dear Louis,” remarked his cousin as the door closed, “it
had not occurred to me to make a tour round Paris to see the sights!
And so, with the foundations of the world crumbling around you, you
stay in bed because you are—bored!”
“Or sleepy,” finished the Vicomte calmly. “Take some chocolate,
Gilbert—no, I don’t want any—and tell me then how you propose to amuse
yourself to-day.”
The Marquis took up his cup, and leaning back in his chair, crossed
his legs. “Louis,” he said with some emphasis, but with perfect
good-humour, “if you are trying to see how far you can play on my
credulity with regard to yourself, I warn you to desist. Neither of
us, I imagine, is a fool——”
Saint-Ermay interrupted him with a laugh. “I am by no means sure about
myself. I sometimes think,” he said, looking at his cousin with an
appearance of great candour, “that I am moving in that direction.
In which case,” he concluded politely, “we should naturally part
company.”
The Marquis acknowledged this compliment with an ironic bow. “I think
you are mistaken about yourself,” he returned. “You depreciate your
capacities unduly. For instance, you really know perfectly well that
your present position is—to say the least—insecure.”
It was not without misgivings that he thus approached the delicate
topic. The Vicomte stretched himself luxuriously among his down and
draperies, and clasped both hands at the back of his head.
“Well, what of that?” he demanded lazily, looking up at the canopy of
the bed. “Your statement, you know, has not the attribute of novelty.”
As Saint-Ermay threw up his arm the flood of lace fell away from his
right wrist and revealed to Gilbert’s notice the fact that the wrist
itself was enveloped in a bandage of considerable extent, whose
surface was flecked with two little spots of crimson.
“Ah, you concede that!” he said quietly, and added: “What have you
done to your arm?”
Louis reddened perceptibly, and immediately returned the injured
member to its hiding-place beneath the bedclothes. “It is nothing,”
he responded hastily, “a mere scratch.”
“A scratch?” repeated the Marquis, setting down his cup. “But with
what did you inflict one of that length?”
His question was followed by a moment’s silence, which it is possible
that Saint-Ermay utilised in searching for a plausible explanation.
“It . . . the fact is, I did not do it myself,” he admitted finally.
“Will you have some more chocolate, Gilbert?”
But the Marquis’ curiosity was piqued by the presence in the speaker’s
tone of some concealed emotion other than embarrassment.
“Thank you, no. It was an accident, then, I hope? You have not been
set upon in the streets, or anything of the sort?”
Louis shook his head. “It is nothing worth distressing yourself about,
I assure you.”
“Ah, I see! Your cat, perhaps?” suggested the Marquis drily, glancing
at that animal.
“Comme tu persistes! Lucidor never scratches! I suppose I may as well
out with it,” said Louis, half laughing, half vexed. He raised himself
on his elbow. “Though you think me a lie-a-bed, mon cousin, I have
been abroad this morning for all that!” His eyes danced as he made
this admission.
“Louis! You have not been—fighting?”
“Si fait!” returned the culprit, nodding cheerfully. “Tierce and carte
at six o’clock this morning. The air was delightful; some day I shall
take to early rising.”
Visions of Champcenetz, of Barnave, of Mirabeau-Tonneau, passed
through the Marquis’ mind.
“But, my dear Louis,” he began, somewhat aghast, “the days are surely
over when you of the Court can hope to rid yourselves by that means of
obnoxious deputies. You are not in 1790 now. Who was it—and where did
you meet? I should not have thought an encounter possible——” He broke
off in perplexity and a genuine anxiety. “You are not deceiving me,
Louis?” he asked. “You are not seriously hurt?”
“No more than this,” replied the Vicomte lightly, holding up the
bandaged wrist. “As I told you, a scratch—due to my own carelessness.
It was all over in three minutes.”
“And your adversary?”
“I ran him through the lungs,” returned Saint-Ermay. “He will
recover.” Both statements were made with great indifference, but
Gilbert remarked that the speaker’s face was many degrees graver than
his tone, and that he was studying the ornamentation of the bottom of
the bed with almost a sombre expression. For his own part he scarcely
knew what to say.
“I am glad you are come out of it so well,” he observed at length,
“and, considering the present state of affairs, perhaps even more glad
that you did not kill your deputy. Is it permitted to ask the cause of
dispute?”
Louis turned his gaze on his kinsman. “I am afraid I must ask you to
spare me any further questions,” he said, and then he looked away, and
began to stroke Lucidor, the Persian. “And . . . it was not a deputy.
It was M. de Bercy with whom I fought.”
“Of your own party!”
“Precisely!” responded Louis bitterly. “Unfortunately, membership of
that party does not seem to be a guarantee for—honourable conduct.
However,” he continued, with a spice of vindictive enjoyment, “he will
have time enough to repent of it. I am not sure that I wanted to kill
him—this morning.”
The Marquis lifted his eyebrows and refrained from speech, though he
could have given vent to some very trenchant remarks. The Vicomte, who
had now been serious for quite four minutes (and Gilbert thought he
scarcely remembered in him so long a period of gravity) suddenly shook
off his preoccupation.
“I know exactly what you are thinking, Gilbert,” he said, with a
certain malign merriment in his eyes. “We are mad, are we not? Ah
well! one must live, and to-morrow takes care of itself, you know. And
confess now, Monsieur le Marquis, that—seeing one’s days on this
planet are likely shortly to be accomplished (oh, I am not blind as
well as mad)—confess now, that, fool as you think me, I get more out
of my foolish life than you with all your wisdom and your dirty
peasants!”
If his cousin’s remark were true, Château-Foix had no intention of
acknowledging it.
“I am not here to discuss the general philosophy of life with you,” he
responded with a smile, “but its conduct at this particular juncture.
I have seen the King.”
“The deuce you have!” exclaimed the Vicomte, sitting up. “When?”
“This morning. I had an audience at ten o’clock.”
“To acquaint him with what you told me last night, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said the Marquis, steeling himself to meet an outburst of
indignation. But none came. On the contrary Louis beat up his pillow
and lay down again.
“This is interesting,” he observed, settling himself comfortably on
his side, with a hand under his cheek and his eyes fixed on his
visitor. “How did he receive you? With his usual apathy?”
The Marquis nodded. At his cousin’s question he seemed to hear again
the tones of that resigned and hopeless voice.
“I was not prepared for so much dejection,” he said. “His Majesty
struck me as prepared for any circumstance, provided only that it were
adverse. I imagine that he cannot conceive of any other now. When I
told him—merely as a warning—of the inclusion of my name in your list,
he professed no surprise; he said that he had always thought the
alliance a vain hope and a dangerous—more dangerous than most. ‘They
are always telling me of plans,’ he went on, ‘and yet Mirabeau
failed, and De Moleville failed, and I have known now that since
Varennes no plans will ever succeed for us.’ When I spoke of the
present reaction in his favour, he replied that it was only a
reprieve.”
“Yes,” said Louis rather sadly, “he is always like that. What else?”
The crisis had come. And to his own surprise Gilbert got up suddenly
from his chair, and sitting down on the bed, put his hand impulsively
over the Vicomte’s.
“Louis, I will be absolutely frank with you. You shall call me an
interfering fool, if you will. I asked the King for a positive command
against the continuance of a scheme so dangerous.”
Not a muscle of the face on the pillow moved, and the hand was not
withdrawn from underneath his own.
“And he gave it to me. He gave me absolute injunctions—for you, and
for the others. He sent this as a warrant.” Château-Foix turned Louis’
passive hand palm uppermost and laid in it a heavy mourning ring. In
the centre was a tiny braid of the palest hair, finer than silk.
Louis moved at last. “Yes, I know that ring,” he said, looking at it
attentively. “That hair is the late Dauphin’s.” He continued to look
at the ring in silence, then, slipping it on his finger he sank back
again on to his pillows and shut his eyes. A frown made its appearance
between his clear eyebrows. The Marquis gazed at him anxiously and
almost wistfully, got slowly off the bed, and the Persian cat, roused
by the slight seismic commotion, stretched out a well-armed claw with
an enormous yawn.
Suddenly Louis opened his eyes and looked up straight at his visitor.
“What was the real reason of your coming to Paris, Gilbert?” he asked
abruptly.
“To stop you,” returned Château-Foix. “I did not know about the 20th
until I had made up my mind to come.”
“To stop me—without real proof?”
“Yes.”
“The devil!” said Saint-Ermay.
There was another pause.
“I would give my right hand to have one,” said the Marquis, with a
certain passion. “But I have only convictions, and those you won’t
listen to.”
“If your convictions are right,” observed Louis reflectively, “it
means that we are all Vergniaud’s dupes. That would be amusing. . .
Perhaps . . . . perhaps . . . Convictions indeed! Deuce take me, but
they must be strong to have brought you so far.”
“Yes, they are strong,” said the Marquis.
The Vicomte sat up in bed, hugging his knees. “Of course it is all
guesswork. I wonder how I can most quickly get hold of D’Aubeville.”
He paused and then broke out laughing. “I’lI tell them, but if you are
right . . . we are gone too far for that to be of any use.”
It was strange that the full realisation of where the speaker stood
came only at that moment to Gilbert, with his laugh, quite unfeigned,
and his glance of self-mockery, not so simple. Yet Château-Foix had
thought of this through miles of travelling and a partially sleepless
night, and it was the very anxiety which had wrecked his interview of
the previous evening. His voice escaped his control. “Do you really
mean what you are saying?”
Louis looked away. He had read his cousin’s mind, and he hated
emotion.
“They have all our signatures,” he said in his cool voice.
Gilbert also knew now how much he cared for his scapegrace playmate.
The years, with their sundering of interests and sympathies, fled
backwards. “Something must be done—something must be done,” he
repeated almost mechanically, while Louis threw him a smile, and
tossing back his hair, lay down again.
“Thank you for coming,” he resumed cheerfully. “I wish I had been
more—had listened better last night. But I will obey your warning—and
the King’s wish. The best thing you can do meanwhile is to leave Paris
as quickly as possible. You will see Lucienne, I suppose?”
“I am going to see her now,” replied Gilbert, rising slowly. “And what
will you do?”
“I will get up at once,” returned the Vicomte, stifling a yawn, “and
spread your enlivening suspicions. Where is that rascal Jasmin?” He
stretched to the bell-rope and rang lustily.
“I must see you again, Louis. Where can we meet? I am staying at the
Hôtel des Etats Généraux, Rue des Petits-Pères.”
The young Royalist considered. “I will write,” he said finally. “But
surely you will go back to-morrow?”
Château-Foix shook his head. “I shall not leave Paris while Lucienne
is here—or you either,” he added to himself. “Au revoir.”
“Poor Gilbert,” said the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay as the door closed.
“I never knew he cared so much. Jasmin, you are slower than a
tortoise! Where are my clothes?”
CHAPTER VII
LUCIENNE LAUGHS AND CRIES
“Je t’ai vue au temps des lilas,
Ton jeune cœur venait d’éclore,
Et tu disais, ‘Je ne veux pas,
Je ne veux pas qu’on m’aime encore !’
Qu’as-tu fait depuis mon départ?
Qui part trop tôt revient top tard. . . .”
—ALFRED DE MUSSET.
The high roofs of the three pavilions of the Tuileries once more
peered at Gilbert as for the second time that day he made his way
towards the Cour du Carrousel. A huddle of buildings—hotels, barracks,
livery-stables, dependencies of all kinds—screened the great court
from the passers-by; and having threaded his way through these the
Marquis, whose goal was not now the royal apartments, directed his
steps to the extreme left-hand wing of the palace, the Pavillon de
Flore. Here, on the ground floor, were the rooms of Madame de
Lamballe, and above her dwelt the King’s sister, to whose apartments
Château-Foix, presenting his card of entry to the sentinel, was
presently admitted by the Escalier de la Reine.
The room in which he waited for Lucienne was the same in which his
cousin had brought her violets on a winter’s day six months ago. Now a
pleasant sunlight filtered into it through the striped blinds, and it
was full of the scent of roses. Among the pictures on the walls hung
two portraits, both of women, and the Marquis guessed them to be those
of Madame de Raigecourt and Madame de Bombelles, the Princess’
friends. This fact, and the presence of a little bronze crucifix
standing on a table which bore a few books of devotion stamped with
the arms of France, led him to suppose the room to belong to Madame
Elisabeth herself. A half-finished piece of needlework lying on a
chair somehow recalled Lucienne. All the shelter and refinement of the
place, this very piece of embroidery, the roses and the sunlight,
affected Gilbert with an odd sense of the contrast with his own
uneasiness. They spelt security; yet its occupants must know—who
better?—that the room had no such claim. It was but eleven days since
the 20th of June.
On that thought the Marquis found himself at the window. The great
garden which it overlooked was deserted, as usual; yet, away on the
other side, at right angles to the palace, he could see the terrace
of the Feuillants swarming with people. Nothing, he knew, but a
trivial bit of ribbon stretched between two chairs kept the crowd from
overflowing into the garden of the Tuileries. But the ribbon was
symbolic; moreover, it proclaimed those green alleys accursed—the
“country of Coblentz,” the “black forest.” Nobody but the Royal
Family, accursed too, and for whose sake they were banned, walked in
them now.
Gilbert sighed and turned away. What would be the end of it all? Not
indeed that he had much thought to spare at the moment for the fate of
France; his present preoccupations were Louis, with his reckless
loyalty, and Lucienne, with her clinging to her royal mistress. . . .
And that step in the corridor must be hers.
When Madame Vigée-Lebrun, about three years before, was painting
Lucienne’s portrait, she had remarked to the Comtesse d’Aucourt that
the girl was like a wood-nymph, and that she wished she had painted
her as Daphne or Procris. And if a wood-nymph be a creature set apart
from human passions—which is doubtful—then the term well represents
the aspect under which his affianced bride appeared to the Marquis de
Château-Foix also. For the last few years Lucienne had seemed to him a
sort of elemental creature, a being fresh from the hands of nature,
to be reverenced because she was so extraordinarily untouched and
innocent. In those dark hours which he had known, and still knew, when
the problem of existence weighed heavily upon him, Lucienne with her
goodness and her beauty was always the one glimmer which never failed
him, the one little star, free from all taint of passion and raised
above the possibility of pollution, which swung clear of the mists in
which he sometimes walked.
But, in truth, Lucienne was no elemental being of the sort. Her
training had rendered it impossible. On the very lovable characteristics
which were hers by nature Madame d’Aucourt, no mean architect, had
superimposed a structure designed indeed to show them to the best
advantage, but not intrinsically meritorious. She had a little
exploited her daughter’s charm. And the result of the Comtesse’s
example and training was that to some people the girl seemed to live
in a series of pictures. Lucienne was herself quite innocent of any
artistic intentions, but she constantly caused other people to see
her, in memory or in imagination, in pictures too. Gilbert had a whole
gallery of such compositions.
He had occasion at once to add a fresh canvas to his collection as the
door opened now, and she came in. The whiteness of the soft dress she
wore, the pallor of the rose drooping in the folds of her kerchief—a
rose no whiter than her own long throat with its narrow band of black
ribbon—the lovely freshness of her cheek, the poise of her head with
its shining burden, the smile on her beautiful mouth—all these Gilbert
suddenly saw anew, as for the first time, and was aware of a strange
and dizzying sensation.
In another moment he was bending over her hand.
“I know why you have come,” said the girl’s delicious voice above him,
alive with the very spirit of youth. “You all seem very anxious to get
rid of me!” And she laughed—a trickle of clear merriment.
“Let me look at you!” he exclaimed. He held her wrists prisoner for a
moment, and then drew her down to a sofa. “What you must have gone
through—what you must have gone through!” he repeated. “I can’t think
how I ever let you remain here! No, I ought never to have done it!” He
had a sudden flashing vision of this exquisite creature, so nearly
his, at bay in a window in the palace, insulted, frightened,
helpless. . .
The momentary mirth died out of Lucienne’s eyes, and her mouth took on
the shadow of a pout.
“But, Gilbert, I always asked you to leave me here. It was what I
wanted. I don’t want to go even now. The Princess——”
“Yes, I know, my darling,” interrupted Château-Foix. “It is just like
you. But I ought never to have done it. However, it is no good talking
about it. The Princess had more sense than I have had, in making
arrangements for you to go to England. I shall not know a moment’s
peace till you are out of this horrible place.”
The smile came back to Lucienne’s mouth, “Oh, it wasn’t so bad as
that!” she said, not very truthfully. “I—we—were quite safe, really.
And we have got used to seeing the _sans-culottes_ about by this
time.”
But his betrothed’s treatment of the crisis seemed very far from
reassuring the Marquis. His face grew still graver, his clasp of her
hands closer, his voice more charged with feeling. “Lucienne, you must
never go through such things again. You don’t know what you are to me.
Do you realise in the least, I wonder, how I think of you—how I see
you down at Chantemerle, in the morning, perhaps, when I go round the
home-farm, or when I ride alone along the lanes. And all the time——”
His voice changed. “If I had seen you in reality, here, in this, I
could not have respected your mother’s wish, and waited. . . . And now
we have waited too long, and I have got to send you away.”
He broke off abruptly, loosed her hands, sprang up and went to the
window. A fire which he had never guessed at ran along his nerves,
strung as they were by anxiety and excitement. She was no longer the
creature removed above the sphere of emotion; she was a woman,
beautiful, adorable—and his! He swung round from the window, stood in
front of her, and holding out his arms said in a shaken but imperious
voice: “Come here, Lucienne!”
And when Lucienne had got up from the sofa—blindly, almost as if she
did not know what she was doing, he folded her passionately in his
arms, and kissed her again and again, till she hid her face on his
breast, and he discovered that she was crying.
At that he kissed her hair. “Why are you crying, darling?” he asked
tenderly. “You are quite safe now.”
She pushed with her little hands against his breast, trying to free
herself. “Don’t, don’t—you frighten me!”
He loosed her instantly, thinking what a selfish brute he was, and
she—how untouched a lily! “I didn’t mean to frighten you, dear. But
there’s nothing to be frightened of. See—let us sit down again and
talk quietly. You must never be afraid of me, Lucienne.” And he got
her gently back to the sofa, where she sat leaning against his
shoulder, with her handkerchief to her eyes and her sobs growing
gradually fainter, while, reproaching himself for his want of
consideration, he talked of he knew not what. “The Princess was
telling me yesterday how brave you have been.”
“I haven’t been brave.” She choked down a sob. “But I wish I could
stay. If you knew how Madame Elisabeth——”
“Yes, dearest; but surely you would not wish to add to the burdens she
carries already. Besides, you belong to me a thousand times more than
to her. If only I could take you back with me!”
“Couldn’t you?” came in a very small, low voice.
“My darling, it’s impossible. Affairs are much too critical just now,
in Vendée. And that is why I cannot even go with you to England. But I
shall send Louis in my place, to escort you and Madame Gaumont.”
At that she started away from her support as if galvanised. “Louis!”
she exclaimed. “Oh no, he must not come!”
Gilbert turned his head and looked at her in surprise. “Why not?
Surely you would be glad to have him if it can be managed?”
“Oh, but I am sure he could not leave the King. Do not ask him; I am
sure he ought not to come!” All traces of tears had vanished.
He was still surprised, but rather pleased at her independence, and
said, smiling: “You seem to rate Louis’ protection of his Majesty
rather highly, dearest. As a matter of fact, Louis appears to have
been doing the same thing himself, and I should therefore be only too
glad to find a reason cogent enough to get him out of Paris at once.”
Gilbert was partly conscious indeed of the somewhat startled gaze
which Lucienne turned on him at these words, but he was wholly
ignorant of the sick horror which mounted to the girl’s heart as he
went on. “I suppose you have not seen much of him recently? I am
rather anxious about him; he has been dabbling a little too freely in
politics of late.”
For an instant the room went round—but not to Gilbert. Then she asked
breathlessly: “Politics? What sort of politics?”
The sharp anxiety in her voice warned the Marquis that he was alarming
her. “Oh, just one of the usual Royalist schemes, rather more
hare-brained than usual—but I hope—— It is all right, darling, there
is no need to be alarmed; Louis is always lucky. And now I must go.”
Lucienne rose too, and hearing some one say in indifferent tones, “I
hope he is in no real danger,” supposed that it was she herself who
spoke.
“No; I think it has been stopped in time,” answered Château-Foix not
very reassuringly. There was a talk after that in Lucienne’s ears
about final arrangements, and of seeing her at Madame Gaumont’s house,
whither she was to go to-morrow. Then came good-bye, and a kiss which
now she hardly felt. At last the door shut, and she was left alone.
* * * * * *
She sat there without moving, her hands locked together in her lap,
suffering horribly. The flame which Louis de Saint-Ermay had lighted
still burnt for him alone; wanting in depth as she might be, the girl
was not of those who, after the first awakening of love, care not very
greatly to whom they dedicate the flame. The emergence of the lover in
Gilbert only terrified her; she did not take it for a tribute. Six
months ago, in this very room, she had known another embrace; had
sat on this very sofa, with her head on Louis’ shoulder, trying to
reconcile herself to the bitter sacrifice which they must make for the
sake of honour, and of the man who had a right to hold her in his
arms. And almost impossible though the sacrifice had seemed at times,
Lucienne had never lifted a finger to bring Saint-Ermay back. She was
capable of renunciation—if only she had some one to help her. Her
mistress, whom she adored, had been her support; it was the Princess’s
strength that had upheld her all these six months. Lucienne had
confided to Madame Elisabeth the whole episode, and the Princess,
seeing that Lucienne was anxious to do right, had comforted and
counselled her, and kept her on those heights which are more easy of
first attainment than of permanent occupation. It never occurred to
either of them—so binding did they consider a betrothal—that, putting
aside the suffering caused to Lucienne and to her lover, the girl
would be doing the Marquis a wrong to marry him when her heart could
never be his. Meanwhile Lucienne was faithful to the course that she
had laid down for herself, and she had never seen Louis alone again;
indeed, as there was now no properly constituted court, they met
seldom under any circumstances. The last encounter had been on the
memorable day of the invasion of the mob, when he had made a rampart
of his body for her safety. And to be so close to him for so long had
transformed that day of terror—at least in memory—from an ordeal to a
regretted joy.
Lucienne did not move even when the door was quietly opened, and a
voice said gently, “My child, has Monsieur le Marquis gone?” and when,
receiving no answer, the speaker came into the room—a clear-complexioned
lady of twenty-eight or thereabouts, with a carriage at once dignified
and graceful—Madame Philippine-Marie-Hélène-Elisabeth de France, the
King’s sister. Lucienne rose mechanically as she came towards her, and
turned on her mistress a pale, strained face. The Princess, with a
long look at her, took the girl by the hands, and Lucienne without a
word of explanation broke out: “Madame, give me some of your strength!
Oh, I promise you, I promise you I will be brave——”
“I know you will,” said Madame Elisabeth gently, sitting down on the
sofa and drawing Lucienne down with her. “And you do not need my
strength. You have plenty of your own, and you will know better how to
use it by and by. Dear little one,” she went on, kissing her on the
forehead, “you have made me very happy to-day, and M. de Château-Foix,
he is happy too. England is not far away, and we shall know that you
are in safe keeping until . . . until happier days come for France.”
Lucienne hardly seemed to heed her words. She was staring straight in
front of her as she leant forward with her hands clasped. “I will tell
you what happened,” she said in slow, dry tones. “He was very kind to
me, and he was very strong, so that it was rest to be with him.” She
closed her eyes for a moment. “Somehow or other I knew that it was
different from anything before, and I knew that he loved me, and
I was afraid. But I was almost glad to be afraid, too; for I thought
that perhaps one day he might make me forget, and make me love
him. And then he is so good; he spoke of Louis—of the Vicomte de
Saint-Ermay—taking me to England, and I told him that the Vicomte
could not leave the King, and that he must not ask him, for again I
was afraid, but that was a different kind of fear. And then—and
then——” She turned to the Princess. “How can I tell you? He said that
M. de Saint-Ermay was involved in some political scheme, and I thought
my heart would have stopped beating, for from the way he spoke I saw
that it means danger—perhaps worse—to Louis. In that moment I knew
that I should never be able to tell myself that all which passed in
the winter had been but a girl’s fancy, for I knew—God forgive me—I
knew that I loved Louis, so that I could die for him, and that
whatever happened I was his altogether . . . always!” She stopped, and
turned a frightened look on her companion, and then with a cry, “What
have I said! what have I said!” she burst into a passion of weeping.
At Lucienne’s last words Madame Elisabeth had raised her hand in
silent protest, for she could not find words before what seemed to her
one of pain’s mysteries—unhappy love, ashamed at its own articulate
confession. Every trace of self, of private sorrow or of remembrance
of personal danger had left the Princess, for hers was one of those
rare natures which can really identify themselves with another’s
grief. To all who suffered her love and her pity went out unasked, but
for those of her own family, and for those who for special reasons
claimed her affection, she was more than ready to be spent and
offered. On Lucienne in particular she had lavished all the affection
of her tender and generous heart. But at this moment the Princess felt
instinctively that she was going to fail Lucienne, and the knowledge
was very bitter to her. Lucienne was looking to her for understanding,
and she could not give it. The suffering, as suffering, called out her
sympathy, but its nature was incomprehensible. The saints see with
clearness that what the world calls suffering is not always misery,
and that what the world calls happiness is not always joy, and are
separated by this knowledge from the society in which they live far
more effectually than by convent walls. And since Madame Elisabeth de
France was a saint, it was her ideals, and not the fact that she had
never known the force of human passion, which made her feel that she
could hardly stop to be sorry for the girl whom she loved as her own
daughter. She saw Lucienne’s way so plainly.
Yet because she was very human, she dared not take the girl again into
her arms, lest the words which she must speak should die upon her
lips. It was possibly the last time that she should see Lucienne—for
she never had any illusion as to the extremity of the danger which
threatened the Royal Family, although for her brother’s sake she kept
up the appearance of a brave heart. Immeasurable love and pity shone
in her face as she looked at the bowed head. At last she put out her
hands and took Lucienne’s into her own. Lucienne remembered to her
last day what the woman who was her best friend found to say to her in
the crisis of her life. There was no word of blame, no word of duty,
no hint that she feared for the future.
“My child,” said the Princess very gently, “the pain will not always
be as it is now, and in the future there will be things to comfort
you—perhaps the love of children. And remember always that it is only
to the highly favoured that there comes the possibility of so great a
sacrifice as yours.”
CHAPTER VIII
FURTHER OBSTINACY OF A CONSPIRATOR
“Je n’oublierai jamais ce regard qui devait s’éteindre sitôt.”
—CHATEAUBRIAND (of Marie Antoinette).
At a little table in the Café de Foy, once a Revolutionary, now a
Royalist resort, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay sat the next morning and
waited for his cousin. The busy life of the Palais-Royal went on about
him, but for once he seemed oblivious of it; he even looked a little
grave.
Louis de Chantemerle had worn all his life a very subtle disguise—an
impenetrable armour of gaiety, more baffling than gravity, over an
extreme reserve. To call his customary outer self a disguise at all is
perhaps misleading, for that self went much deeper. He was really what
he appeared to be, careless, pleasure-loving, airily indifferent. But
the reserve was there, and it was the very mocking frankness which he
so successfully opposed to all attempts at its exhumation which proved
his concern that his soul should be decently covered up. Few things
were not to him objects of raillery, and the most worthy objects and
individuals had an unhappy knack of presenting themselves to him in a
ludicrous light. Nature had given him parts with a temperament which
forbade him to make use of them; he had too much wit, in fact, to be
anything but a fine gentleman.
And yet all these sterile qualities were counterbalanced by his charm;
not the charm of manner which, with his personal beauty, his birth and
his gifts, had served him so well in his own path of life, but an
attraction less easy of definition. In a life of light-hearted
self-indulgence, of a fastidious but by no means innocent pursuit of
pleasure, Louis had somehow preserved a singular inward untaintedness.
He had some claims to the name of profligate; no moralist could
easily have been confuted who had called him a rake, a gambler, a
spendthrift, or a duellist. He was headstrong, wayward, and indolent,
extremely obstinate at times, and excessively easy-going at others.
Save for one notable exception, now six months old, he had invariably
done what he pleased. With all this, he had kept the heart of a boy—if
of a naughty boy—and a fascination for which, as M. des Graves had
once said, an evangelist might have prayed in vain.
Louis had enough on his mind at this moment, however, to sober even
his persistent gaiety. In the first place, he was himself, along with
nearly all his friends—and knew it well—in the most imminent personal
danger. The vessel launched by the young ultra-Royalists to be the
ark of the drowning monarchy was vastly more like to prove the coffin
of all the crew. A day’s research had sufficed to establish its
unseaworthiness. In the second place, the inevitable parting with
Lucienne was now upon him. And though he had said good-bye to her on
the day when honour demanded it, yet in his constant visits to the
Tuileries he had sometimes caught sight of her; and though all the
time he was uneasy as to her personal safety in Paris, still the day
when she must leave it was always not yet, so that she still shed a
dim fragrance over his existence, like a flower out of reach. But the
day of transplanting had come at last.
He got up and strolled to the door. Outside, on the verge of the
garden, were the tables from one of which Camille Desmoulins had
hounded on the populace to the destruction of the Bastille nearly
three years ago. To-day a couple of young men of his own stamp were
sitting at the nearest, each with a second chair on whose rungs
he rested his feet. One of them wore a waistcoat powdered with
fleur-de-lys, and a minute tricolour cockade at the back of his hat—a
situation chosen to show his contempt for the emblem. Pitched battles
between the _jeunesse dorée_ and the Jacobin faction had given the
Café de Foy for the time being to the Royalists, and a lively zest was
lent to its occupation by the knowledge that to-morrow it might be
closed, or raided again by the enemy. Jousserand, the proprietor, good
peaceable man, had put up the price of his liquid refreshments, a
change which had made for a more aristocratic clientele; but the cap
of liberty had before now been hung up in the Café de Foy.
The Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, acknowledging the salutation of his
acquaintances, searched among the shifting groups in the garden for
the sight of his cousin. All the other cafés were in full swing, and
it was difficult to distinguish an acquaintance among the throngs that
surged round the Grand Café or the Café de Valois, on the opposite
side, or the Café de Chartres and the Grotte Lyrique at the other end,
under the Galerie de Beaujolais. As he gazed the young man with the
cockade asked him laughing if he were reviving the once familiar jest
of last summer, when a young Royalist would mount daily to the
belvedere of the Café de Foy under pretence of looking whether the
army of the _émigrés_ were not yet advancing from Coblentz. Louis
replied a trifle absently, and at that moment caught sight of his
cousin’s tall figure passing in front of the Jacobin Café Corazza. He
waited until he was sure that Gilbert had seen him, and returned to
the table in the corner which he had quitted.
A moment later the Marquis entered and came straight up to him. The
few habitués who preferred to drink their coffee inside the building
turned round to look at him, but the place was now nearly empty.
“Well?” asked Château-Foix significantly.
The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders. “Sit down, mon cher. I am desirous
of making you a full and leisurely apology. You will take coffee?
François, coffee for two and plenty of cream! Do you know, Gilbert,
that since the patriotic Assembly took to sitting so assiduously, you
can always get cream in the Palais-Royal at any time, since nobody
knows at what hour our dear deputies may come in here and demand
refreshment after so much talking. So there is one good result, at
least, of the present tenancy of the Manège.”
“I suppose,” said Gilbert when the coffee had been brought, “that your
reference to an apology means——”
“That your surmises, my dear cousin, are probably correct. As I cannot
yet be sure, I make the apology conditional—like the baptism of
heretics. In a day or two you may be in possession of the precious
thing without reservation.”
“What have you found out?” asked the Marquis, divided between relief
and apprehension.
“Very little,” returned his cousin, helping himself to cream. “That’s
the damnable part of it. I spent the whole of yesterday seeing people
and talking to them and telling them of the King’s prohibition. The
net result of my enquiries was that I elicited these facts. First,
that D’Aubeville had yesterday morning received an anonymous letter of
warning; secondly, that the Comte de Périgny’s latest deity—one of
the ladies here at the Palais-Royal—had had a fit of hysterics for
which—it’s a long story—he could assign no other cause than anxiety
for his safety based on some information the nymph wouldn’t divulge;
and, thirdly—but this may not be a fact, a rumour of something Madame
Roland said at her salon a night or two ago. You have heard of
Louvet?”
“I have heard of his book.”
“You surprise me. _Faublas_ is not exactly for the virtuous. But
Louvet is now a member of the Legislative, and better known for that
rather amusing pink sheet of his, _La Sentinelle_, which you may have
noticed decorating the walls of this city. Well, Louvet is a devotee
also of Buzot’s Egeria, who is not, I believe, over well disposed
towards Madame d’Espaze. Egeria—as the tale goes—said to him two
nights ago, as he was leaving, ‘Do you never go to the Salon du
Luxembourg?’—meaning, of course, Madame d’Espaze’s house in the Rue de
Tournon—‘I should advise you to make haste to sample it before it
closes.’ Now there is no reason why Célie—why Madame d’Espaze should
close her salon, or why anybody should close it for her, unless the
purpose which it has served should suddenly come to an end. Anyhow,
Madame Roland meant something, and let it slip. The tale may not,
however, be true; naturally, I hadn’t it at first hand. You are not
drinking your coffee, and Jousserand’s feelings will be hurt.”
The Marquis drank. “Is there anything else?” he asked.
“Lots of little things,” replied the Vicomte composedly. “I won’t bore
you with them; I am not sure that I haven’t forgotten some of them
already. Anyhow, there were some pretty long faces yesterday between
these various items of information and this.” He indicated the King’s
ring on his finger, next to the plain silver circlet inside which was
engraved, as Gilbert knew, _Deus salvum fac regem, reginam, et
delphinum!_—words which might any day cost the wearer his life. “And I
owe it to you to a knowledge that I did not, on Saturday night, carry
to our fair hostess’s agreeable salon as unbiassed a mind as would
have been mine before your arrival and denunciation. I observed a few
trifles.”
“But now you have definitely broken off negotiations with the
Gironde!”
Louis made a little grimace. “We can’t exactly do that. The stage of
negotiations is past. If they are acting in bad faith it is all up
with us, and we have nothing further to do but to stop in our
mouse-trap and await the cat or a bucket of water.” He stirred his
coffee with an admirable equanimity which Gilbert hardly felt capable
of imitating.
“Then what will you do?” he asked, frowning. “You must do something.”
“What can we do?” demanded Louis. “My friend the Chevalier d’Aubeville,
who has a head on his shoulders—as yet—thinks we should seem to go on
as we have begun, if it is possible to do so without implicating
ourselves still further, lest we precipitate the crisis by showing
suspicion. One or two believe that matters will not come to a point,
as far as our own personal safety is concerned. They conceive that
the aim of the transaction is to implicate and to discredit . . .
another.” He lifted his hat as he spoke, with a face grown grave.
“That is very possible,” returned Gilbert reflectively. “And that
aim—is it likely to have been attained? Never mind, mon cher,” he went
on kindly, “we won’t discuss it. Let us for the moment consider your
own personal plans.”
“I haven’t any,” said the young conspirator, pushing away his empty
cup. “I shall stop here with the rest, and see what happens. I cannot
run away now.”
“No, of course not,” agreed the Marquis. “Still, I had hoped—before
this happened—that you would be free to do a little office for me.” He
was not very greatly surprised at his kinsman’s resolution to go
through with the affair in which he had become entangled, nor in his
heart did he blame it, yet he hoped that, if he played his cards
carefully, he might still prevail on him to get out of harm’s way
before it was too late.
Louis looked enquiringly at him.
“This is what I wanted you to do for me,” resumed Château-Foix,
putting his elbows on the table and lowering his voice. “It is
absolutely imperative that I return home with as little delay as
possible.”
“You surely don’t need _my_ assistance with your devoted tenantry?”
“No. I want you to take my place elsewhere. I want you to escort
Lucienne over to England for me.”
To the Marquis’ amazement the smile of a moment before was wiped as
completely off Saint-Ermay’s face as if he had struck him. A quite
indefinable but perfectly visible change crossed it, as, drawing a
little back, Louis said in a glacial tone: “I couldn’t possibly do
that.”
Gilbert’s surprise began to approach the border-line of offence.
“It is not such an extraordinary proposition, surely?” he retorted.
“You are to all intents and purposes my younger brother, and Lucienne
goes under the wing of Madame Gaumont. An escort, however, is
desirable; naturally, I meant to go myself, but it is out of the
question. I must return to Chantemerle the moment she is out of
Paris.”
“Isn’t it more out of the question,” asked the Vicomte, “to send her
out of Paris in the dangerous company of a suspect like myself? Do you
think that my escort (as things are tending) would do anything else
but compromise her?”
There was so much sound sense in this objection that Château-Foix at
once ruefully acknowledged the downfall of his diplomatic little house
of cards. Behind a slight annoyance at his own short-sightedness
lurked also a vague wonder at Louis’ evident distaste for the mission.
“I suppose that you are right,” he conceded regretfully. “It was
foolish of me not to have thought of that—but the plan had occurred to
me before I knew that you were so compromised. Well, she must go
alone.”
“Madame Gaumont is worth an army of _ci-devants_ such as myself,” said
Louis in a more natural manner. “The name of the late Gaumont is a
passport with the patriotic. On my honour, I think Lucienne is safer
without—without any other escort.” He got up, and went on with less of
his usual levity: “I can’t leave the King, Gilbert. You will say, and
justly, that my presence is not much guarantee for his safety, but I
could leave him less easily now after compromising him—as you told me
the other night I was doing.”
“My dear Louis——”
“No, you were quite right. But I _am_ a _chevalier du poignard_, as
they call us. I am sworn not to desert . . . I have, to tell you the
truth, his Majesty’s orders to remain. And there’s an end of it,”
concluded the Vicomte, suddenly smiling.
Gilbert had never liked him quite so well as during the progress of
this little harangue. For one thing, it was so rare to see him in
earnest.
“I will say no more about it,” he replied. “We must wait and see what
happens, as you say. And now, to recur to Lucienne, let us go and see
if she has left the Tuileries yet. She was to go to Madame Gaumont’s
house in the Rue Vieille-de-Temple at noon; if we get to the palace in
time, we might accompany her.” He pulled out his watch and looked at
it. “We have just time.”
“But you won’t want me,” said Louis.
“Nonsense,” retorted the Marquis, throwing him a kindly glance.
“Lucienne will be delighted to see you; she is rather anxious about
you, I fancy. Come, or we shall miss her.”
But the Vicomte still seemed in two minds about accepting this
invitation. “Well, don’t at any rate tell her that I refused . . .
that I could not take her. Oh, I suppose you have already told her,
perhaps, that you were going to ask me? Have you?”
The Marquis, who had turned to go, turned round again surprised for
the second time at something in his cousin’s tone, and especially at
the emphasis laid upon the last two words.
“Yes, I did tell her,” he replied, staring. “But what of that? The
matter is easily explained. My idea was a foolish one. Why, any one
would think, my dear Louis, that you were afraid of Mademoiselle
Lucienne d’Aucourt!”
“Oh, sooner than be suspected of that!” retorted Louis gaily, and,
tossing an assignat on to the little table, he followed Gilbert out
into the garden.
And to Château-Foix, immediately after he had spoken, came the
remembrance that Lucienne too had not seemed to wish for Louis’
company. She too had said that he could not leave the King.
As soon as they turned out of the Palais-Royal into the Rue de
Richelieu they could see that the Rue Saint-Honoré was blocked by a
crowd. Against the wall a figure with gesticulating arms could be seen
above the mass of upturned faces.
“More speechifying,” said Louis disgustedly. “Hang it! we shall
have to go back and get out the other side. . . . No, here are some
National Guards turning out of the Rue du Rempart.”
They went up to the outskirts of the crowd. The orator could be heard
only intermittently; as far as could be gathered he was emitting a
spouting stream of abuse directed, like a firehose, against the
Tuileries, towards whose roofs, distinguishable across the Rue
Saint-Honoré, he shook his fist. Such phrases as “Austrian Committee,”
“_chevaliers du poignard_,” were indistinctly audible. Louis looked at
the Marquis and silently shrugged his shoulders, but as the half-dozen
National Guards began to cleave a way through the mob after their
usual fashion, their muskets held horizontally at arms’ length above
their heads, he beckoned to him and slipped into their wake. In
the passage thus formed they ploughed a difficult way through the
indignant crowd, a dirty member of which, suddenly shaking his fist
under Gilbert’s nose with some passion, called him a swine of an
aristocrat. The incident plainly afforded Louis a certain amount of
pleasure, for, as he explained to his kinsman on their way down the
Rue Nicaise, the Marquis would not be appreciated by the lower orders
of Paris as greatly as he was at home.
They entered the palace by the great staircase in the Pavillon de
l’Horloge, and had therefore to traverse the deserted state apartments
before they could reach Madame Elisabeth’s quarters. The Salle des
Suisses was empty, but in the Salle de l’Œil de Bœuf, in the embrasure
of a window, two young men were talking. One of them saluted Louis
with a smile as he passed, and the action drew the Marquis’s attention
to him—a youth of twenty or so, tall, slight, and fair, with straight
and regular features.
“Who was that?” he asked as soon as they were out of earshot. “He
looked more like an Englishman than a Frenchman.”
“It was the Comte Henri de la Rochejaquelein,” replied Louis. “We were
in the King’s Constitutional Guard together. The other was his cousin,
the Marquis de Lescure. I should have thought you would have known
him, for he is almost a neighbour of yours—at least he lives somewhere
near Bressuire. La Rochejaquelein is not much further off for the
matter of that—but he is an Angevin.”
“I think I have heard the name,” said Gilbert.
“M. de Lescure is like myself,” continued Louis, “under orders from
his Majesty not to emigrate. As a matter of fact, he did once get as
far as Tournay, but came back.”
“Are they, too, involved in your plot?”
Louis shook his head. “Lescure is too much of a saint to go to Madame
d’Espaze’s salon, and has recently married a young wife into the
bargain. And as for Henri, I tried to get him to join, but he would
not.”
The block in the Rue de Richelieu had apparently proved fatal to
the Marquis’s plan of escorting Lucienne to her new quarters. Just
outside the Galerie de Diane the cousins met a waiting-woman of the
Princess’s, who told Louis in response to his query that Mademoiselle
d’Aucourt had left a few minutes ago. Madame Gaumont herself had come
to fetch her charge.
The two men turned back into the Galerie de Diane.
“I am sorry,” said Gilbert. “Never mind; we will go and pay our
respects to Madame Gaumont to-morrow. Let me see: to-day is Monday,
the 2nd; they start on Thursday.”
“Yes,” assented the Vicomte in a colourless tone. They were both
walking slowly with their eyes on the floor.
“She ought to have gone long ago.”
“It would have been better.”
“However, it is no use regretting that. The past few months have
altered her, Louis,” said the Marquis, in a burst of confidence very
rare with him.
Saint-Ermay lifted his head and looked at his cousin, whose eyes were
still downcast, with a gaze a little startled, and his lips tightened.
All at once his eyes wavered, a swift change passed over his face, and
he caught at Gilbert's arm.
“Hush,” he said in a low voice, “the Queen!”
She came down the long gallery, alone. One of the two men who watched
her had last seen her, beautiful and shining, “enchantée de la vie,”
the brilliant centre of a brilliant court. He was not then, nor ever
had been, her admirer; rather was he her critic. But now, as she moved
slowly down the empty gallery, the sweep of her dress more audible
than the faint tap of her high heels on the polished floor, a thrill
that was pain ran through him. Her eyes looked as if they saw nothing
around her, out of a face changed and aged beyond all speech—sad,
patient, aloof, serene, still proud, so proud indeed that it was clear
nothing said or done now, whether by foe or friend, could touch the
shrine of suffering of which it was the curtain. The once bright hair
above it was grey, but more than ever it was the face of a Queen.
Nearer she came and nearer, and seemed not to notice the two men by
the wall, taking them perhaps for a couple of curious sightseers, or
for some of the guards whose presence she was obliged to tolerate even
in her bedchamber. She might have passed them, if Louis de Saint-Ermay
had not dropped on one knee, not with intent to stay her, but with
bent head, as one kneels at the passage of the Host.
The Queen stopped, with a faint and pathetic look of surprise, that
showed how rare and perilous were such marks of respect, and Gilbert,
his brain in a confusion of pain and pity, heard her say in a voice
of ineffable sadness: “What! M. de Saint-Ermay! and are you not gone
yet?”
“Never, Madame, while I am free to stay,” answered Louis very low.
The Queen smiled sadly, and then, shaking her head with something of
the air of one who indulges a wilful child, she held out her hand, and
he kissed it like a relic.
A moment later Gilbert too was bowing low over the same little hand,
but of what the Queen said to him, or of what he replied, he heard
nothing. Another moment again, and the Galerie de Diane was empty.
Himself moved beyond what he could ever have imagined possible, he
turned to his cousin. Louis was very pale, and his eyes were sparkling
with a rage and devotion alike impotent.
“God damn them all to hell!” he said passionately. “Let us go—I can't
bear this place!”
As he followed his cousin down the great staircase, and out into the
Cour Royale, Gilbert had the thought, with which he certainly had not
entered the Tuileries that morning, that, had he been in Louis’ place,
perhaps he too would have refused to leave the sight of that tragic
face, the sound of that proud, sad voice.
CHAPTER IX
_ET DONA FERENTES_
“Peuple Français, peuple intrépide . . .
Entends les cris, vois l’insolence
Des muscadins, amis des rois ;
Ils menacent de leur vengeance
Tous les défenseurs de tes droits.
. . . . . .
Ils se disent des patriotes,
Ces vils esclaves des tyrans ;
De leur égaux fougueux despotes,
Du trône ils sont les partisans.
Le mensonge vit sur leur bouche,
Ils fondent sur lui leurs succès,
Et leur haine impie et farouche
Brûle de perdre les Français.”
—_Le Vrai Reveil du Peuple_ (1795).
When M. de la Guerinière, in the year 1743, took over the royal riding
school of the Tuileries, and, making additions thereto, turned it
into a private academy of horsemanship, he could have had small idea
of what should, nearly fifty years later, replace his equestrian
arrangements. Where the young Louis XV. had pranced and caracoled the
National Assembly now deliberated the affairs of a France becoming
daily more unlike that of the Bien-Aimé. It is only just to say
that the tenants of the building had not found their new quarters
altogether convenient. A parallelogram of great length, bordered by
six rows of seats rising one above the other, seats from which some of
the occupants could neither catch the eye of the president nor be seen
by him, the Manège oppressed its inmates by its defective ventilation
and its demands on the voice. The presidential tribune, a simple table
covered with a green cloth, stood half way up the hall on a daïs,
immediately facing that of the speakers, an arrangement which cut the
space into two geographical divisions, and perhaps contributed, as one
of its orators remarked, to the moral divisions of the Legislative
Assembly also. These latter divisions were at any rate clear
enough—the Right, the constitutional Royalists; the Left, the Gironde
and their present allies, the Jacobins, further reinforced by the
extreme Left; and the Centre, which generally voted with the Right.
At nine o’clock on the morning of July 3rd the Manège was already
full. The galleries for the people, which adorned all four walls, and
of which some, supported by pillars, projected over the very heads of
the orators, were crowded with spectators. Down in the central space
between the seats, round the two china stoves in the semblance of the
Bastille, deputies in negligent attire, booted and spurred, strolled
about, talking, laughing, spitting, calling to each other. It was in
vain that the President rang his bell several times for silence, and
that the four black-clad ushers with their gilded swords attempted to
enforce his appeals. At last a more effective check supervened, in
the approach of a deputation. It was the customary hour for such
attendances and the persons in the central space hastily clambered to
their seats to get a better view of it.
Conducted by an usher, a man and a woman threaded their way from the
west entrance past the noisy groups towards the green daïs. From their
dusty and travel-stained appearance they had evidently journeyed far
by road, and by the long garment which he wore—it could hardly be
called a cassock—the man was a priest, but a “constitutional.” To his
loose mouth and swarthy skin he added a bearing of decided truculence.
Beside him there walked two children of about four and six years, and
the woman who followed him bore in her arms a wailing infant of a few
months old. In spite of her rags and evident misery, the face of the
girl, for she was little more, would have won her attention anywhere.
It had once been beautiful, but now, across the beauty which still
remained, there was written disillusionment absolute and complete. The
short hair which curled freely on her forehead had once been covered
with the white veil of the novice.
The group came to a stand-still opposite the daïs, and the constitutional
began to address the President in loud, confident tones.
“My name is François Lethon,” he said, “and I am the curé of
Tregourez, in Finistère. This,” pointing to the motionless figure of
the woman, “is my wife.”
Applause from the nearest deputies greeted this remark, some seeing
fit to signify their approval of a married clergy by spitting on the
ground. The curé bowed, cleared his throat as if for a harangue, and
began again.
“I am the servant of the nation, she is the servant of the nation, and
this infant is our gift to the nation.” With a deprecatory wave of the
hand he turned towards the two children, who immediately tried to
escape from his eye and to hide behind the woman’s skirt. “They were
my protests some time since against an unnatural law, which it has now
seemed good to you gentlemen, the fathers of liberty, to remove.
_Their_ mother is dead.”
Fresh applause followed these words, several of the deputies pressing
round to shake hands with the constitutional, and to gaze curiously at
the girl, who throughout kept her eyes fixed upon the child in her
arms, and, but for the rising color in her pale cheeks, seemed
unconscious of the babble of voices round her, and of the sentiments,
not always too delicately expressed, which must have reached her ears.
After some moments of clamour, which was increased rather than
lessened by fresh ringing of the bell, and by the cries of the ushers,
the President succeeded in intimating that the curé should proceed
with his story.
“Two years ago,” resumed the priest, “at the time when the civil oath
was required from the clergy, and the religious houses were ordered
to be dissolved, I was chaplain of a convent at Coutances, in Normandy.
For some while I had cast my eyes upon one of the novices who
had pleased me much, but the rules of the Order were strict, and
opportunities for intercourse were rare. But on the dissolution of
that particular house I immediately addressed myself to Sister Louise,
offering her the honourable form of a civil marriage, and pointing out
that a worse fate might easily befall her. It only took a year to
convince her. I married her, and, on the whole,” he said, with a
patronising nod, “we have found her fairly submissive, and likely in
time to become a good _citoyenne_. I come now to the point of my
discourse. Last month I was appointed to the living of Tregourez.
When the news of our arrival reached the village, a crowd of men and
women, instigated by their former curé, who had taken refuge in the
_ci-devant_ château of the _ci-devant_ seigneur, came out to meet us,
howling round the diligence and brandishing weapons. They did not,
however, attempt any violence upon our persons, but that night the
windows were broken, and all our personal property taken from us
except a few clothes. The next day we made our escape, and have walked
to Paris. Citizens, you see our plight; you see how we have suffered
on behalf of liberty and freedom. Now that you have heard my story, I
appeal to a beneficent legislature to grant me compensation, and I
demand that the nation shall avenge my wrongs!”
A burst of applause drowned the curé’s last words. When it had
subsided the President was heard to say that the nation was not
insensible to the sufferings of such a champion of its liberties, but
that, as it was already late, he must pass on the petitioner to the
Committee of Liquidation. The curé made as if he would embark upon a
voluble expression of gratitude, but at a motion from the President he
was captured by an usher, and forced to cut short his harangue, and
the party moved across the oval to the door at the farther end. Some
of the deputies stopped them to offer their congratulations to the
happy father, while others cast admiring glances at the unfortunate
girl-mother, who came last in the sad little procession.
Up in one of the galleries, wedged in between a shopkeeper and a
fishwife, the Marquis de Château-Foix had surveyed this scene with the
profoundest disgust. It was a relief when, turning to the serious
business of the day, the President announced as the subject for
discussion “the situation of France,” and the groups of deputies again
broke up, scrambling hurriedly to their seats. In comparative silence
a member of the Gironde, Jean Debry, mounted the steps of the tribune.
It seemed to Gilbert that most of the deputies of the Left looked
worn and anxious, and that they accorded the orator but a divided
attention, trying at the same time to keep a watch upon the tribunes
of the people in order to see the effect of his words. Once, when the
King was mentioned with disparagement, there arose a cry from a
gallery, “Vive Monsieur Véto!” It was promptly suppressed, but it came
again, and was echoed several times; but, on the whole, the tradesmen,
artisans, and loafers who jostled each other in the galleries did not
seem particularly interested. Indeed, by their frequent interruptions,
they encouraged the speaker to make a speedy end, and Jean Debry was
not long in granting their desire. His words were purely introductory,
and he seemed glad to descend from the tribune.
When his place became vacant a buzz of interest immediately broke out.
It had gone round the galleries that the next speaker was to be
Vergniaud, the greatest orator of the Legislative. Just above the
tribune especially much excitement prevailed, the rabble of the street
jostling with the respectable bourgeois to catch a glimpse of the man
who was seen to be making his way to it. It was Vergniaud; the massive
head and shoulders of the Girondin were unmistakable. A silence more
expressive of approval than any applause fell upon the galleries.
Château-Foix looked curiously at the celebrated orator, and decided,
like everybody else, that he was not handsome. His slanting forehead
was too high, his nose and chin too pronounced, his lips too full, his
brows too prominent. In repose it was a face to attract attention
almost by its ugliness. As the Girondin opened his lips to speak his
words were drowned in a sudden burst of applause from the galleries,
and the Left looked at one another, relief written on their faces.
Vergniaud’s speech was, as usual, prepared and closely reasoned. He
began by asking the meaning of what seemed to be a counter-revolution.
The movements of the Army had been changed at the critical moment, the
Ministry had been dismissed, the National Assembly itself had been
torn by division. Then he spoke of internal troubles, and assigned two
causes—the nobility and the priesthood. The first, he said, could be
kept in order by a close police surveillance, but the second were
under the King’s protection. It was not possible to believe, without
accusing the King of being the enemy of his people, that he wished to
encourage the intrigues of sacerdotalism, therefore they must conclude
that he thought himself sufficiently strong to impose peace. At the
same time, if failure were the result, it would be the fault of no one
but the King.
The speaker held the whole Assembly by his words. At his first
insinuations against the King there had been a slight murmur of
disapproval from the extreme Right, and from one of the galleries, but
it had been promptly suppressed, and as Vergniaud continued he became
bolder in his questioning of the King’s motive. At last it seemed as
if he would dare to pass from insinuation to direct attack.
“It is in the name of the King,” he said, “that the French princes
have tried to raise all the courts of Europe against France; it is to
vindicate the dignity of the King that the treaty of Pillnitz was
signed and the monstrous alliance made between the courts of Vienna
and Berlin; it is to defend the King that the former companies of the
body-guard have hurried to Germany to serve beneath the standards of
rebellion; it is to come to the help of the King that the _émigrés_
ask for and obtain employment in the Austrian armies, and prepare to
tear the bosom of their native land; it is to join these gallant
defenders of the royal prerogative that other gallants of the most
scrupulous honour are abandoning their posts in presence of the enemy
and are labouring to corrupt their soldiers; it is in the name of the
King that liberty is being attacked. In short, it is the name of the
King alone which is the pretext and the cause of all the evils which
are being heaped upon our heads, and of all which we have to dread.”
The speaker paused, amid a thunder of applause. As it died unwillingly
away he resumed.
“Yes, my friends, all these crimes are being committed in the name of
the King. But remark”—he struck his hand lightly on the rail before
him—“remark that you may ask me whether the King be in every case
directly responsible for them. Your hearts, attuned to the love of
justice, may demand of me whether the King indeed dismisses with his
blessing these young nobles who fight for Austria. If he sought his
own advantage, you say, would he not rather retain them by his side as
janissaries? Possibly. But what if I told you that he _has_ retained
sufficient for this purpose; that this man, whom the generosity of the
French people cannot move, has his band of assassins, few in number,
perhaps, but desperate and ready; that all you have heard of the
Austrian Committee, all you saw in February of last year of the
_chevaliers du poignard_, is no bugbear, but truth itself!”
Confused cries arose as the Girondin paused again, leaning over the
balustrade of the tribune, but they were of short duration, for the
whole Assembly was panting for his next words. Vergniaud drew himself
up, thrusting a hand into his breast, and his voice rang out clear and
solemn.
“People of France, I make no random accusations. All that is being
done against you on the frontiers is as nothing to the mine which is
being laid here in Paris, not many yards from where I stand. We know
whose hand shall apply the match, when the time is come, and shatter
into a thousand fragments not only us, but our dreams, our hopes, our
plans of better things for France. We know it—alas, that I should have
to say it!—and yet the knowledge does not help us. We need something
more ere we can stamp out this viperous brood. We want proofs—their
plans or their names. . . . Fellow-citizens, here are both!”
He drew out his left hand and held aloft a little roll of papers.
Amid the cries and the applause, the stamping of feet, the struggling
and pushing to gain a glimpse of the orator, Gilbert was able to slip
unnoticed from his seat and make a way into the narrow staircase that
led into the Passage des Feuillants.
M. des Graves was right—terribly right! The blow had fallen, and the
words he had just heard spelt death with no uncertain letters. What
had Louis been able to do to save himself?
CHAPTER X
THE VICOMTE FINISHES HIS TOILET
“I tint half mysel’ when my gude lord I did tine:
A heart half sae brave a braid belt will never bin’,
Nor the grassy sods cover a bosom half sae kin’;
He's a drop o' dearest blude in this auld heart o' mine.
. . . . . . . .
O that I were with him i’ death’s gory fauld,
O had I but the iron on whilk hauds him sae cauld!”
—_Lament for Lord Maxwell_.
Gilbert hurried through the streets with a sick heart. He dared not
hasten overmuch, for fear of attracting attention, and the transit
between the Manège and the Rue d'Antin seemed interminable. At last he
stood before the house in which his cousin lodged. The entrance was
unguarded, the _concierge_ invisible, and Château-Foix slipped across
the courtyard unnoticed. All was quiet, and he went rapidly up the
stairs. The door of Louis’ bedroom stood wide, and so, concluding that
apartment to be unoccupied, the Marquis knocked at the door of the
sitting-room, which was shut. Receiving no answer, he turned the
handle and went in. One glance was enough to show him what had
happened.
The room was in the extreme of disorder. The drawers of the Boule
cabinet against the wall had been wrenched open, and out of one or two
dribbled odds and ends of all kinds. Across most of them, however, ran
a strip of paper and a hasty seal. On the round table in the centre of
the room was a china bowl of crimson roses, overturned and shattered,
apparently by the sword which seemed to have been flung down on top of
it, while the water, a damp patch in the sunlight, deepened the
suggestive hue of the red English carpet. Gilbert recognised the
costly weapon as his cousin’s; the naked steel—the scabbard lay upon
the floor—shone through the red rose-petals like the menace of Fate
across a flower-strewn existence.
The Marquis walked over to the cabinet. Had they found papers among
its other contents? Something scrunched under his foot, and, stooping,
he picked up a little miniature, broken across its laughing face. To
the ring at the top was tied by a ribbon a curl of fair hair. With
something between a sigh and a frown Gilbert slipped the broken gage,
no frailer, perhaps, than its giver, into one of the half-open
drawers, where a glance showed him that it might find suitable
company. Ah well! better they should find things like these than
papers. He turned as he did it at a sound behind him, and saw in the
doorway the stricken face of Jasmin. The old man made a sort of rush
at him, and stopped half-way, brought up by a respect too deep-rooted
to be overthrown even at such a crisis.
“Pardon, Monsieur le Marquis,” he murmured brokenly. “Monsieur le
Vicomte——”
“Is arrested?” asked Château-Foix with a great outward composure.
Jasmin nodded mutely, and two tears coursed slowly down his old
cheeks.
“This morning?”
“About two hours ago. O mon Dieu! what shall we do, M. Gilbert?” he
sobbed, reverting to a mode of address long since laid by.
The Marquis took a turn up and down in front of the violated cabinet.
There were two things he must know.
“Did they find any papers?”
Jasmin put back his pocket-handkerchief. “No, Monseigneur. Praise to
the saints, Monsieur le Vicomte burnt them all last night.”
“Thank God!” said Gilbert to himself. “And now, do you know where he
was taken?”
Jasmin’s face fell. “They would not tell him.”
“You are quite sure you did not overhear their destination? Think.”
“I am quite sure, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“And no one else heard it?”
“No, no one. O Monseigneur,” burst out the old man, clasping his
hands, “what will become of Monsieur le Vicomte? Nobody knows what a
kind master he was—always was. And it seems but the other day he was
a little boy, and I used——”
Château-Foix went up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Because
your master is arrested, Jasmin,” he said kindly, “there is no need to
preach his funeral sermon. He is in prison; we must find out where,
and then we must get him out again. Sit down”—for the old man was
shaking all over—“and tell me clearly the whole story from beginning
to end. The more you can recollect, the easier you will make it for me
to know what to do.”
But sit down the old servant would not.
“I brought Monsieur le Vicomte his coffee at the usual hour,” he began
feverishly, “and soon afterwards he got up. He was very merry, and
ordered me to lay out the new _carmélite_ suit, because it was such a
fine morning, and he thought that very likely he should not wear it
where he was going. It was like Fate, Monsieur le Marquis, for of
course he did not mean prison.” Jasmin faltered, and then proceeded.
“When he was half dressed, he sat down before the glass in his
_peignoir_ as usual, and I dressed his hair. I remember, I had just
tied the ribbon, when we heard a great knock at the door downstairs.
‘I wonder what that is,’ I said, and I stopped to listen. ‘Never
mind,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte. ‘It may be the devil, from the
fashion of his announcing himself, but I must be shaved all the same.’
So I had everything ready, and the very brush in my hand, when we
heard loud voices downstairs, and then people coming up fast and
noisily. ‘You can wait a little,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte very
quietly, ‘for I think it _is_ the devil.’ And then he throws back his
head, and says, laughing, ‘Open the door to him, Jasmin.’ But before I
could get to it, it was thrown wide, and there were six or seven men
in the vile red and blue uniform, and others behind, scum with pikes.
They tumbled in as if they expected Monsieur le Vicomte to be getting
out of the window, but there he sat leaning back in his chair, with
his legs crossed, quite cool, looking at them with that way he has
sometimes, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“I know,” said Gilbert, who was well acquainted with the polish and
insolence of his cousin's sang-froid. “Go on.”
“After a moment a man in front pulled out a paper. ‘You are the
_ci-devant_ Vicomte de Saint-Ermay,’ he says, ‘and I hold a warrant to
arrest you for conspiracy on behalf of Capet against the nation. In
the name of the sovereign people, I command you to follow me.’
“‘I know of only one sovereign in France,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte,
‘and he does not spell his name with those letters. Let me see your
warrant.’
“The man in authority seemed to hesitate, Monsieur le Marquis, but I
suppose that when he saw my master so quiet he thought that he could
trust him with the accursed thing, and so he came forward and put it
into his hand. Monsieur le Vicomte took it very gingerly, as if he
were afraid of soiling his fingers—though indeed the paper was quite
clean—and read it through once. Then he gave it back and got up from
his chair.
“‘Thank you, my friend,’ he says with a little smile. ‘I shall be at
your service in a few moments. Meanwhile pray make yourselves and your
excellent colleagues at home.’
“‘You must come at once!’ says the man threateningly. ‘What are you
going to do? Resistance is useless.’ I think he was angry because
Monsieur le Vicomte was so polite.
“‘I should not dream of resisting you,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte very
sweetly, and adds something about his being irresistible. ‘I am only
going to finish my toilet.’ Then he turned to me and bade me bring him
some fresh shaving water.
“Then the man swore, because, being very ill-favoured, he was certain
now that Monsieur le Vicomte was laughing at him. ‘You shall come as
you are,’ he said with several oaths.
“Monsieur le Vicomte said that that was impossible, and he threw open
his dressing-gown. ‘I could not conceivably permit myself to shock the
delicacy of the nation,’ he says, ‘by going through the streets in
this state’—he was in his shirt and breeches, you understand, Monsieur
le Marquis. ‘Surely you can amuse yourself while I finish dressing; I
shall not be long.’
“They made a great clamour at that, and there was much swearing, and
everybody seemed to be in the room at once. But the end of it was that
they gave in, because the man in authority remembered that he must
look for papers, and, as Monsieur le Vicomte pointed out, he could do
that while he himself was being shaved. But when they asked where his
papers were he said that last night the ashes were in the grate, but
that if Jacques had done his work properly he was afraid they would
not be there now. Then they went to see, Monsieur le Marquis, and
anyhow it would have been of no use, because Monsieur le Vicomte never
burnt them in that grate at all. I heard them breaking open drawers in
there, and prayed to heaven that Monsieur Louis would not want me to
shave him, because my hand was shaking so, and there were two men
guarding the door, and two sitting on the bed with their muskets on
their knees. But Monsieur le Vicomte would not take any denial—when he
really meant a thing he never would—and I began and I cut him at once.
‘Give me the razor, Jasmin, you heart of hare,’ he says. ‘I do not
want my throat cut before my time.’ So he took it, and finished
shaving himself as cool as you please, and all the while they were
stamping in and out, and swearing and breaking things, and telling
Monsieur le Vicomte to make haste. But he took very little notice of
them until he had finished shaving.
“‘Bring me my coat and waistcoat, Jasmin,’ he says then. ‘The citizen
seems unfortunate in his game of hide-and-seek.’ I asked him if he
would still have the _carmélite_, and he says, ‘Why not?’ so I brought
it. But first the men turned out the pockets, and after that I thought
that Monsieur le Vicomte would not put it on—but he did.”
Jasmin stopped.
“And then?”
“Then they took him away—in a coach,” replied the old man, his lips
trembling, and suddenly, unconsciously, he sat down on the sofa behind
him and bent forward, burying his face in his hands.
To Jasmin this was evidently the end, the tragic, overmastering end,
of the story, but the Marquis had not time to taste this finality.
“You cannot have told me everything, Jasmin,” he said. “Surely
Monsieur le Vicomte left some instructions, some——”
He broke off, rather startled, for the old man had sprung up. “Holy
Virgin! I had forgotten for the moment. Heaven send we have not
disturbed him! Pardon me, Monseigneur.” He went on tip-toe to the far
side of the room, and Gilbert followed him, suddenly uncertain as to
his sanity. And in a deep chair by the window, on one of Louis’
handsomest coats, slumbered the object of this solicitude, the
beautiful Persian cat which Château-Foix had seen on his bed.
“He has been so restless since Monsieur Louis went,” explained Jasmin,
coming softly away. “At last I brought him this coat to lie on. Poor
Lucidor! it has soothed him. But”—he looked back—“I see that he has
not touched his cream; how vexed Monsieur le Vicomte would be! I was
to be sure that he had it at his usual time.”
“Were those my cousin's last instructions?” asked Gilbert sarcastically.
“Yes, Monseigneur,” responded the old servant, quite oblivious of the
sneer.
The Marquis muttered under his breath something uncomplimentary to his
kinsman. Such levity was incomprehensible to him.
“Are you sure there was nothing else?” he demanded impatiently. “No
message for me—even though I am not a cat?”
Jasmin looked at him with a sort of reproachful astonishment.
“Monsieur le Marquis, how could there be? We were not alone for a
single moment. Do you think Monsieur le Vicomte would wish to
implicate you? Indeed,” he finished nervously, “he would not think it
safe for you to be here now, in case they return.”
“You need not alarm yourself, my good Jasmin,” returned Château-Foix.
“I shall not stay, if you can give me no more information.” He walked
musingly to the door. “By the way, would not the name of the prison
have been in the warrant?”
“If it had been, Monsieur le Vicomte would not have asked it,” replied
Jasmin, shaking his head. “He did ask it—so that I might hear, I
suppose—but they would not tell him.”
Gilbert went out of the house feeling like a man who has unexpectedly
come to the edge of a high cliff. Before him was nothingness. He
almost felt that Louis’ arrest was less terrible than the absolute
ignorance as to his whereabouts. True, he had spoken to Jasmin—more
hopefully than conviction really warranted—about procuring his
master’s release—but how was he to do it, even if he knew whither he
had been taken? And not to know that was stupefying. Poor Louis, going
light-hearted into the darkness with no last message for any one—save
a pet! No, it was incredible that he should never see him again; his
release only needed an unswerving determination and perseverance, and,
once released, he would instantly get him out of Paris, and they
would go back to Poitou together. Was not that the very aim of his
coming to Paris? One's own kin are safe, of course, from the graver
catastrophes, and who could fancy Louis other than fortunate? He had
been so all his life.
The thought of leaving Paris brought to the Marquis, who was almost
at his own hotel, the remembrance of another who was also to quit it
for safety. He looked at his watch. He had promised to see Lucienne
to-day; he was indeed to tell her whether or no Louis would escort her
to England. Saint-Ermay’s refusal was now more providential than
inexplicable, and he need not tell her that his cousin could not take
her, but simply that it had been arranged otherwise. He need not, in
fact, alarm and grieve her by letting her know at all of his arrest.
Moreover, it was yet early, barely noon; much might be done before he
went to see her; he might even carry her news of a peril past. But in
his heart of hearts he did not think he could accomplish anything so
quickly.
And when he returned, some five hours later, the hopeful visions which
he had insisted upon seeing were transmuted into menacing phantoms of
gloom. He was no wiser than when he had started out, and he was a
great deal more depressed. With much difficulty he had succeeded in
seeing Bertrand-Moleville. The Royalist ex-minister knew nothing,
could do nothing. If there had been other arrests—and there must have
been—they had been kept very quiet. Perhaps the Girondins had found
the fish in their net less numerous than they had hoped. But the
Comte de Périgny had vanished, as Gilbert discovered when he at last
procured his address. In despair, Gilbert went to the Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, whom he knew, and, in some sort, had
followed. The Liberal leader and philanthropist, standing between the
two parties, might, he thought, be induced to mediate, but Gilbert
soon found that on that score he had nothing to hope from him. The Duc
was kind and sympathetic, but, like most moderates, he knew himself
more intolerable to the extremists than a Royalist, perhaps, would
have been. He could only advise Château-Foix to go straight to one
of the Girondin chiefs, suggesting for the purpose Roland, as an
ex-minister and humane, or Condorcet, as an ex-aristocrat. But he did
not disguise his belief that any application to the dominant party
would be unsuccessful.
“We must face the truth,” he said gravely. “This is what they must
have worked for, and can you expect them now to forego the fruits of
victory?”
“You think, then, that I am to abandon hope?” Gilbert had asked rather
bitterly, but the good Duke replied that what he meant was that no
direct exertion of influence was likely to be of use. He promised the
matter his earnest consideration, and undertook to communicate with
the Marquis early next morning if he had any news.
Profoundly dispirited and weary, Gilbert threw himself down in his own
room. But he was too anxious to rest, and, moreover, it was already
after the hour he had named for seeing Lucienne. Yesterday he would
perhaps have been there before the time, but to-day another face had
power to banish hers. Great God! suppose that Fate _had_ sometimes the
will to cheat the fortunate!
CHAPTER XI
“YOU ARE HIDING SOMETHING FROM ME!”
A little pensive over lost glories, over periwig and falbala, over
lovelock and Flanders point, there stood in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple,
in the once fashionable quarter of the Marais, the beautiful little
Hôtel de la Séguinière, which a peer of France had built in the days
of Louis XIII., a chancellor had inhabited under the Roi Soleil, and a
favourite under Louis XV., and which, finally, a self-made banker had
bought in 1780. All nymphs and garlands within, pilasters and garlands
without, it was a house fit for a prince or a royal mistress, a house
that smiled and sang, and into this house, in the year named above,
the excellent Monsieur Gaumont, well known in the Rue Vivienne, had
brought his equally excellent English wife. And the Hôtel de la
Séguinière, so incongruous, had not affected either the simplicity of
his manners or the goodness of his heart. He had not tried to live up
to it; neither had he brought down its airy characteristics to his own
bourgeois level. In these abstentions his sensible wife had aided him.
Madame Gaumont, when she first entered this dwelling, though a bride,
was already mature, and her husband was over fifty. If the good man
sometimes found the decorations of his house a little trying, at least
he never repented of his selection of a helpmate. During the ten years
of his occupancy of the Hôtel, he sang the praises of the nation which
had provided him with so good a wife, and at the end of that time he
passed quietly out of the troubles of this world (exactly at the epoch
when Mirabeau was proposing the creation of more assignats in order
to meet the second financial crisis of 1790). M. Gaumont departed
consoled with the knowledge that if any woman was able to take care
of herself, under any circumstances, that woman was his wife.
Nevertheless he had strongly urged her to return, as soon as might be,
to her native land.
The widow, though greatly distressed at his death, took some comfort
in the thought that she had protected him, at all events during the
last decade of his life, from the numerous frauds and impostors who
were for ever draining him of his substance. She was herself of a
most charitable and kind disposition, but she possessed a certain
shrewdness and a power of discrimination which in matters of charity
had been lacking to her husband. For the first year of her widowhood
she lived in great seclusion, but not in idleness, since she insisted
upon concluding the banker's affairs, as far as possible, herself.
It was at this time that her common-sense homely nature was extremely
touched by a message of sympathy which she had received from Madame
Elisabeth, with whom she had once had an audience on matters
of charity. When, therefore, having yielded to the continual
solicitations of her relatives in England to return, for a time at
least, to her own country, she heard, by a mere coincidence, that the
Princess was desirous of obtaining an escort thither for a young lady
of the Court, she immediately offered her services.
It was with even more than her accustomed kindness and good-nature
that Madame Gaumont greeted Lucienne on the afternoon that she
bore her away from the Tuileries. Her appearance was in itself a
consolation. Tall and stout, but not ungainly, she carried a small
head upon massive shoulders, and her eyes twinkled with amusement at
the smallest provocation. Her cheerful motherly humour at once
understood and felt for the girl’s dejection without losing its
slightly bracing temper. It would have been plain indeed to a less
sympathetic eye that Lucienne was heart-broken at leaving her beloved
mistress. In the coach by Madame Gaumont’s side, and during the first
hour or so after her arrival at the Hôtel de la Séguinière, the last
words of the Princess and her own resolutions to be brave had
sustained her. But that evening, alone in the pretty pink and white
boudoir which her hostess had assigned to her, it was different. All
the cables which had held her little bark to its anchorage were
parting one after the other; she felt herself alone on a hostile sea.
It was not only the parting with Madame Elisabeth—it was not only
shrinking from the future which unnerved her; it was terror of
herself, for herself. And quite suddenly the idea came to her: why not
end this eternal warfare, embrace the inevitable? Why not tell Gilbert
that she wished to marry him now, before she went to England?
The thought was stunning, but it brought the relief of finality. And,
after all, it was what she was going to do in the end. Would not
Madame Elisabeth have approved of it? Why had she not done it before?
Borne on the tide of impulse, she got up and looked round the
unfamiliar room for writing materials. They were there all ready to
her hand. She sat down at the escritoire, and seizing a sheet of paper
wrote with shaking fingers the first words that occurred to her,
folded the letter, sealed and addressed it. . . . Then she paused.
What did it mean, that square of paper lying in front of her? It meant
exactly what it said to her, in her own handwriting—“Monsieur le
Marquis de Château-Foix.” (Lucienne never could remember that one was
not supposed to use titles any more.) It represented Gilbert. He
would come at once, he would probably marry her to-morrow. To-morrow,
then, she would be really his. It would be rest of a sort. She was
far enough from feeling aversion to him. It would be the best
solution. . . .
No, she was not made for so heroic a remedy!
“What shall I do—what shall I do?” she whispered desperately to
herself, sitting in front of the letter and twisting her hands. The
Caryatids of the fireplace could not advise her, nor that little
marquise of the school of La Tour, who looked so rosily out of her
tarnished frame over the mantelpiece. But a small sound spoke to her
and decided her fate. Because it was a chilly evening Madame Gaumont
had had a fire lit in the boudoir. And as Lucienne sat there, tossed
on a thousand conflicting currents of thought, a piece of wood, burnt
through, fell in with a gentle crash. Almost before she had realised
it the girl had risen, crossed the room, flung the letter into the
flames, and, returning to the escritoire, buried her face in her
hands, drawing long breaths of relief. She had the sensation of
having escaped a pursuer. . . .
In the few simple words of commendation that the Princess had spoken
to her, Madame Gaumont had learnt that it was also the wish of
Lucienne’s affianced husband, the Marquis de Château-Foix, that the
girl should go to England. And as the banker’s widow dearly loved all
circumstances attending wooings, betrothals, marriages, and the like,
she looked forward to the arrival of the happy suitor with more
pleasure, had she but known it, than the _future_ herself. But
Lucienne made something of a fight for the situation next morning. The
weary air of one who has not slept was attributed by her hostess, and
with partial accuracy, to her grief at parting with Madame Elisabeth.
Being conscious of this Lucienne was able to answer her sympathetic
questions about Gilbert naturally enough. But the day dragged on,
and still Gilbert did not come. How thankful she was that she had
burnt her letter! She was now a prey to all the instincts of
conventionality, which had never made themselves heard in her
overstrung condition of the previous night. It was her dead mother’s
wish which had delayed the marriage; how could she have dreamed of
outraging it? And Gilbert—what would he have thought of a girl who
offered herself in that fashion? At times she was almost cheerful at
the thought of her escape, and, ironically enough, when Madame Gaumont
was thinking complacently, “The poor child is reviving already at the
prospect of seeing her betrothed,” Lucienne was congratulating herself
that the day would see him, after all, in no closer relationship.
It was late in the afternoon before the expected visitor was announced
to Madame Gaumont, where she sat in her partially dismantled boudoir
doing accounts in preparation for her departure, and where Lucienne,
her head on her hand, was gazing out of the window—“looking for her
lover,” thought her hostess. But the lover, when he entered, was
something of a surprise. He was not the handsome young nobleman whom
she had imagined to herself. Gilbert’s serious manner and his rather
severe style of dress usually gave him the appearance of an older man,
and to-day, fresh from the scene of Louis’ arrest, he was more than
usually grave. However, Madame Gaumont had hardly thrown down her pen
and risen with delight to receive him before she decided that he had,
after all, an air of distinction. Gilbert kissed her hand, and
Lucienne’s.
“You will forgive the confusion in which you find us, Monsieur le
Marquis, will you not?” asked the good lady cheerfully. “I need hardly
apologise to you, since you know that I—we—I should say, are leaving
on the day after to-morrow. It is a great pleasure to me to have the
companionship of Mademoiselle d’Aucourt—though, to be sure, I am very
sorry to be the instrument of taking her away from you! . . . And
now,” she added, beaming, “since your time is so short, I will not
take from you any of your precious moments. Au revoir, Monsieur.”
She got her bulk out of the door with such surprising alacrity that
Gilbert had barely time to open it for her.
Lucienne, very pale in her white dress with its black ribbons, was
standing, when he turned again, with her fingers resting on a little
gilded table in the centre of the room. Her large dark eyes, which
could be so full of laughter, were wide open and eager, and underneath
them were black rings of fatigue and perhaps suffering, which
Château-Foix had never seen there before. Again he felt the dizzy
onslaught of that passion which had surprised him in the Tuileries. He
fought it down; he dared not show it; he had frightened her once. He
went up to her, and gently possessed himself of her hands instead.
“You are tired, my darling, and sad.”
She smiled a little—very bravely, he thought. “Not very tired. But
sad, yes.”
“I wish it need not be; I wish it with all my heart,” he said
earnestly. “It is desperately hard for both of us.” He raised her
hands to his own shoulders and stood looking down at her. “I only send
you away, my dearest, because it is the best for you. You know that,
Lucienne, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said the girl dreamily, looking up at him and yet through him.
He tightened his grasp of her hands. “Lucienne, my heart, what is it?
You are tired out, and I can’t take care of you. I have got to leave
you to a stranger . . . I can't even send Louis with you.”
“I knew that Louis would not be able to leave the King,” said
Lucienne, and she gently disengaged herself and sat down. “You should
have believed me at the first, Gilbert.”
As he looked at her, sitting there pale but smiling, her spirit, as
he conceived it, and her beauty so wrought upon Gilbert that his
self-restraint began to give way again, and he walked hastily up and
down the room. She was going over the sea, away from him, and he
longed to take her back with him to Vendée, to clasp her in his arms
and to shower kisses on her little pale face. There was no absolutely
valid reason against his doing either of these things, except that the
first was not in harmony with what he thought best for her, the
second, he had learnt, was not to be yet.
As for Lucienne, she sat still with her eyes fixed almost mechanically
upon her lover. She had never in her life seen him so moved, but she
had passed beyond the region of surprise or even of acute sensation,
and she thought, as far as she could think at all, of a burnt letter.
At last Gilbert came to a stand-still in front of her. “I wish you did
not look so tired,” he said under his breath. Then he sat down by her
and took her hand in both of his and went on speaking in a voice that
showed the restraint which he was putting on himself. “My mother will
soon go over to take care of you, I hope, Lucienne; and I am sure you
will be happy in Suffolk. You will like my uncle; he is extremely
kind, and so are my cousins, George and Amelia.”
Some answer was probably required of her, so she said: “It seems
strange that you should have English cousins.”
The Marquis nodded, but was not diverted into enlarging on this
relationship, so perhaps he had not expected a remark. He went on to
talk a little of the journey, of English habits, of Suffolk, and she
could not guess, except that his manner was somehow indefinably
different, that, as he described Sir William Ashley’s avenue, he saw
himself riding up it to claim her. Yet his thought was almost audible
in his voice as he said: “I shall come over myself very soon. It may
be that we shall have to be married in England, but you must try not
to mind that.”
Lucienne's hand was her own again now, and she looked down at his ring
as she twisted it on her finger. “I shall not mind,” she said at
length.
“And until that time,” went on Gilbert in a low voice she had never
heard before, “there will no day pass in which I shall not think of
you and long for you.”
There had been growing in Lucienne’s heart, even in the midst of her
apathy, a horrible fear lest, by reason of that very apathy (of which
she was fully conscious) she might awaken in Gilbert some suspicion of
the truth. She might be compromising Louis. For Louis’ sake—she could
not have done it else—she was quickened to a great effort, and
stretching out her hand, said with all the warmth of which she was
capable, and with a smile to boot: “I shall be waiting for you when
you come.”
Château-Foix put a long kiss on the little hand. “You are as brave as
I knew you would be. God grant that day may not be far off.”
Rather than discuss that question and run the risk of failing in
responsiveness, she said: “Is it true that you are going back to
Chantemerle at once?”
“I am going back directly you are out of Paris,” answered Gilbert,
looking at her and thinking how prettily the hair grew on her
forehead.
“And Louis with you, I suppose?”
The question struck at him like the ache of a recurrent pain. He had
actually forgotten for the moment the black cloud on his heart. He
must have hesitated for the fraction of a second, for he heard
Lucienne say quickly and almost reproachfully: “You are not going to
leave him behind in Paris, surely, Gilbert? You know how reckless he
is, and that if any one has influence with him it is you!”
A somewhat grim smile flickered over the Marquis’ face at this
testimony. “Yes,” he said, trusting that this time he was not
betraying hesitation, “Louis must come with me.” And, fearing further
questions, he rose to take his leave. He stood towering up above
Lucienne, and once again he held out his arms to her. And Lucienne got
up and came to him, but she seemed to shrink into nothing in his
embrace, and to try to hide her face from him. Then he attempted to
comfort her, blaming himself for having made the parting harder for
her.
“I must leave you now, dearest,” he said, gently releasing her, “but I
shall try to see you again on Thursday, if only for a moment, to say
good-bye.”
“You will bring Louis, too?” she asked, and she looked at him with a
gaze there was no escaping.
“If I can,” said the Marquis.
Suddenly she started away from him, with a hand at her breast and her
whole body quivering with life. “Why ‘if you can’? Why ‘if you can’?”
she cried. “You are hiding something from me! He is—he is . . . O tell
me!”
Château-Foix looked at the carpet. “I had not meant to tell you,” he
answered gravely and reluctantly, “but perhaps you had better know. He
was arrested this morning.”
He heard a sort of fluttering sigh, and raised his eyes in time to see
the girl, like a broken lily, sway towards the sofa behind her. He
took an instinctive step forward to catch her, but she had sunk
backward among the rose-coloured cushions, so gently that it was hard
to realise she had no volition. She had fainted.
CHAPTER XII
GILBERT IS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL
“Puis une révolte surgit en lui contre lui-même, contre cette
honteuse insinuation du moi défiant, du moi jaloux, du moi méchant
que nous portons tous. . . . On ne peut rien contre l'Idée. Elle est
imprenable, impossible à chasser, impossible à tuer.”
—GUY DE MAUPASSANT, _L'Epreuve_.
Château-Foix passed under the escutcheoned gateway into the street.
Madame Gaumont and Lucienne’s maid, appearing on his frantic ringing
of the bell, had turned him somewhat ignominiously out of the room,
until the former, reissuing, had allayed his anxiety with the news
that the dear child had recovered her senses, that there was nothing
to fear, but that it would obviously be wiser for him not to see her
again at present. The good lady gave him to understand how profound
was her sympathy with the emotional crisis which had produced so
moving a result.
So Gilbert left the Hôtel de la Séguinière. He was concerned and
anxious, and could not blame himself sufficiently for allowing
Lucienne to have heard the truth about Louis. He had better have lied.
And he had turned into the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux when suddenly he
stopped, and put his hand across his eyes. A vision had abruptly
presented itself of Lucienne, white and quivering with excitement,
uttering those words that rang with terror and passion, “Why ‘if you
can’? Why ‘if you can’? You are hiding something. . . .” He felt her
again in his arms, inanimate the one moment, the next—— And this—this
at the mention of Louis’ name, of Louis’ danger. . . . The hideous
suspicion was impossible, and yet—— He would know the truth at once,
he would go back and ask Lucienne herself. He swung on his heel, and
stopped, won by wiser counsels. Did he purpose to make a fool of
himself, to play the jealous lover, and at such a time, when the
balances of life and death were weighing? The poor child would
naturally be anxious; her passion was conjured up by his own
disordered imagination; she was tired; how could he have dreamed such
a thing! Once more he turned his face westward and walked rapidly on.
But alas! to drive away a thought is not to slay it. The terrible
idea, which had sprung full-panoplied into being, was immortal, and he
knew it. The sting had been dealt, and the poison was ineradicable.
The street seemed to lengthen and contract, to be gripping his heart.
It came back the second time like a harpy—“What guarantee have you
that Louis has not played you false, that Lucienne has not deceived
you?” He cast it away the second time, still walking on, though he was
unconscious of movement, for it seemed as if the world stood still.
But it was like fighting the sea. For the third time it surged back
upon him—“Suppose, suppose . . .” And then round a corner, in that
network of little streets, he came face to face with D’Aubeville.
“A moment!” said the latter in a low voice, gripping him by the arm
without an apology. He was rather pale, and his breath came short as
though he had been running. “Give me a moment!” He drew the Marquis up
an alley. “You know he has been arrested?”
“Louis?” asked the Marquis. “Yes. Do you know where he is?”
“If you can get him released,” said D’Aubeville rapidly, without
replying to the question, “I can get him out of Paris.”
“But where is he?” exclaimed Gilbert impatiently. “I can get him out
of Paris myself, if I can find him.”
“She must know, if no one else does,” returned D’Aubeville. “Go to
her—to Madame d’Espaze. She knows, and she could get Lecorrier to
release him.”
“Madame d’Espaze,” repeated the Marquis. “She knows, you say—but would
she do it?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “It is a chance—the only one.
At least, if she would do it for any one, she would do it for
Saint-Ermay.”
“Give me her address,” said Château-Foix. “I can but try. If we knew
where he is it would be something.”
D’Aubeville nodded, scribbling meanwhile in a pocket-book. “There is
her address. Get Saint-Ermay released before to-morrow evening—I can
do nothing myself, I should merely be taken too—and send him to the
address I have written beneath it. . . . No, you say you can manage
that part yourself. It is all over; I must go and see if any of us are
left—and you should not be seen talking to me. Good luck to you!”
“Tell me one thing,” interposed Gilbert hastily. “This woman—I know
nothing of Louis’ relations with her—can I bribe her?”
D’Aubeville turned. “I should doubt it. I cannot tell you how to
prevail upon her; I must leave that to you. She is a devil, but she
has a heart sometimes. And at any rate she knows where he is.” He
disappeared in the dusk.
The Marquis stood still, collecting his thoughts. A moment or two ago
Louis’ peril had sunk forgotten beneath his possible treachery. Now
the full realisation of his imminent danger swept like the incoming
tide over a shore of suspicion that would be bared again at ebb. The
flood carried Château-Foix along with it. He summoned a passing
vehicle, sprang in, and drove at once across the river to Madame
d’Espaze’s house in the Rue de Tournon.
The rush of feeling had borne him up to the very door of the
enchantress before he began to consider what he should say to her.
Should he plead or threaten, argue or bribe? Not knowing the lady he
concluded (perhaps not unwisely) that it was useless to arrange a
plan of campaign until he had seen her, and rang the bell on this
resolution.
Alas, Madame was not at home to any one. No, she had given positive
orders. And then only did Gilbert realise that it was something late
for a visit. Would she receive him to-morrow morning? Sped by a
handsome gratuity, the lackey went back with the Marquis’ card. He
returned to say that the Comtesse would gladly receive Monsieur at
ten. With this consolation Gilbert, baffled, went slowly down the
steps between the flowering shrubs and through the gay little
courtyard out again into the street.
And gradually the tide began to ebb. There was nothing to be done till
morning—nothing but think. Once back in his room at the hotel there
seemed indeed to be every likelihood of his doing that till daybreak,
the more so that a certain merciless clearness of vision was beginning
to bathe past and present in a dreadful illumination. Everything was
patent to him now. That he should not have known better! That he could
have had the incredible folly to trust Louis near Lucienne; to believe
that there was at least one woman in the world whom he would respect.
Fool! it had probably made the prize but the more desirable!
The horrible source of light in Gilbert’s brain brought back incident
after incident in the past, all pointing to the one goal. No sooner
had one swept before him than another rushed upon its heels. “And I!
and I!” they cried to him, ghosts of his unutterable folly, of Louis’
treachery, of Lucienne’s weakness. He had trusted so completely that a
revulsion so complete stripped instantly every rag of faith from him,
and left him naked to the storm. For a little while he was able to
regard the event from almost an impersonal standpoint; then the
kaleidoscope shifted, and his proud and writhing spirit beheld himself
as the victim, laughed at, perhaps, or worse, pitied; till at last,
passing by the image of Lucienne with averted face, his mind fixed on
the thought of Louis in a passion of hatred. As yet he would not,
could not examine her position; it was Louis who was guilty; it was
Louis who had entrapped her; it was Louis, curse him, curse him!—with
his beauty and his grace, his ready tongue, his gay smile, and just
that reputation for gallantry likely to render him more attractive
still.
And suddenly, as the bells of Notre Dame des Victoires behind the
hotel chimed the quarter past nine, a thought, scarifying in its
intensity, tore shuddering across the night of his mind. He had
revenge in his very hands. He could leave Louis where he was—leave him
to rot in the prison to which his philandering with another woman had
brought him—leave him to be hanged on a lamp-post like the Marquis de
Favras, to be torn in pieces like De Launay, to have his handsome,
insolent head paraded along the streets on a pike point, like
Foulon—like him, perhaps, with a wisp of grass between the lips which
had lied and kissed. . . .
It was not at once that Gilbert realised to what voice he was
listening. The shock of the image he had conjured up for himself told
him. O God! was he like that! His head fell forward on his arms. . . .
Ten o’clock had struck before he lifted it. The bitter shame and
conflict of that three-quarters of an hour had brought the pendulum
back with a swing. What shadow of proof had he? Lucienne had been
overwrought; how had he dared to think such a thing of her? It was a
nightmare out of which he would awaken with the dawn.
But when the dawn came he had not awakened; only, haggard and
doubt-ridden, he threw himself on his bed to gain a little respite ere
he set out to play his last desperate stake for the life of the
kinsman who had—or had not?—done him so foul an injury.
CHAPTER XIII
“HOURS IN THE RAIN”
“Roses, roses, roses scatter,
Drifts of pink in the flooding water;
Dial that notched our hours in the sun
Hath no notch for the hours undone,
Hours in the rain; and no great matter.”
—K. T. HINKSON, _The Poor Jacobites_.
Some two hours after Gilbert was repulsed from Madame d’Espaze’s door
an old man and a young girl were sitting in the Hôtel de la Force
playing backgammon by a scanty fire. The large, bare room was empty
but for themselves, for La Force had not then the crowd of captives of
which it was to be relieved in so bloody a fashion just two months
later. Nevertheless there ran across the apartment a long trestle
table void of a cloth, and the old man looked up every now and again
from his game as though expecting an arrival.
“Our guests and the supper are alike late to-night, my dear,” he
remarked at last, pushing away the board and the pieces. He wore the
cross of Saint Louis on a faded and old-fashioned coat; the snuff-box
between his long blanched fingers was of common horn, and a network of
darning obscured the original Mechlin of the lace at his wrists. For
the Chambre des Victoires, where he sat, was on the debtors’ side of
La Force, itself pre-eminently a debtors’ prison, though already
opening to receive political offenders.
A moment after his observation a key turned in the door, and three men
came in. Two of them were quite young, the third about thirty-five,
and all, after saluting the occupants of the room with some ceremony,
fell to conversation with them with the ease and humour of old
acquaintances. Indeed it was now some months since the five had been
accustomed to take their evening meal in common—for though they always
called the Chevalier de Maisonfleur their host, the title was one of
courtesy only, belonging more properly to the State, which provided
apartment, food, and service, and was willing, in return for a small
extra payment, to save its officials the trouble of dishing up
separate repasts.
“Mademoiselle, your hands are cold,” said one of the younger men. “In
July too. I fear the Chambre des Victoires is chilly even in summer.”
“They were late in lighting the fire, Monsieur,” replied the girl,
“and perhaps I am tired to-day.” The ghost of a sigh checked on her
white lips.
“I trust our host will not think me a boor,” said his companion,
bowing to the old man where he sat with crossed legs in his chair, an
air of contentment on his lined and high-bred features. “But I should
like to suggest that his domestics are behindhand with the banquet
also.”
The Chevalier de Maisonfleur smiled. “You have my sincere apologies,
M. Chanzeau. I must really speak sharply to my _maître d’hôtel_. Ah,
here is the rogue.”
Again the key turned, the door was butted violently open, and a
shock-headed jailor hurried in with a tray, while some unseen agency
closed the door behind him. “Now, no complaints, my little pigeons. I
know you are grumbling because poor Jacques is five minutes late.
Always meals—always eating—always trays to carry about and dishes to
wash up.” He set down the tray with a crash. “There is stew to-night.
Are you pampered, hein?” As he proceeded noisily to set spoon and
platters on the bare board, the prisoners regarded him and each other
with indulgent smiles. They esteemed themselves fortunate in the
attendance of the noisy Jacques, the best-hearted jailor in La Force.
“No, we are not grumbling, my dear Jacques,” said the girl in her
gentle, tired voice. “You have so much to do, have you not? Shall I
set out those spoons for you?” And she went to his assistance.
“Let us all help,” said one of the young men, laughing, and he and his
companion, leaving their elders by the fire, crowded to the table,
despite the remonstrances of Jacques, who asserted with some truth
that they were merely hindering him. Thus it was that the key turned,
and the door opened a third time unnoticed, and it was the girl who,
first looking up, cried in surprise, “Who is that?” A handsome youth
in a violet-blue suit of extreme elegance and the latest cut was
standing just inside the door looking at the scene with interest.
“Bless me!” grunted Jacques, coming hastily round the table, “I had
forgotten. Citizen Maisonfleur, I have a new guest for you. Didn’t you
notice that I brought in six covers. The citizen only arrived this
morning.”
“And is very welcome,” observed the Chevalier, getting up from his
chair with much dignity. “Sir, we shall be much obliged to you if you
will do us the favour of supping with us.”
Louis bowed and came over to him. “Had I known that I was intruding on
a private party——” he apologised between jest and earnest. “However,
I was not in reality offered an alternative, and that must be my
excuse.”
“None, my dear sir, is needed, I assure you,” said the old man,
evidently favourably impressed. “You are only too welcome to our
little circle. Let me present you to my daughter, Mademoiselle
Jeanne-Céleste-Valentine de Maisonfleur.”
Louis, supplying his name, kissed the little cold hand, and was duly
made acquainted with MM. Chanzeau and Lagrange, who had abandoned the
laying of the table to Jacques. But before he was introduced to the
elder man, the latter, wrinkling up a pair of short-sighted eyes,
asked abruptly: “Are you the Saint-Ermay who was in the bodyguard,
compagnie Villeroy?”
“Yes,” said Louis, puzzled. “Were you there? Pardon me if I have had
the pleasure of meeting you and the bad manners to forget it——”
The other gave a short laugh. “On my soul, Vicomte, you must have a
short memory. Or else it is over-burdened with such meetings. Have you
really forgotten a certain morning behind the Luxembourg two and a
half years ago? It is true that I have more reason to remember it than
you!”
“Des Essars!” exclaimed Louis. “How could I not know you again!—But it
was such a horribly dark morning,” he added, in such a tone that they
all laughed in spite of themselves.
“And I have altered, eh?” said Des Essars, with a grim little smile.
“Well, I have been in here nearly ever since. As we settled our little
difference finally on that occasion I must not say that I am glad to
see you.” He held out his hand with a friendly gesture, and Louis took
it as frankly.
“Well, gentlemen,” observed M. de Maisonfleur, taking snuff in high
good-humour, “this is all very satisfactory and as it should be.
And here is our good Jacques with some culinary triumph. M. de
Saint-Ermay, I will ask you to give your arm to my daughter. . . .”
* * * * * *
When Louis, back in his own cell, reviewed his evening, he found it a
dream-like memory, at once ludicrous and pathetic. It was not easy to
do the honours of a badly-made stew, eaten in wooden platters with
pewter spoons on a deal table without a cloth, but M. de Maisonfleur
had accomplished it. It was not easy—and Louis had guessed it—for a
girl who was tired and heart-sick to behave as though her shabby dress
were new and fashionable, and she the chatelaine entertaining her
father's guests, but Mademoiselle de Maisonfleur had done it. He had
sat by her side and helped her. Opposite to him, too, was the man whom
he had last seen senseless on the frosty grass in the Luxembourg
gardens—all for the sake of a hasty word. Now it was as though they
had never crossed swords.
It was indeed as like a dream as the rest of the solitary day had
been, as this very straw-covered pallet on which he sat was like a
dream.
“Devilish more like a nightmare!” exclaimed the dreamer aloud,
surveying the couch with disfavour. “Well, perhaps if I really go to
sleep I shall wake up;” and slowly divesting himself of his coat and
waistcoat he lay down in the straw.
The curious semi-stoical strain which underlay Louis de Chantemerle’s
levity had served him well in the last twelve hours, but it had not
the potency of a soporific. Having nothing else to do, he had perforce
spent a considerable amount of time already in reflection on his
position, and had not intended to resume the subject for the present.
He had looked his danger in the face. His chances were not good, and
he knew it. He was there to be made an example of; the example would
probably be made. In that case nothing remained to do but to meet his
fate with courage. But as he lay wide-eyed in the gloom, and watched
the tiny square of night sky through the barred window there seized
him—strangely enough, for the first time—not the realisation of
impending death, but the horrible sense that he was caged. It began
to be impossible to lie still any longer. He sprang up with an
exclamation, combating an insensate impulse to batter at the barred
door, to beat with bare hands against the walls. Instead, biting his
lips, and for the sake of doing something, he dragged the little table
from the middle of the room to the window, and climbed up on it. But
the bars were still above his head, and he got down again to stand a
moment motionless, his back against the wall, the sweat on his
forehead, fighting with all the powers of his nature against the
nameless fear that closes round any trapped creature with youth and
health in its veins. Then he went back to his pallet, lay down and
covered himself up very deliberately with his coat. Sleep did not come
for many hours, but the unsuspected strength of will on which he could
call at pleasure enabled him at least to seek it. In the end he slept
soundly enough.
He did not wake, indeed, till the bolts of his cell door, noisily
withdrawn about six o'clock, brought him back from the region of
dreams to reality. He stirred, and the rustle of the straw told him
instantly where he was.
“Breakfast, _ci-devant_,” said a gruff voice succinctly, and something
was set down on the floor.
“Stop a minute, my friend,” commanded Louis sleepily. “I want some
water—for washing—and a razor too.”
The jailor exploded. “Name of a name! What next? Water—I don’t say, if
you choose to pay for it—but a razor!”
The Vicomte was by this time sitting up, and studying the hairy visage
in the doorway. “True,” he observed reflectively. “Razors don't seem
to be much in fashion here.”
“No, nor won’t ever be, my young sprig,” retorted the man. “However,
don’t trouble yourself. You won’t be here long enough to grow a
beard.”
“I sincerely trust not,” replied the captive, without pausing to
enquire the exact meaning of this ambiguous prediction. “Well, bring
me some water then—a livre's worth.”
When the man returned Saint-Ermay was standing in the middle of the
little room picking bits of straw off his ruffles. His guardian set
down a broken jug and a small basin on the table under the window.
“Been trying to look out?” he asked, grinning.
“No; trying to hang myself with this,” said Louis coolly, untying his
hair and holding up the ribbon. “Ah, thanks for the water. Now, about
that razor——”
“Haven’t I told you, miserable _aristo_, that you can’t have it?”
cried the jailor, exasperated.
Saint-Ermay’s money had been returned to him when he was searched on
arrival, though he would most willingly have parted with it could it
have spared him that distasteful proceeding. He now drew a five-livre
piece from his breeches pocket and looked at it. “What do you suppose
I should do, then, with a razor, my friend?”
“Why, cut my throat,” retorted the jailor with an oath. But his eyes
were fastened on the big silver coin.
“And what advantage,” asked the prisoner, “do you conceive that I
should reap from such an action? Try to be sensible about this matter.
I propose to give you five livres and the word of a gentleman that I
will not lay a finger on your razor. You shall shave me yourself—and
then you will be far more likely to cut my throat than I yours,
especially as I doubt whether you have ever had much practice with the
implement.”
Cupidity struggled for a moment with respect for regulations and came
off victorious, with the result that about an hour afterwards Louis
surrendered his chin to ministrations not of the most skilful. After
the crown-piece had changed hands and the jailor was gathering up his
shaving materials, he observed in a significant tone: “You seem mighty
free with your money, _aristo_. Isn't there any other use you could
put it to, now?”
“I'm afraid, Barber, that your speech is too dark for me,” returned
Saint-Ermay, dabbing at a cut on his chin. “Do you mean that you would
like to powder my hair for me?”
“Isn't there anybody outside,” asked the man, sinking his voice, “who
would be glad to have a line from you? It's done, sometimes, with the
help of a louis or two. . . .”
The Vicomte stood silent, with his handkerchief to his chin, but his
heart suddenly beat fast. Was it possible? Gilbert did not even know
where he was. It might make all the difference. And Lucienne. . . .
“All very fine,” he said, not wishing to appear too eager. “But
supposing I have a fancy to write a letter, how am I to know that you
will ever deliver it?”
“Oh, you may trust me for that, _ci-devant_. I'll deliver it safe
enough, and not ask you for the money till I can prove I have done it.
See, here is paper and pencil, but be quick.” The eagerness was his,
not Saint-Ermay’s, as he dragged out a grimy piece of paper and a
stump of pencil. “Write quickly, and give it to me now, for I shan't
be able to come in again this morning.”
Louis looked very hard at his dirty, leering face as he took the
pencil and paper, shrugged his shoulders, and turned away to the
table. The man hastily placed a stool for him.
“Thanks,” said the Vicomte rather coldly, “but you need not supervise
my composition. You can read it afterwards if you have a mind to.” And
as his Mercury retired grumbling to the door he began to write to
Gilbert—in English.
At the end of a line and a half he stopped dead. It was not the
difficulties of a foreign tongue which gave him pause, it was the
sudden unpleasant suspicion that he was walking into a trap, destined
not, indeed, for his own undoing, but for that of the recipient of his
missive, if he sent one. The demeanour of his would-be messenger, even
now fidgeting with impatience, his eagerness to carry a letter, his
convenient production of the means of communication, might indeed be
due to cupidity, but were capable of a darker explanation. Another
voice told him that his fear was born of imagination, and that when
the Fates had put such a chance in his way he was a fool not to snatch
at it. You are throwing away your life, perhaps, for a scruple, said
Reason. Gilbert was not suspect. But Gilbert’s name, by accident or
design, had figured with his own in the list of conspirators. Of what
avail, too, to have refrained, in the face of strong desire, from
leaving him a verbal message yesterday morning if he meant to
compromise him now far more deeply by writing to him?—No, he dared not
do it. He ran his pencil through the words, crushed the paper
together in his hand, and rose.
“I have changed my mind, M. Figaro,” he said carelessly. “There will
be no letter, after all. I have forgotten my correspondent’s address.”
The man looked for a second as if he were about to break out into a
string of curses. Then, mastering himself, he picked up the shaving
materials from the floor, observing acidly: “As the citizen pleases. I
think he will be sorry before long that he refused an honest man’s
offer of help.”
“The price was too high,” said Louis enigmatically.
“Nevertheless you will regret it, _ci-devant_,” repeated the other in
a menacing tone. Watching the door close on him, Louis thought it very
probable.
The morning dragged by. Last night's horror had not wholly relaxed its
grip, but the presence of daylight had the effect of company, and the
Vicomte de Saint-Errnay would rather have died a thousand times than
allow any human eye to witness his private emotions. He walked up and
down reflecting, till he tired himself by the constant turning that
the narrow limits of his cell required. He wondered what Gilbert was
doing—what he had done when he found out. And D’Aubeville, De Périgny,
and the rest—what of them? How many of them had been taken? There
might be some in La Force. He had not asked because he was sure
that he would not be told the truth. At any rate, their scheme was
shattered for ever.
And something else was ended too. Lucienne should be starting for
England to-morrow. Would she go now? Why not? There was all the more
reason for her departure. He should never see her again . . . and even
in his hour of renunciation, the highest of his life, he had never
contemplated exactly that. The jailor was right. He wished that he had
sent a message—not to Gilbert, but to her. It might have been in her
hands by now. He smoothed out the crumpled ball of paper, then threw
it away with a gesture half anger, half regret. Of what use—of what
use! With Lucienne he had had his chance—and had chosen not to take
it. It looked now inconceivable folly; for when he had turned his back
on what honour forbade him to take he had known—or at least he had
recognised afterwards—that there were other things still left for him
in life. But since he was to end like this the sacrifice seemed barren
beyond the power of speech. He was to die without having known the
best that life could give him. It would have been some comfort to
remember at the last that he had had his heart’s desire. It was the
very poorest kind of consolation to feel that he might have known it,
and had not. It seemed to the young man that he could better have
borne to see Gilbert and Lucienne together with his own living eyes
(as indeed he had schooled himself to realise that he must see them)
than that their union should date from an epoch when he, blown
somewhere about the winds of the world, could no longer behold it. He
had an extreme reluctance to die, in any case; but this thought stung
him to the most passionate revolt. It raged in him for a little while,
and then the very vehemence with which he dashed himself in thought
against the implacable barrier of Death restored him to a former mood.
He had to die like a gentleman. It was perhaps, after all, good that
in this matter he had lived like one too. He had no other creed.
* * * * * *
The Chevalier de Maisonfleur and his daughter were alone when
Saint-Ermay’s turnkey threw open the door of the Chambre des
Victoires. The old man laid aside his book, the girl her knitting,
with alacrity at his entrance.
“A very pleasant surprise, Monsieur le Vicomte,” exclaimed the former
as he welcomed him. “It is not yet nine o’clock. We are unduly
favoured.”
“It is I who am favoured,” returned Louis. “I had no conception of how
long a solitary morning and afternoon could be.”
A shadow swept over the Chevalier’s face. “So, too, are four years,
with only an old man for company,” he said, sighing. His daughter’s
cheek, half concealed by a pale curl as she bent hastily to pick up
her ball of wool, flushed scarlet for a moment. Louis looked away in
an embarrassed pity; there was nothing to say, and he was glad when M.
de Maisonfleur, resuming his usual cheerful, courteous self, set out
in pursuit of other topics. Five minutes later M. des Essars came in.
“Have you heard,” said the newcomer, shaking hands with Louis,
“that—so my jailor tells me—Vergniaud made a great speech yesterday
morning, full of denunciations, and especially of the so-called
_chevaliers du poignard_?”
“I had not,” said his late adversary. “If it be true, however,
it no doubt accounts for my having the pleasure of your renewed
acquaintance.”
“I feared it might,” returned the other gravely. “I hoped, however,
that you might be here for something less—less——”
“Less damning than loyalty,” finished Louis gaily. “Well, you know,
Des Essars, if you have got to be in prison, it doesn’t make much odds
what you are there for.” Privately he thought, however, that it did.
“Do you know if there were many arrests?”
“About thirty, the jailor said. He knew no names.”
Louis bit his lip. “Thirty! Nearly all of us! Damned fools we were—I
beg your pardon, Mademoiselle——”
“Surely, Monsieur,” broke in the Chevalier with a certain lofty
sympathy, “you do not consider yourselves fools for taking the side
that every gentleman would take—if he were free?”
“No, not for that,” returned the young man, “but for trusting the
Gironde, who tricked us into believing their protestations of
friendship, and then betrayed us.”
Anger and disillusionment lent a new tone to his voice, for he knew
now that he was still cherishing hopes of the schemes which for days
he had known to be doomed. Suddenly it occurred to him that Des
Essars, from the way in which he was looking at him, knew something
more. Apologising to the father and daughter, he drew him over to the
other side of the room.
“Tell me the rest,” he said peremptorily. “You know something else, I
can see.”
“My dear Vicomte, there is nothing to tell. Besides, I know nothing—it
is all hearsay.”
“Let me have the hearsay, then. Your jailor had heard something more.
You know quite well what I mean.”
Des Essars looked him in the eyes, and turned away his own. “He said
that they were voting in the Assembly for a long rope and a short
shrift,” he replied unwillingly. “But for God's sake remember——”
Louis stopped him. “It is exactly what I wanted to know, and what I
expected to hear. I am infinitely obliged to you, and I regret the
Luxembourg more than ever.” He shook hands, smiling. “Shall we go back
to Mademoiselle?”
The girl and her father had been watching the little colloquy with
something like alarm, and the knitting had rolled to the ground again.
Louis stooped and picked it up.
“M. des Essars has been relieving my mind about small matter,” he said
lightly, drawing up a chair. “Mademoiselle, I wish you would teach me
to knit. I am sure it is soothing to the temper.”
“And have you a bad one, Monsieur?” asked Jeanne de Maisonfleur. “I
should not have suspected it.”
“You have pardoned me, then, my little exhibition of it a moment ago.
You are very generous, Mademoiselle. May I not do something to show
my gratitude—hold this for you, for instance?” He took up an unwound
skein of wool.
The girl paid no heed to his request. “There is an anger which does
not claim forgiveness, but—admiration,” she said in a low voice. “If
you have lost, Monsieur, you have at least fought for the cause which
we, here, cannot aid, but for which we pray night and morning. If my
poor father . . . if I had a brother . . .” She broke off there and
threw a look at her father and Des Essars, but they were deep in
converse on the other side of the hearth. “Monsieur, it is very bitter
to lose before one has fought, and to suffer, but not for the cause
for which one would so gladly bear anything!”
“Mademoiselle, I had guessed that,” said the Vicomte, dropping his
voice also. “But since you give your prayers——”
“Ah, do you believe in prayers!” she retorted—and to tell the truth
her interlocutor did not—“No! I think Heaven is deaf—to us, at least.
Have you not had some one to pray for you and for France, and yet you
are here . . . And France . . . where is she going? And tell me,” she
went on, without giving him time to reply, “what was M. des Essars
saying to you just now?”
Louis looked down at the long skein of coarse wool still lying across
his palm. “M. des Essars and I were making up our old quarrel,”
he said at length. “How does one undo the end of this thing,
Mademoiselle?—for I insist on holding it for you.”
The girl searched his face with her tragic eyes. “You will not tell
me. . . . Then I know!”
Louis was still holding out the skein, smiling. “I shall have time for
this,” he said gently.
She took it mechanically, her eyes still fixed on his; then, without a
word, steadied perhaps by his own self-command, she began to unfasten
the end.
“You are very kind, M. de Saint-Ermay,” came the Chevalier’s voice.
“Are you sure that my daughter is not trespassing unwarrantably on
your good nature?”
“It was M. de Saint-Ermay who insisted, mon père,” replied
Mademoiselle de Maisonfleur, and a desolate little smile twitched her
mouth for an instant.
“The fact is that I really know how to hold it properly,” said Louis,
half to the girl and half to the others, as he held out his hands and
she put the skein in position. “I advise you to take a lesson from me,
Des Essars.”
“Ah, but could you do it the other way round?” asked Des Essars.
“Could you make the ball if Mademoiselle held the skein?”
Whether Louis would have taken up this challenge was to remain
unknown, for at that instant the turning of a key in the lock reminded
them all that their circle was still incomplete.
“Here are our missing guests,” said the Chevalier, tapping his
snuff-box, “or else, indeed, Jacques with the supper.”
It was neither. The door swung open to reveal an unfamiliar figure—an
official from the _guichet_ of the prison, with a large bunch of keys
in one hand and a paper in the other. A dead silence fell on the room.
“Citizen Chantemerle!” said the man.
Louis looked up for a moment, but he did not stir, and went on
placidly holding the skein, though the hands that had held the ball
were twisted together in their owner’s lap.
The _guichetier_ referred to his paper. “Louis-Adrien Chantemerle,
_ci-devant_ Vicomte de Saint-Ermay. You, there, is not that your
cursed name?”
“A portion of it,” responded Louis lazily. “Your information appears
fragmentary. However, I do recognise myself.” He rose from the chair.
“Mademoiselle, to our next meeting. I regret infinitely that the skein
is not finished after all.” He slipped the wool off his hands and slid
it gently into her lap, and then catching her shaking fingers, he
kissed them with his most courtly air. “Good-bye, Monsieur le
Chevalier. Good-bye, Des Essars.”
“Good-bye, Vicomte,” said the old man, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“I am sorry—I am very sorry.” And he added, in a voice not free from
emotion: “Though our acquaintance has been so short, we shall greatly
miss you.”
Louis loosed Des Essars’ hand and bowed to him. “I wish no more
flattering epitaph,” he said with his charming smile. “Adieu.”
He followed the jailor out of the room, and the girl broke into
hysterical sobbing.
CHAPTER XIV
CIRCE AND ULYSSES
“And do you ask what game she plays?
With me ’tis lost or won;
With thee ’tis playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But ’tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway of the sun.
“Thou seest the card that falls—she knows
The card that followeth;
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath;
When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue,
And know she calls it Death.”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Card-dealer_.
No woman like Madame d’Espaze, with her notoriety, her lovers, her
political intriguery, her secret power (how great, a matter for
speculation), had ever crossed Gilbert’s path in life. He had time
this morning, as he threaded the streets, to make some picture of
her to himself. Two types of beauty presented themselves to his
imagination; the one dark, voluptuous, imperious, a sort of empress
of vice, the other of that fair and child-like mould which rules
by cajolery. At the door of the Comtesse’s salon he was still
speculating which class would claim her, for his success might
depend upon it.
But she belonged to neither. The Marquis beheld, on a small sofa
covered with yellow damask, a woman—a girl almost—wearing a simple
virginal gown of light Indian muslin, made after the new mode. She
rose as Château-Foix was announced, and he was struck with her grace,
her height, and the grave, nunlike style of her beauty. Here were no
meretricious enhancements; she was not painted, and her beautiful
brown hair, gathered simply into a knot, was innocent of powder or of
any sort of adornment. The trailing folds of white fell from breast to
foot. Gilbert was taken aback, he scarcely knew why. The Comtesse
threw him a look of calm enquiry out of her long placid eyes, ere she
responded to his bow.
“You have come to see me on business, Monsieur, I understand,” she
said, as she rose from her curtsy. “I regret that I could not receive
you last night. Be seated, I pray.”
Gilbert bowed again slightly, but remained standing. “I have come,
Madame,” he said, with great directness, “to know if you can give me
any news of my unfortunate cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”
Madame d’Espaze’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Mon Dieu! Monsieur le
Marquis, you take away my breath,” she said. “Is M. de Saint-Ermay
lost, then?”
“He has been arrested,” replied Château-Foix shortly. Little versed as
he was in the ways of women, he saw that she was going to play with
him, and the prospect was not alluring.
“Ah, he has been arrested, the poor Saint-Ermay?” queried the
Comtesse. “I am desolated, but what would you have? Politics is a
dangerous game.” She breathed out a light little sigh, and sank down
on the sofa. “You should have kept him out of it, Monsieur le
Marquis.”
To this remark, delivered with an indescribable airy malice, Gilbert
made no answer for the moment. But he took the chair which his hostess
had previously indicated to him, and, once seated, he observed coldly:
“You will pardon me for saying, Madame, that this is not a case for
levity.”
“But, Monsieur,” retorted the lady, “I am all seriousness. Though I
do not quite see,” she added, pursing her lips, “why it should be
demanded of me.”
“You did not know then, Madame, that M. de Saint-Ermay was in prison?”
asked Gilbert, looking at her steadily.
Madame d’Espaze shrugged her shoulders. “How should I?”
“Then I must tell you about it,” replied Château-Foix. “I found, a
short time ago, that my cousin was becoming entangled in a scheme
which did not commend itself to me—a scheme which I need not
particularise to you, Madame, and one in which, to be frank, I
suspected a trap. I therefore came to Paris; I endeavoured to dissuade
him from further compromising himself, and especially from continuing
his visits to the chief meeting-place of the two parties—your house. I
failed; and the Vicomte attended your salon last Saturday night, as he
had intended. This morning he was arrested, and I am ignorant even of
the place of his imprisonment.”
Madame d’Espaze had listened quite gravely to this recital, and now
said, without any particular expression in her lazy voice: “I do not
know, Monsieur le Marquis, why you are telling me all this.”
“You do not, then,” retorted her guest, “see any connection between
the constant meetings of Vergniaud and his followers with these young
men at your house, his denunciation of them yesterday in the Manège,
and their almost simultaneous arrest? I do.”
The attack was so direct, and in all probability so unexpected, that
the Comtesse for the first time showed signs of discomposure. She got
up and moved away, her white robe trailing softly on the shining
floor. Half over her shoulder she said: “You talk very strangely, M.
de Château-Foix.”
“Yet I think that what I say is just,” replied Gilbert, on his feet.
“I wonder——” said the Comtesse. Then she turned and faced him. “But
even if it were, it is not a way in which I should allow many people
to speak to me in my house.”
“But not many people come on my mission.”
“Mon Dieu, no, fortunately!” exclaimed Madame d’Espaze with vivacity.
“Fortunately, people do not often come to me and expect me to make
myself responsible for every young hothead who gets himself into
trouble with the authorities. Fortunately, that chair has not often
served as a pulpit nor this sofa as a bench for the congregation.
. . . Never mind, Monsieur le Marquis, but resume your sermon!”
“I was not aware, Madame, that I was preaching,” said Château-Foix
a trifle stiffly. “It was not my intention. I come rather as a
suppliant.”
“With what a menacing tone!” exclaimed the Comtesse, with a little
laugh and a shrug of her beautiful shoulders. She trailed slowly back
to the sofa and sank on the cushions. “And for what, pray, are you
supplicating?”
“For my cousin’s release,” said the Marquis.
Half leaning back among the yellow cushions the Comtesse d’Espaze
surveyed him indolently as he stood before her, very straight, his
hand on the back of his chair. “Why not ask for the moon, Monsieur le
Marquis?” she said at last.
“I do not admit the suitability of the metaphor,” retorted Gilbert,
controlling himself with difficulty. “I am asking for the life of a
friend of your own, Madame. Surely my request is not a very strange
one.”
“And what makes you think that M. de Saint-Ermay is a friend of mine?”
she asked at that. “You abound in strange suppositions, Monsieur.”
“Because I know my cousin rather well, Madame,” answered the Marquis.
“And since I have seen you——” he concluded, bowing.
“Merci, Monsieur!” cried the lady. “And because, as I am to understand,
Monsieur le Vicomte has done me the honour to admire me, I am to feel
that his blood is on my head?”
“If not responsibility, I should expect you to feel interest,”
retorted Gilbert sternly. “But if you have no concern for the boy, I
am only wasting your time and my own.” He made a movement as if to
take his leave.
Madame d’Espaze put out her hand. “Stay a moment, M. de Château-Foix.
I am not as insensible as you think to the fate of my friends. But you
must see that I cannot afford to sacrifice my party to my personal
friendships. You will say that politics is not a game for a woman—I am
sure that is one of your ideas—but since I have taken it up I must
play it. And these people are not friends; they only come here to pay
me compliments, and I have had my fill of those for more years than I
should care to acknowledge to you. Those are not the stakes for which
I play now. . . . I wonder why I am saying these things to you. . . .
You have come to the wrong person; it is nothing to me—not the snap of
a finger—if all these young fools pay the penalty of their folly.” She
was on her feet by now, walking rapidly about. “You have come to the
wrong person,” she reiterated.
“Madame, I do not think I have,” said Gilbert quietly.
Suddenly she turned on him. “You credit me, I suppose, with being
Louis’ mistress?”
“That is not a matter which concerns or interests me, Madame. I want
my cousin’s life, not an account of the way in which he spends it.”
The Comtesse stopped in her restless walk as if struck by a sudden
idea. “Then you do not know—you do not consider yourself his mentor?”
“Most certainly not.”
She looked at him with an interest which, undisguised as it was, held
something more concealed behind it.
“Have you seen much of him lately?—No, I know that you have not. Do
you know that he fought the Comte de Bercy the morning after you came
to Paris?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert, wondering whither this was tending, “I do know
it.”
“But do you know why?”
“No.”
“You are a singular person, M. de Château-Foix,” said his hostess
slowly. “If you will take my advice—but of course you will not—do not
try to find out!” She turned away again and said, after a moment’s
pause: “And now, if I cannot help you, what will you do?”
“Ah, no, Madame,” returned Gilbert, shaking his head with the glimmer
of a smile. “If you will not help me, I dare not reveal to you such
poor resources as I may have, independent of your aid.”
“In other words, I must be ally or enemy? You have no liking for
half-measures, I see, Monsieur le Marquis. . . . Well, no more have I.
And I am convinced, from what I have already seen, that I prefer you
when you smile to when you frown at me. So . . . let us be allies.
Will that satisfy you?”
“Madame——” began Gilbert, scarcely daring to believe her words,
accompanied by that brilliant and half-mocking smile.
Madame d’Espaze held up both her slim hands. “No thanks, Monsieur, I
beg. But instead of them, tell me, since you are so clear-sighted, how
I am to set about this business of Monsieur le Vicomte?”
And under her malicious gaze Château-Foix had the certain conviction
that she meant to see how he would avoid saying in so many words: “You
have but to ask your lover for his release.” He began a careful phrase
full of generalities about influence, but ere he had finished it she
seemed to have lost interest in the reply to her question, and he
stopped and looked at her, as she stood in the middle of the white and
gold room with her head bent and a hand to her cheek. It seemed to him
quite a long time that she stood thus, till she said reflectively:
“Yes, I think I can do it. It will not be easy, however. You shall
have an order of release to-day if I can possibly procure it. Do I
know where you are staying?”
The Marquis told her.
“There is one condition—one thing you must promise me—both for Louis’
sake and . . . that of others. Once he is out of prison he must leave
Paris immediately.”
It was the least that could be expected, and a condition that did not
displease Gilbert at all—or would not have done so two days ago. “I
promise it on my honour,” he said. “What can I do—what can I possibly
do—to show my gratitude?”
The Comtesse spread out her hands. “You can keep a better eye on your
scapegrace of a cousin,” she said lightly. “I make him over to
you. . . . Next time, too, that you are in Paris, my friend, come and
see me on your own account. You have just seen how amenable I am to
good influence.” She floated nearer to him, and gave him her hand,
bare of rings and incredibly small and white.
Gilbert raised it to his lips. “I shall be only too happy, Comtesse.
There is no means by which I can thank you sufficiently.”
“You have only yourself to thank, M. de Château-Foix, for I assure you
that I have not that good heart to which I have been afraid you would
refer. Yet if it is any consolation to you, Marquis, reflect that, in
this changing world, I may some day be needing help from you. . . .
But that is not why I am your ally now.” She smiled at him charmingly.
CHAPTER XV
HAPPY REUNION OF TWO KINSMEN
“Come through, come through, Lieutenant Gordon
Come through and drink some wine wi’ me!
For yesterday I was your prisoner,
But now the night I am set free.”
—_Archie o’ Cawfield_.
The long day of suspense was closing into evening before Gilbert,
consumed with anxiety at the Hôtel des Etats-Généraux, knew that
Madame d’Espaze had not belied her word. From the packet which was
brought to him about nine o’clock fell out a scented note.
“Take the accompanying order and present it at La Force without
loss of time. It will do all you wish.—C. D’E.”
Dismissing at the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, for prudence sake, the
fiacre which had brought him so far, Château-Foix hurried thence
eastwards on foot. His head was in a whirl; he had not time to think
how he should greet his cousin, and was glad of it, but threaded his
way quickly through the animation of the Rue Saint-Antoine, till he
saw on his left the opening of the little Rue des Ballets. Narrow,
roughly paved, sloping down to a central gutter with its trickling
stream, it ran its thirty paces up to the sombre facade of the Hôtel
de la Force. And Gilbert went towards the prison in the July dusk,
with no premonition of the September afternoon when the gutter over
which he strode should run with a darker stream, and the narrow door
which faced him open to let out, into the brief hell of axes and
laughter, victim after victim. . . . His thoughts were all of Louis,
of Louis immured in that dark mass which rose, its high roof pierced
with tiny dormer windows, behind the lower range of the entrance. The
sight of La Force and all that it stood for had exorcised for the
moment any feelings of his own. He cast a hasty glance to his left,
where the building ran along the Rue du Roi de Sicile—lately
rebaptized as the Rue des Droits de l’Homme—and accosted the sentry
in his box by the door.
Some parley with this individual resulted in his being admitted, and,
following a jailor through two successive _guichets_, he found himself
in the bureau of the prison. Months afterwards he realised that this
place must have been the summary tribunal chamber of so many agonies.
Bault, the _concierge_, was fetched from his supper, registers were
brought out and searched, the order of release was entered, not
without comment, and, as far as formalities were concerned, Louis was
a free man again. The _concierge_, at heart not ill-natured, and
further softened by the hundred livres which the Marquis had just
slipped into his hand, remarked that it would be as well to let the
prisoner out by the little door giving into the Rue des Droits de
l’Homme, and not by the chief entrance, whence he might possibly be
espied by passers in the Rue Saint Antoine. An aristocrat leaving La
Force might chance to be a displeasing sight to the good patriots of
the Faubourg, and from what he, Bault, remembered of the citizen
Saint-Ermay, there was no disguising the fact that he was an
aristocrat.
Gilbert thanked him, and, since he should not return that way, was
allowed to follow the _guichetier_ instead of remaining where he was,
as he had expected do. His guide crossed a small courtyard, went
through yet a third _guichet_, emerged into a larger court, and
turning, ascended a staircase.
“Number 32,” he repeated to himself, and they went down a dirty
ill-lit corridor, with rows of doors either side. But, to Gilbert’s
astonishment, the door of 32, when they reached it, stood ajar,
affording him a glimpse of the narrow abode for which his kinsman had
exchanged his own apartments. A horrible thought suddenly visited him
that they had been fooling him at the bureau, that Louis had already
been transferred, tried, murdered, he knew not what. . . .
“Where is he?” he demanded harshly.
The jailor, turning on his heel, responded with an oath, and began to
retrace his steps, asseverating that if he had known he was coming all
this —— way for nothing after a —— _aristo_, some one else could have
had the job. However, he seemed to have an objective in view, and
Gilbert followed him mutely downstairs again. Half-way along a
corridor he stopped, motioned to the Marquis to stay where he was, and
disappeared round a corner.
He seemed to be gone long. The lamp above Gilbert’s head stank
villainously; the horrible oppression of the place entered his soul
and joined forces with the oppression already seated there. Echoing
steps came nearer, and Louis, with his head held high, walked down the
corridor, alone.
He was on the Marquis before he saw who it was. “Good God! not you as
well!” he exclaimed, stopping short with a catch of the breath.
The sound of the familiar, careless voice, pierced with an unfamiliar
note of apprehension, swept everything else out of Gilbert’s mind.
“My dear boy—no!” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “No—you are
free! Did they not tell you?”
“Free!” exclaimed Louis, bewildered. “I thought—— But how the devil——”
The Marquis put a finger on his lips as the _guichetier_ came up,
swinging his keys.
“Little surprise for you, _ci-devant_, isn't it?” observed that
worthy. “I might have told you, hein? But I like my little joke. Come
on, then, since we are to part with you.”
A few moments more and they were standing in the dark, narrow street,
with the door swung to upon them and the sound of heavy bolts slipping
back into their places to bring home, if it were needed, the full
savour of release.
Louis drew a long breath, and turning without a word to Gilbert
embraced him. The Marquis released himself something hastily, and took
off his cloak. “Put this on,” he said hurriedly. “I must tell you that
you are now my valet. I have yet to get you out of Paris. There is a
suit of clothes in readiness for you at my hotel, to which you must
accompany me at once. Meanwhile, it is fortunately dark.” He swung the
heavy cloak over Louis’ slim figure. “Not a word now, I beg of you;
but follow me as quickly as you can.”
He started to walk rapidly along the Rue du Roi de Sicile, past the
prison front, towards the Rue de la Verrerie, and Louis, wrapped in
the cloak, followed obediently and still half dazed. At last, at the
corner of the Rue de la Verrerie and the Rue Saint Martin, Gilbert
hailed a passing fiacre, and they got in.
“Perhaps now I may thank you, or try to,” exclaimed the Vicomte as the
vehicle started. “My dear Gilbert, has any one ever relied on you in
vain? Though, indeed, I was not relying much on you or on anybody.” He
slipped his arm into his cousin’s.
The conflicts through which Château-Foix had passed had clothed his
spirit—for the time being, at least—in a sort of exhaustion. He did
not return the pressure, but he smiled—a little wearily—and said: “You
have small need to thank me. You owe your release to—an enemy.”
Louis appeared to reflect rapidly. “It’s no use—I have too many.”
“It was Madame d’Espaze.”
“The devil!” exclaimed the Vicomte. He seemed genuinely surprised. “I
should never have dreamt of such a thing. But you must have asked
her?”
“I did.”
Louis was evidently at a loss for an expression of his feelings. “You
are amazing, Gilbert!” he said at last. “Did you actually interview
her?”
The Marquis nodded.
“I didn’t think she cared enough,” said her admirer thoughtfully. “I
suppose you worked on her feelings? Heavens, what a scene! So I owe my
release to Célie—and to you. One must not forget the amiable Lecorrier
too; I presume she got the order through him.”
“Probably,” returned Château-Foix drily. “I did not enquire as to the
means she proposed to adopt.”
Louis laughed. “They have their humorous side. You must give me a full
account some time. Parbleu, mon cher, but you must have been having
the deuce of a time these two days!”
“And yourself?” asked Gilbert.
The Vicomte gave a shrug. “My only consolation was that the accommodation
in the next world would be better. One has always understood that it
is exceptionally good there. The company I would not have wished to
change. Is this the Place des Victoires already?”
At the hotel a sleepy servant, in response to enquiry, informed
Château-Foix that a bed had been prepared for Monsieur’s new valet in
the little dressing-room leading out of his own apartment, and within
a few minutes the Vicomte stood, candle in hand, looking down at the
sober grey suit which his cousin was placing on his pallet bed. The
cloak, half slipping off his shoulders, displayed the elegance which
he must discard for it.
“I hope these will fit,” said the Marquis. “They are quite new; I
got them this afternoon. What is to be done, I wonder, with the
compromising clothes you have on?”
Louis suddenly put down the candle, and impulsively, half laughing,
half touched, laid his hands on Gilbert’s shoulders from behind. “My
dear Gilbert, I don't deserve all this trouble!”
“Don’t you?” asked the Marquis in an odd tone, turning round and
facing his kinsman. “Don’t you? Why not?”
“Well,” returned Louis, “let us admit that I am worth some trouble,
but not worth running risks for. And I am sure you have run, and will
be running, risks for me.”
Château-Foix shrugged his shoulders. “Not if you will do as I ask,” he
responded rather coldly. “Let me tell you what that is. To-morrow
morning about noon we start for Chantemerle; we will post, and ought
to get to Dreux the same night. I am proposing to take rather a
circuitous route, for safety’s sake. I have got a passport for you as
my valet, in the name of Pierre Jourdain. All I ask is that you shall
play the part as well as you can, for both our sakes.”
“But,” broke in Louis, “I would rather stay in Paris. Why—they are all
taken, I suppose, D’Aubeville, Périgny, and the rest—and one might
try——”
“I am sorry,” said his cousin, “but in the matter you have no choice.
I gave my word that you should go at once; it was a condition of your
release. The rest, I fear, must pay the penalty—but, by the way, M.
d’Aubeville had not been arrested yesterday evening, for it was he who
advised me to go to Madame d’Espaze.”
The light died out of the Vicomte’s face as he listened to this
pronouncement, and he sat down rather gloomily on the bed and said
nothing. The Marquis looked at him for a moment as he stared at the
floor, with his hands in his pockets.
“Well, go to bed now,” he said, more kindly. “You can’t help yourself,
Louis—and who knows what there may be to do in Poitou? Good-night.” He
went out and shut the door between the two rooms.
It had been a day of great tension and fatigue, following on a
sleepless night, and the moment that he was alone, Gilbert realised
how tired he was—too tired (as he half thankfully realised) to look
his haunting idea in the face again at present. Undressing rapidly,
he threw himself into bed. Scarcely had he blown out his light before
there was a rap on the door between his room and his cousin’s, and
Louis, in his shirt and breeches, stood in the doorway. The light
behind him threw up his figure, but left his face untouched.
“I forgot to ask you,” he said, “about Lucienne. Is she going with
Madame Gaumont to-morrow as arranged?”
It is true that Gilbert then wished that he had not extinguished his
candle, but he was too proud to light it again for the purpose of
seeing the speaker’s face, and the voice told him nothing.
“Yes,” he answered. “She leaves Paris to-morrow about eleven.”
There was an infinitesimal pause.
“You told her, I suppose, that I could not escort her to England?”
“Yes,” said the Marquis, and then a mad idea rushed into his mind.
He raised himself on his elbow. “Am I to understand that you are
reconsidering your decision—that you wish to take her—now?” His heart
thumped absurdly on his ribs as he waited for the answer—absurdly,
because he had no intention of allowing Louis to do so, but the
question was a test.
Did Louis mutter something between his teeth? Aloud he only said:
“Certainly not. What made you think so? I merely wanted to know if
she were going. Good-night.”
CHAPTER XVI
FAREWELL
“If we must part,
Then let it be like this;
Not heart on heart,
Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;
But touch my hand and say:
‘Until to-morrow or some other day,
If we must part.’”
—ERNEST DOWSON, _A Valediction_.
Lucienne lay long in the deep sleep which Madame Gaumont’s
swiftly-administered potion had produced. They had carried her into
her bedroom, and Madame Gaumont had determined to wait for the time
when her charge should wake up. Lucienne’s bed was in shadow, but in
the far corner of the room there was a bright patch from a shaded
lamp, beside which sat the widow knitting. And because of the click
of her needles Lucienne dreamt that she was a child again, under the
guardianship of her old nurse, until, startled by some distant sound
into completer consciousness, she opened her eyes and, with a little
cry of disappointment, raised herself in bed.
In a moment the ample figure of Madame Gaumont was bending over her,
and before she could ask a question a wine-glass, steadied by Madame
Gaumont’s hand, was at her lips, and she was forced to drink its
contents to the last drop.
“There, my love,” said her hostess, “you’ll soon be well again now,
and you mustn’t talk, but just go off to sleep again, and if you want
anything, you’ve only to call, and I shall hear.”
Lucienne fixed her eyes on the shrewd, kind face, and lay down
obediently. She knew where she was now, and although it all seemed
very odd, she was too sleepy to ask any questions. If it were not her
nurse it was a very good substitute. To the music of the needles she
floated back to the shore of dreams.
Madame Gaumont, returned to her knitting, had an uneasy feeling that
all was not well with the girl. It seemed to her that perhaps there
was some other trouble in addition even to the natural grief at
parting with her lover and with Madame Elisabeth. “Poor child, poor
little soul!” she said to herself; “with no mother, and Monsieur
le Marquis, so good, so splendid, no doubt, but perhaps a little
overwhelming.” Well, well, she should not lack for creature comforts,
for the feeding up of the body went, in Madame Gaumont’s opinion, a
long way towards bringing peace to the mind.
But presently the quiet sleep came to an end. Lucienne tossed from
side to side, and began to break out into the most pitiful sobbing.
Madame Gaumont rose and went over to the bed again. The girl lay with
her head deep in the pillows, crying with the unrestrained abandonment
of a child, and at intervals whispering a name which the good lady
could not catch. For a moment or two the latter stood irresolute, and
then began to shake the weeper by the shoulder. “There, there, my
pretty one,” she said, “you’ve had a bad dream. You must not cry like
that, or we shall never be able to let you see Monsieur le Marquis
to-morrow.”
This statement was not without its effect. Lucienne instantly sat up.
“I don’t want to see him,” she wailed. “You must tell him I'm ill—tell
him anything—only do not let him come near me. . . . But find out from
him about Louis. I must know—I shall go mad if I don’t! You will find
out . . . promise me!”
“Yes, yes, love, I promise you; only lie down now and try to keep
quiet,” responded Madame Gaumont, whose mind had just come to several
sudden conclusions. She busied herself round the bed, shaking the
pillow and smoothing the tumbled bedclothes, and Lucienne lay back and
watched her, and seemed content to listen to her prattle. And before
long she slept again, and slept quietly, till she woke with a start to
find the room full of summer sunlight, and her kind watcher gone.
Almost with the first movement of consciousness her mind made that
painful mental effort to reproduce in the morning the vague something
which has happened before the period of oblivion. First there came
faint images of the night—of Madame Gaumont and a shaded lamp, of
restless tossings and bad dreams, and then suddenly a mental picture
which eclipsed all others, and a familiar voice sounding in her
ears—“I had not meant to tell you, but perhaps you had better know.”
She stretched herself to her full length under the bedclothes, her
whole body tingling at the recollection, and buried her burning cheeks
in the pillows. With eyes tightly shut as if she were unwilling for
outward objects to break the trance of misery, she recalled every
detail of Gilbert’s visit. Shame, and something like anger at her own
stupidity, came over her, for now he must know, he must guess their
secret. Not even Gilbert could think that she cared like that for his
cousin. But the torturing anxiety for Louis came to banish her own
confusion. If only he were safe, nothing mattered; the world might
think what it liked. It was only Louis, Louis that she wanted! Why had
she not taken him, when she might have called him to herself through
all these months? Because it was against honour and right; and what
were honour and right set against love and longing such as this?
She had deceived herself; she had listened to Madame Elisabeth,
and thought that she too could rise to heights of devotion and
sacrifice. . . . Oh, it was mockery! She wanted no favours from the
cold heaven of the saints! To feel Louis’ arms round her and his
kisses on her hair, that were worth an age-long purgatory. But the
gates of love had opened, and closed again for ever, as she believed,
and a great darkness came down upon her soul.
* * * * * *
It was no doubt fortunate for Lucienne that the whole of that day was
spent in the most engrossing preparations for departure—the final
depositing of articles in chests, the final shrouding up of furniture.
Dear to the heart of Madame Gaumont were such doings, and little did
she intend to find, when she returned from her English visit, that her
property had suffered by her absence. Although she would not allow
Lucienne to lift a finger, and kept her in bed most of the day, the
salutary sense of bustle pervading the house did something to distract
the girl’s mind. Lucienne had another distraction also. In the morning
she had said that she could not see M. de Château-Foix when he came;
by the evening she was in a fever to know why he had not come. Was it
because he had guessed her secret, or because he was somehow engaged
in Louis’ affairs? The night of July 4th fell and she was no wiser,
but filled with surmises each more agonising than the other.
She rose on the morning of the start pale and heavy-eyed. Madame
Gaumont repressed with difficulty the exclamation of dismay which
trembled on her lips, when Lucienne appeared in her hostess’s boudoir
about ten o’clock. Had she not guessed that there was something very
much wrong she would have given vent to it.
“Does Justine want any help, my dear, or has she quite finished your
trunk? I declare,” pursued the good lady, “if she has not left out my
second-best silk!”
As the injured mistress rang for the erring maid Lucienne sank down
into a big chair. “How long before we leave the house, Madame?” she
asked listlessly.
“More than three-quarters of an hour, love, so you need not put
on your cloak yet. Remember to take your smelling salts in your
reticule, my dear. Some persons find them beneficial during the sea
passage.—What is it, Henri?”
“M. de Château-Foix’ valet, Madame,” said the man. “He has come with a
message for Mademoiselle from his master, and begs that Madame will
permit him to give it in person.”
Madame Gaumont gave a sigh of relief. But, not knowing of what
disconcerting news the messenger might be the bearer, she felt that
she must interview him first herself.
“I will come down immediately,” she said. “It is best that I should
see him first, my dear child,” she added, casting a glance on
Lucienne, into whose white cheeks had sprung a patch of red, and whose
hands were grasping the arms of her chair.
When she came back, panting a little from the ascent, Lucienne was
walking nervously up and down the room. She tried to read Madame
Gaumont’s face, and found it grave, for the good lady was not sure
that she was about to do right.
“There is nothing wrong, dear,” she said. “But Monsieur le Marquis has
sent a better messenger than his valet.”
“Louis—is it Louis?” gasped Lucienne.
“His cousin—M. de Saint-Ermay, I think he said his name was,” went on
Madame Gaumont, affecting not to notice the girl’s discomposure. “And
so, my dear, as he comes straight from Monsieur le Marquis, I think
you may go down and see him.—If I were a Frenchwoman I shouldn’t let
her,” she thought to herself.
“And M. de Château-Foix . . .?” faltered Lucienne.
“I understand that he is following shortly. Go, my child—unless you
would rather not.”
Meanwhile Louis stood in the middle of the dismantled salon. It struck
him as he waited that the room might be the bare boards of a stage,
for the suddenness with which he had been precipitated there had given
him something of the unreality of the player. Gilbert had told him how
he had promised Lucienne that she should see them both before his
departure, and they had been seated side by side in a fiacre on their
way from the Hôtel des Etats-Généraux to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple,
when the Marquis, who was even more silent than his wont, had pulled
out his passport to examine it, and had uttered an exclamation of
dismay.
“There has been some mistake,” he said, in answer to his cousin’s
query. “Here is a perfectly wrong description of you—it will never
pass.” And thrusting his head out of the window he called to the
driver to stop. “Go on and tell Lucienne that I will come as soon as I
can,” he said hastily. “I must go back and rectify this.” And before
Louis realised what had happened he was alone in the vehicle, driving
on by himself to bid Lucienne farewell.
The feeling of unreality did not wholly leave him when the door
opened, and Lucienne came slowly in, ghostlike in her pallor, her
quiet movements, and even in the way she looked at him, as over some
indefinable barrier.
He too went forward without saying a word, and catching her cold hands
pressed them to his lips.
“You are safe, Louis—you got out of prison?” said the low, shaken
voice.
“Gilbert got me out. I am sorry you ever knew I was in. You are not
fit to stand—come, let me put you into this chair, though it doesn’t
look very comfortable.”
She suffered him to put her into one of the swathed chairs, and asked
faintly: “Why have you come?”
“Gilbert sent me on,” said Louis, looking down at her. “He had some
business to see to at the last moment—something wrong with the
passport—but he is following.”
She said nothing, and after a moment he knelt down beside her.
“This is good-bye, Lucienne.” Whether her evident state of stupor
steadied him or no he could not have told, but after a long look at
her passionless white face and down-dropped lids he took one of her
hands, kissed it gently, and got to his feet again. All the way from
the Rue des Petits-Pères the violins of passion had played in his
breast little sad airs of farewell, to which he could listen without
danger. And in this ghostlike room, with Lucienne who looked like a
ghost, who spoke like a ghost, with his kiss on her cold unclinging
fingers, it was not so hard then to act like a gentleman, and after
last night there could be no question of doing anything else.
“At what time are you leaving the house?” he asked at last; not caring
for an answer, since he knew it, but in order to break a silence which
was becoming charged with something too potent for safety.
Nor did Lucienne give the answer. She lifted her eyes, and what the
young man saw in them sent all the gentle minor airs crashing into
discords, overridden by a deeper, insistent, triumphal note. . . .
Involuntarily he went a step nearer. . . .
And then—to that music she was in his arms, clinging, sobbing,
entreating. “Louis, you shall not go—you shall not, you shall not!
It has been a horrible mistake. . . . I have tried—I promised the
Princess—but I can’t, I can’t, Louis . . . it’s impossible!”
The heart against which she lay beat furiously, all its hot young
blood vibrating to her words. The ghostlike room went dim; she alone
was real—too real, overpoweringly human and appealing. And everything
pleaded for her—the scent of her hair, Saint-Ermay’s own temperament,
his past of facile conquests. . . . Probably only one thing could have
saved him; it was on his side now.
“Lucienne,” he said in a strangled voice, “it is impossible. I cannot
be such a hound, though God knows I would like to be. Let me go, dear.
It is impossible.” And he tried, very gently, with hands that shook a
little, to unclasp her twining fingers.
But Lucienne had the tenacity of many impressionable natures, and too
little experience to know that there is often more fighting to do
after victory than before it. Her victory had been won six months ago;
but to-day, after all, she had flung herself into the embrace which
then she had repulsed. Unstrung, in bitter revolt against fate and the
part she had herself taken in moulding that fate, conscious only of
her passionate desire for happiness—conscious, too, that the lover of
to-day was not the almost suppliant of that January afternoon—she
snatched up arms for a new and a different combat. The force of her
love and misery rushed against Saint-Ermay like the tide, and tossing
on that impetuous sea like wrack and seaweed went all maidenly reserve
and pride.
“Louis, Louis,” she kept repeating over and over again, like a child,
and strained him the closer, “I can’t live without you . . . I have
tried, but I can’t. . . . I can’t go to England! Oh, why do you say
that it is impossible?”
The sight of her beautiful, agonised face, so near his own, made
Louis’ head whirl. “Because,” he said hoarsely, looking away, “I owe
Gilbert my life, and I can’t do it. Let me go, my darling; it has to
be.”
Even with the music of passion in his ears he was conscious of his
delicate and ironical situation. It was impossible to avoid the
thought that his cousin might at that very moment be coming up the
stairs. Nothing but dire catastrophe for all three of them could
result if it were so. But he could not bring himself to say it. As he
hesitated Lucienne herself loosed her arms from about him.
“Then you do not love me, after all! . . . No, no, Louis—I did
not mean it. . . . Do not look like that. . . . I did not mean
it. . . . It is God who is against us!” Her voice sank. “If he saved
your life——” Turning away she hid her face in her hands and broke into
fresh weeping.
And—strange perversity—the moment that she saw the thing as he did,
and acknowledged the inevitable, Louis would have given everything he
possessed to have her in his arms again. There surged over him a mad
desire to dare that inevitable, to defy Gilbert, to claim her, cost
what it might. Should he do it? Her sobs, the line of her neck, her
shaken body wrung his heart. . . . He could give Gilbert his life if
he demanded it. . . .
And there stole into his mind the last recollection that he wished
to have at such a moment, the last that he could imagine would be
conjured up. For once before he had staked his life for a woman; and
had been, too, within an ace of paying it: once before he had felt,
with fire in his veins, that a stake so supreme ennobled the cause
for which it was ventured. And had it ennobled what followed? No! a
thousand times no, and Lucienne was degraded by the parallel. He
trampled down the wild impulse.
“Lucienne,” he said unsteadily, “don't cry so—I can’t bear it.
I . . . Say good-bye and let me go!”
Still sobbing, and with her face hidden by one hand, she put out the
other to him blindly. He did not dare to trust himself at that moment
to take it, and it fell like a wounded bird to her side, so that they
stood by each other in the big empty room without speaking, she
weeping, and he, with his hands clenched, looking at her in torture
and impotence. Perhaps it was the fact that her hand had not been
taken which enabled Lucienne a little to command herself. And when her
tear-blinded eyes rested on her lover, standing so near, but with so
white and rigid a face, she recognised the futility of rebelling any
more. It seemed to her that all her youth went from her in that
moment, and that she was suddenly very old, very prudent, and did not
care for anything very much, like the old Marquise de la Ferronière,
her grandmother, who spent her days in a convent but was not a nun. So
she sank down in the chair behind her, and, shutting her eyes, leant
her head against the back, the better to taste this wisdom and
detachment, and the sooner to forget Louis, whom henceforth she must
never remember.
Saint-Ermay bent hastily over her with an exclamation. She opened her
eyes.
“Say good-bye quickly. . . .”
“I thought you had fainted!”
“No,” said Lucienne, “I hardly ever——” She stopped, and a shiver
of reminiscence ran through her. Ought she to tell him? But the
remembrance was horrible and shameful; she could not.
Louis saw that something was troubling her.
“Does it matter?” he asked tenderly, kneeling down once more beside
her. “There is only one thing that matters to me, Lucienne, and that
is that I shall love you as long as I live. . . . But perhaps you had
best forget that. . . . Good-bye, my darling.”
The passionate kisses which he set on her hand woke on the instant in
Lucienne that youth which she had felt slip from her—woke it to a last
desperate revolt.
“No . . . no, Louis,” she gasped in agony. “Not yet . . . a little
longer. . . . It is too cruel. . . .”
And for a moment longer his head remained bowed on her hand, while she
looked down at it to imprint for ever in her mind all that she could
see of him, till she felt that she could remember to eternity every
rippling strand of his dark-brown hair, the dull black ribbon that
tied it, the tiny curl by his ear, and the strong, delicate hand,
emerging from the coarse and ruffleless sleeve, that had clenched
itself on the other arm of the chair. But before she had made an end
of gazing he got up from his knees, and, without a word, without a
backward look, walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.
CHAPTER XVII
COMEDY OF A BURNT LETTER
When Gilbert stood a moment in the street watching the fiacre bearing
Louis rapidly away from him, his first feeling was one of violent and
unrestrained anger against the impulse which had placed him there. But
there was no time to indulge in this emotion. Why the devil, he asked
himself, had he not, on his discovery, told the driver to drive
straight to the Mairie? Cursing himself, he hailed another fiacre, and
set off at a tearing pace in that direction. Fortunately the mistake
was soon rectified, and he found himself before long in the courtyard
of the Hôtel de la Séguinière. Here a great bustle was in progress.
The post-chaise was, rather to Gilbert’s surprise, already there. It
would have been quite simple, under the circumstances, to walk in
unannounced, but because it might have looked as if he intended spying
on his cousin, Château-Foix would not do it. He was therefore preceded
up the staircase by a flurried domestic.
At the top of the first flight he came on Louis, standing with his
back to a door, and having very much the appearance of supporting
himself by the lintel. The light was not good, but no great amount of
illumination was required to emphasise the fact that he was extremely
pale. He moved aside at once.
“I began to wonder if you were coming,” he said very quietly.
“Lucienne is in here waiting for you. I am afraid that you will find
her rather distressed.”
Gilbert looked him full in the face. “I expected as much,” he said,
equally quietly, and went in.
As for Louis, he went slowly away to the far end of the landing, and
sitting down on a couch in the corner buried his face in his hands. He
had not, however, remained more than a minute or two in this posture
when he sprang hastily up. Madame Gaumont was rustling down the
staircase from the floor above.
“Is that you, Monsieur le Vicomte? Is Monsieur le Marquis here? Such a
to-do; we must start at once. There was a mistake about the tide, and
we shall not catch the packet unless we go immediately. Is Monsieur le
Marquis with Mademoiselle? I don’t like to burst in on them. Will you
go?”
“I, Madame!” exclaimed Louis with a bitter little laugh. “God forbid!”
Even in her hurry Madame Gaumont looked at him curiously for a
second, and seemed about to say something unconnected with travelling
arrangements. Then she thought better of it, and entered the room.
The young man looked for a moment at the door which she had left
ajar behind her, then turned away, and began slowly to descend the
staircase. He would go back to the hotel and wait there for Gilbert.
Yet he went so slowly down the stairs, he paused so long at the door,
and traversed the courtyard with so lagging a step, that by the time
he had reached the gateway a little commotion behind him warned him
that the travellers were already starting. Turning, he saw on the
steps Madame Gaumont and her maid, and on Gilbert’s arm Lucienne, a
hastily but heavily veiled figure; and, as if fascinated, he watched
Gilbert helping in the three women. The postilion scrambled to his
place, and in another moment the post-chaise came rumbling towards him
over the stones. . . . It was gone—passing him as he stood like a
statue in the archway, fighting down a wild desire to spring to the
horses’ heads and stop it. And Lucienne had not seen him; perhaps it
was as well. . . .
Gilbert came across the courtyard, pulling out his watch. “We must get
back at once,” he said briefly, and Louis followed him without a word.
It suited him well enough that his supposed status required him to
walk behind.
Hardly had they got into the yard of the Etats-Généraux when hurrying
footsteps were heard behind them, and looking round they both
recognised one of Madame Gaumont’s domestics. He held a letter in his
hand.
“For you, Sir,” he said, giving it to the Marquis. “It has just been
found in Mademoiselle d’Aucourt’s room—in the grate. Thinking it had
fallen into the fire by mistake, and seeing that it was addressed to
you, I thought it best to bring it on at once.”
“You did quite right,” said Gilbert, giving him a louis. “Pierre, see
that the baggage is ready. We start in a quarter of an hour.” And he
went in, while Saint-Ermay stared after him, wondering what on earth
could be the meaning of this belated missive from Lucienne. It seemed
almost like a message from the dead.
To Gilbert also the letter had something of that complexion, as,
without opening it, he mounted the stairs to his room. For Lucienne,
when he had entered, was not in a condition for a coherent farewell.
He had found her bowed over the arm of the big chair in which she sat,
weeping her heart out, he would have thought, except that the tears
were few. She seemed to have exhausted them. Château-Foix was almost
frightened. But his mind had been made up before ever he opened the
door. She should have from him neither questions nor reproaches. The
fault was not hers; he could not bear that she should have to justify
herself. So he had merely raised her up and kissed her wet cheek; then
Madame Gaumont had come in, and there was an end.
At last he broke open the letter. It was so short that a second or two
sufficed for his eyes to run over the words whose meaning his mind
took much longer to grasp.
“I cannot bear it. I cannot go to England. Come to me and tell me
that we can be married at once, and that you will take me back with
you.—LUCIENNE.”
That was all, but at these few lines Gilbert stood staring, stunned.
After a moment he sat dizzily down, and resting his elbow on the table
put his hand over his eyes the better to taste this enormous, this
overwhelming surprise. He was too dumbfounded for consecutive
reflection, but the first thought which penetrated his stupor was one
of such radiant and piercing joy that his reason seemed to shake
beneath its onslaught. The nightmare was but a nightmare after all.
“Thank God! thank God!” he cried with his deepest soul. It was all
false. The proof had come to him here in this very room which had
witnessed his black night of despair; this was the very table on which
he had bowed his head, those were the same chimes of Notre Dame des
Victoires floating, now, through the sunlight. . . .
And she had gone; he could not thank her for this great proof of her
love; for at first he saw it in that aspect, judging the trust and
confidence which must have prompted her to so unusual a step. The
trust and confidence; yes, and what must she not have suffered when
the next evening he had visited her and said no word of her appeal?
He looked again at the date: he was not mistaken; the letter had
been written on the evening of the day when she had exchanged the
guardianship of the Princess for that of Madame Gaumont. Poor child!
how horribly she must have suffered! His stirred feelings lent him
enough imagination to put himself in her place. Was it any wonder that
she had seemed strange, and that overcome by the strain she had
fainted at the additional shock given, very naturally, by the news of
Louis’ arrest? What must she have thought of him? What, too, if she
had known his unworthy, his vile suspicions of her? How large a part
had his involuntary silence not played in the state in which he had
just found her?
And she was gone, thinking—what? He walked for a minute or two
in agitation up and down the room, until going back to the table
he picked up the little note, so pathetic in its need and its
trustfulness. An idea that was half a hope flashed upon him. That
blackened, scorched corner meant one of two things: either the letter
had fallen into the fire by mischance, Lucienne being left in the
impression that she had sent it, or she had intended to burn it. It
had in that case been but the outcry of her distress, destroyed
because it had seemed to her unmaidenly. And he devoutly hoped that
this was the case, because it left him all the perfume of the message
and relieved her of the dreadful tension of waiting for an answer
which he had never given.
Since he had looked down at her in his interrupted leave-taking, since
he had given her that kiss, whose remembered coldness filled him with
the most burning indignation against himself, not half an hour had
elapsed. And he had let her go thus—for ever, perhaps—and could not
follow her. But he could write to her. He would write here and now. He
looked round impulsively for ink and paper—and then remembered, with a
checking of his ardour, that he could scarcely with delicacy reveal to
her his knowledge of her letter if, as he hoped, she had meant to burn
it.
Footsteps, too, were approaching his door. “Yes; I am coming,” he
shouted, guessing that he was being summoned, that the post-chaise was
waiting. But he lingered a moment, looking with eyes not quite clear
at the little scorched letter ere, kissing it, he thrust it into his
breast, and left the room which had seen him go down into hell and
come forth again.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ROAD TO POITOU
When the light, two-wheeled post-chaise, with its pair of horses and
its postilion, was rolling at last along the sunlit quays, Gilbert
forced himself to turn his thoughts from the joy and relief in his own
breast to the contemplation of a matter for the moment more urgent—the
safe conveyance of his cousin from Paris. He glanced at his kinsman,
seated beside him in his unfamiliar dark clothes, and observed with a
sort of amused despair that he did not seem to consider that prudence
required him to refrain from showing his face at the window, for he
had been looking out in silence ever since they started.
“One would think, my dear Louis,” observed the Marquis at length,
“that you had never seen Paris before. Your evident wish to remain
here may soon, perhaps, be gratified.”
“There’s a most extraordinarily pretty woman just going towards the
Allée des Princes,” murmured Louis.—“I beg your pardon, Gilbert. You
were saying that we shan’t get through. Well, if we don’t I shall have
still less faith in any of the La Rochefoucauld. Wasn’t it Liancourt
who helped you to your passport? I suppose that if we have to get out
at the barrier, I must hold the door open for you. And you must curse
me for a clumsy fool. Oh, I forgot! you never swear at your servants.
By the way, have I a name? I’ve forgotten it, at any rate.”
The Marquis handed him in silence the passport, with its emblematic
figures supporting a shield, inscribed with the device, “Vivre libre
ou mourir”—Minerva bearing the cap of liberty on a pike, and a female
typifying the French constitution, seated on a lion. The crown which
the latter held over the shield had been struck through with a pen,
and the same fate had overtaken the crown surmounting the arms of
France which accompanied the mayoral seal in red wax at the bottom.
Louis’s lip curled as he observed it. “L’an 4 de la liberté,” he
muttered scornfully, running his eye up to the date over Pétion’s
signature, and passed on to peruse his own description.
“I don’t know what the original portrait was like,” he remarked,
returning the document, “but I don’t call this amended version very
flattering. I suppose it was jealousy which led you to dock me of an
inch of my height. However, Pierre Jourdain has a very convincing
sound for a valet.”
When the chaise drew up with a jerk at the Barrière de Versailles it
was possibly on account of the hot July sun that no great alacrity
was displayed in demanding credentials. A sleepy-looking official,
followed by a couple of National Guards, did at last present himself
at the left-hand window—Saint-Ermay’s—and to him the Marquis handed
out the passport, throwing a severe glance at Louis, who seemed to be
struggling with a most inopportune desire to laugh. The man read it
yawning, asked a few questions, signed the paper, returned it, and,
suddenly pulling himself together, shut the chaise door with a bang,
and magnificently waved a dirty hand to the postilion. The horses
sprang forward, the gateway slid past—they were out of Paris.
“Why are you travelling under your own name?” asked the Vicomte
abruptly, breaking a silence which was not uneloquent of tension past.
“Why not?” retorted Gilbert. “You observe that there is no title.
Moreover, I once met Terrier de Monciel before he was Minister of the
Interior, and though, as it happened, he did not recognise me when I
went to have the passport countersigned, I thought that the fewer lies
I told him the better.”
“Especially as we shall probably want quite a new stock later on. I
wonder,” observed Louis thoughtfully, looking at the strongly-cut
profile beside him, “what you could best pass yourself off as at a
pinch.”
“Occupy your wits, then, with the question,” said Château-Foix,
folding up the passport. “If you can hope to become yourself something
other than the most hot-headed young fool in the universe, your
reflections will not be wasted.” He gave Louis one of his rare smiles
as he spoke. Lucienne’s letter met his fingers as he replaced the
passport. God! what a cloud was rolled away in the last hour! To him,
who was never troubled with excess of spirits, his heart seemed
preposterously light—though all the while, deep down, throbbed a
remorse which would not easily leave him. The sunshine and the blue
sky—even the cheerful trot of the horses—were one with his rejoicing.
They were safely out of Paris; Louis was rescued—was sitting here at
his side, and once more it was good to have him there. The old feeling
of affection came back with a force all the stronger for its temporary
suspension, and he turned a little and put a hand on his cousin’s arm.
“I wonder what I should have done if I could not have got you out of
La Force!” he said.
* * * * * *
After Versailles Louis gradually ceased from converse, and, alleging
that he was sleepy, settled himself in the corner of the chaise and
closed his eyes. Gilbert, glancing once or twice at him, was struck
with the way in which his face in repose had lost its life and gaiety,
and attributed the extinction, with compassion, to regret for lost
comrades and a ruined cause. For himself, he was composing in his mind
an answer to Lucienne’s letter all the way from Saint Cyr to Trappes.
The miles sped on uneventfully, but for the change of horses every two
leagues. At Houdan, however, there was a long delay, caused by want of
these animals, and it was dark when they got to Dreux.
“I don’t know any of the inns,” said Gilbert. “Tell the postilion to
go to a moderate-priced one; that will probably be safest.”
Louis transmitted the order, and, remembering his part, got out when
the chaise drew up in the courtyard of the Grand-Cerf and held the
door open for his supposed master. But he forgot the baggage, and had
to be sent back for it.
“I feel very uneasy about you,” observed the Marquis, as Saint-Ermay
deposited a valise on the floor of Gilbert’s room. “I know that you
will never be able to keep up this servant role.”
“Shall I not?” asked Louis, with a certain boyish enjoyment. “You will
see, Monsieur le Marquis. I shall soon be asking for higher wages,
especially if your valise gets any heavier. Are we going to have
anything to eat?”
“I shall have some supper served up here,” said Gilbert, looking
worried. “But will it not seem strange if you have yours with me?”
“Very,” said the Vicomte, who was evidently pining to play his part
elsewhere. “I must have mine downstairs. Am I to engage myself a
room?”
“I would rather have you on a truckle-bed in here,” returned his
kinsman apprehensively. “Ask them if they have one.”
“All right,” said Louis cheerfully. “I’ll say that you are subject to
fits, or melancholia, or walk in your sleep. Au revoir!”
He went out, and did not reappear for so long that the Marquis, after
his supper, rang and asked for his valet, only to be told that he had
gone out some time ago, and that there were some strolling players in
the town, whose performance he was no doubt witnessing. When he at
last came back Château-Foix fell upon him.
“For God’s sake, Louis, don’t treat this affair as a jest. You ought
never to have left the inn——”
“And have people suggesting that we have a reason for lying low?
That’s not my idea of prudent conduct,” retorted his cousin,
unabashed. “I have been witnessing that noble play, _Le Patriotisme
recompensé, ou l’Arrivée à Paris des Sauveurs de la Patrie_—in fact, I
am not sure that after heartily applauding the artist who acted Drouet
I did not join in the _Ça ira_. It will be an inconceivable protection
to you, Gilbert, to have a valet of known Republican principles.”
“I dare say it might, if there were the slightest chance of your
remembering them,” said Gilbert gloomily. “Well, there’s no use
arguing with you. Let’s get to bed, for we must start early to-morrow.”
“I shall sleep across your door, like a feudal vassal,” announced the
Vicomte, dragging at the little bed. “This affair fills me with the
spirit of the faithful retainer. I am not sure that it doesn’t make me
feel grey-haired—grown old in your service, Monsieur le Marquis. . . .
For Heaven’s sake, don’t throw that pillow at me; just think if any
one could see in. . . . But I said you were subject to fits.”
“I forbid you to speak another word, then, Pierre,” said Château-Foix,
laughing. “I am going to get into bed and sleep.”
And he did both. But Louis, deprived of the safety-valve of talking
nonsense, lay miserably wide-awake in the darkness. Yet the high
spirits which he had displayed had not been wholly feigned; they were
not altogether summoned up at will to hide his heart from Gilbert’s
eyes. He was young enough to feel a measure of elation at having done
right at great cost, and there had been something too of reaction in
his vivacity. But now that there was no longer need to be gay it was
very different. Swept back, despite his struggles, into the room at
the Hôtel de la Séguinière, every phase of that intolerable parting
tortured him afresh. How she had clung to him—how she had besought
him! . . . it was as though he should always hear that anguished,
pleading voice. . . . He groaned, and flung himself over in the
truckle-bed. He must not, dared not, think of it. . . . Denied those
images his thoughts went off to others, guessed at; to her on her
road. What must she not be suffering now, alone, hourly drawing
further away! But he must not think of that either! . . . What was it
that she had been going to tell him, and had not?—and, tormenting
question, what had she written in the note which Gilbert had so
belatedly received? . . . What use to surmise; he had no right to
know! . . . So, desperately, he tried to cling to the idea of
Gilbert’s goodness to him; that he had come to Paris to warn him, that
he had saved him from almost certain death. And, tossed on this ocean
of pain, he fell asleep at last, to dream of his lost love, but not
with happy dreams.
* * * * * *
The Marquis had resolved to continue posting, and they traversed thus
the next morning the twenty-five miles or so to Verneuil. But Gilbert
soon began to regret his decision. The country seemed strongly
patriot; every village through which they passed had its tree of
liberty crowned with the red cap, and at Tillières some of the
inhabitants ran after the chaise, shouting out abuse of them as
aristocrats. By the time the old fortifications of Verneuil came in
sight Château-Foix had determined to abandon the post chaise for the
humble diligence.
“Of course, as a good Republican, I applaud you,” was Louis’
observation as they entered the town. “This country is certainly too
patriotic for comfortable methods of travelling. Even the saints are
_sans-culottes_—look at that.” And he pointed to a statue of Saint
Anne which adorned a porch of the Church of the Madeleine. A cap of
liberty perched on her stone coif.
“Yes; and I have noticed two or three wayside Calvaries with a
tricolour ribbon tied round the arm of the Christ,” said Gilbert.
“These are unmistakable signs, and I think we shall do well to observe
them.”
At the Hôtel du Saumon, Gilbert therefore paid the postboy and
dismissed him. The diligence for Mortagne, their next objective, did
not start for an hour or more, and it conveniently left the courtyard
of the Saumon itself. The Marquis ordered himself some déjeuner,
leaving Louis to procure himself a meal in the kitchen regions, and to
see to the baggage. A little before the time appointed he went out
into the big yard. The horses were already harnessed, but there was no
sign of Louis.
“I suppose you have my baggage on all right?” asked Gilbert of the
driver, for the two valises were as invisible as Saint-Ermay.
“Baggage?” echoed the man, a bullet-headed Norman. “I have no baggage
from here. There was none to put on.”
“Surely there were two valises out here,” Château-Foix, with a
premonition of disaster. “Where is my servant?—he was in charge of
them.”
The driver grinned. “Looking after another kind of baggage when I saw
him last,” he retorted. “That kind!” and he jerked his thumb at a
pretty chambermaid who at that moment ran across the yard.
“Pierre!” cried the Marquis angrily, “where are you?”
The sound of his voice caused the Vicomte to emerge, without undue
haste, from a doorway. “Is it time to start?” he asked nonchalantly,
and by no means in the tone of a servant addressing his master.
“What have you done with the baggage?” asked his cousin, frowning.
“Take your hands out of your pockets when you speak to me!”
Louis’ mouth twitched as he obeyed the hint.
“I told a man to put it on the diligence . . . Monsieur,” he answered
soberly. “Isn’t it there? Where has the man got to?” He went back into
the hotel, and returning after a moment’s absence beckoned Gilbert
aside. “The fool put it on the Nonancourt diligence, which went
three-quarters of an hour ago. They never said that there were two
diligences starting from here.”
“So that our baggage is now on its way back to Dreux?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m exceedingly sorry. What can we do?”
Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. We must go on without it.
Fortunately I have all my papers and money on me. Come along; they are
waiting for us.”
“Morbleu,” murmured Louis as he followed him, “you are horribly
magnanimous. I could support reproaches better. It was really very
careless of me.”
“You are new to your rôle—except, perhaps, to one part of it,”
returned his cousin impassively. “But remember not to address me as
an equal in public.”
Passing over to the driver, as lightly as he could, the fact that he
intended continuing his journey without his baggage, Gilbert mounted
into the diligence, which contained only a farmer and his wife and an
insignificant-looking man who was probably a small shopkeeper. But in
its progress through Verneuil the vehicle further gathered up, from
the door of a comfortable-looking house in a main street, a cheerful
little old man with apple cheeks and horn-rimmed spectacles, who
skipped in, bearing under one arm a large and rotund object done up in
newspaper. The two pretty girls who were seeing him off handed in to
him two cabbages of great size, a basket which might be presumed to
contain onions, and a bunch of flowers. These the old man, amid the
laughter of the girls and his own brisk apologies, bestowed beside
him. He waved his hand as the diligence lumbered off and then, pulling
a book from his pocket, was instantly immersed.
The shopkeeper got out at a village a mile or two from Verneuil,
the farmer and his wife at a wayside farm, and having nothing
better to do—for he dared not encourage Louis’ possibly unguarded
conversation—the Marquis fell to examining their fellow-passenger. In
spite of his horticultural impedimenta the latter had not in the least
the air of a farmer; the hand which held the book close to his
short-sighted eyes was thin and pale, though the nails and finger-tips
were a little discoloured; and the book itself, as Gilbert could
easily see, was the _Georgics_ of Virgil. Had not the road, after
crossing the Avre, become very bad his curiosity—such as it was—might
have remained unsatisfied, but a violent jolt suddenly causing one of
the cabbages to leap headlong to the floor, the Marquis, who sat
directly opposite, picked it up and returned it to its owner.
The old man hurriedly put down his book. “A thousand thanks, Citizen,”
he murmured, receiving it in careful hands. “You are too kind.” But he
was plainly more concerned with the fact that one of two of the
vegetable’s outer leaves were damaged than that a stranger had been at
the trouble of stooping for it, as, smoothing them as one might the
plumage of a bird, he restored it to its place. Hardly, however, had
he resumed his study of the classics, before the paper-clad object,
falling with a portentous thud, rolled under Gilbert’s legs.
This time there was real commotion, and Louis, who had removed himself
to a further corner, shook with stifled mirth as his cousin and the
old man made simultaneous dives under the seat. Its wrappings having
come off in the transit, it was plainly a large pumpkin with which the
latter finally emerged.
“You are very good, citizen,” he exclaimed, as the Marquis’ head and
his own narrowly escaped collision. “I am deeply ashamed to have
inconvenienced you with my poor pumpkin.” He regarded the erring
vegetable with a mixture of pride and sorrow, for it had suffered in
its fall.
“The citizen is a very successful gardener,” hazarded Gilbert, also
looking at it.
“Gardening is my passion,” returned the old man fervently. And he went
off into a tolerably long panegyric of the occupation, concluding by
saying: “But I weary you, citizen, for you have not the air of one
interested in agricultural pursuits.”
“On the contrary,” replied the Marquis, “I am deeply concerned in
them.” And with guarded allusions to a small estate, he spoke, for the
sake of being agreeable, of English methods, and how far they might be
pursued in France, while Louis gazed from each window in turn at the
distant woods of Le Perche and La Ferté-Vidame.
Gilbert’s neighbour heard him enthralled. “But I am listening to a
master!” he exclaimed, when Gilbert paused, afraid of saying too much.
“Citizen, you are fortunate indeed, in these days of political
turmoil, to know such rural delights! How true to-day is what the
Mantuan writes—I was just reading it when my cabbage fell down.”
He picked up his book and began to declaim—
“‘Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
Panaque, Silvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!
Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum
Flexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;’—
that line might almost apply to the Princes—
‘Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro’
—the Austrians to the life!
‘Non res Romano, perituraque regna.’
How extraordinarily apt a passage, citizen!”
It was, had it been true that agricultural delights had really
banished political cares from the mind of his hearer. But the citation
appeared to the Marquis a possible trap, and he preferred not to
comment on it. The old man, however, turned the page and proceeded
along a further stretch of delicate ground.
“Listen to this, citizen. Would you not say that Virgil was writing of
the Assembly and the _émigrés_?
‘Hic stupet attonitus rostris: hunc plausus hiantem
Per cuneos (geminatus enim plebisque patrumque)
Corripuit:’
—Vergniaud, or whom you like—
‘gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum,’—
may it not come to that! But listen—this is Coblentz:
‘Exilioque demos et dulcia limina mutant,
Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole jacentem.’”
The reader looked up, and albeit Gilbert was quite innocent of any
intention of seeking a country lying under another sun after the
manner of the _émigrés_, he was not sure that his kindly-looking
vis-à-vis, with his shrewd spectacled eyes, had not some suspicion of
him. His uneasiness was not shared by Louis, who, as M. des Graves
truly said, had forgotten his Virgil, and who was covertly yawning.
The Marquis endeavoured to show an interest which should not commit
him to any opinion on these interpretations.
“Very remarkable, very,” said the reader, shaking his head. He closed
the _Georgics_, took a long look at Château-Foix, and said: “You would
be doing me a great favour, citizen, if you would tell me again about
that English plan of sowing beans and clover—was it not?—alternately
with wheat.”
Considerably relieved at forsaking so dangerous an exegesis, Gilbert
readily complied with this request. It transpired in the course of a
long conversation that the old man was by profession an apothecary at
Mortagne, but that he had a little country house, with some land, near
Verneuil, to which it was his joy to retreat from time to time, and
where, indeed, he hoped shortly to retire for good. His name was
Maillard; the girls who had seen him off were his sister’s children,
who, with their mother, lived at Verneuil. This information, and much
more on his horticultural successes and failures, he tendered simply
and agreeably; asked no inconvenient questions, and forced Gilbert to
tell no lies—except that, referring once to the bored Louis as “your
friend,” he had to be corrected, and begged Gilbert’s pardon. Thus the
miles of hillier country between Tourouvre and Mortagne passed, and at
about eight in the evening they reached their destination.
“To what inn would you recommend us to go?” asked the Marquis, as,
leaving Louis to bring forth the cabbages, he helped M. Maillard out
with his basket, his pumpkin, and his nosegay.
The apothecary gave him a sudden glance so keen that Gilbert was
startled. “Anywhere but to the Croix Blanche,” he said. “I would not
recommend that. Thank you; my boy, here, will carry these things. Bon
voyage, citizen, and a thousand thanks for your agreeable and
instructive conversation.” He shook hands warmly, and trotted off.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Louis, stretching himself, “I thought he was
going to bestow the pumpkin on you. I want my supper; don’t you, after
talking so much?”
But supper was not easy to find. Mortagne had been holding one of its
big horse-fairs, and was very full. Two inns in succession refused
them, and they were told that there was but one other—the Croix
Blanche. Towards this the travelers bent their steps, not in very good
humour.
“This comes of my having lost the baggage,” sighed the Vicomte. “They
think we are tramps.”
“There’s one thing you don’t look like,” retorted Gilbert, “and that’s
a servant. You see, it never occurred to that old man that you were
one.”
“It shows his perspicacity,” returned Louis airily. “And for that I
forgive him his boring conversation on potatoes. And—the deuce! isn’t
this his shop?”
They stopped involuntarily and glanced in. The proprietor was behind
the counter, and, chancing to look up, saw them and ran to the door.
“Where are you going, citizen?” he asked. “Not to the Croix Blanche?”
“The other inns are full,” said the Marquis.
M. Maillard pulled at his chin. “You will be very uncomfortable,” he
said slowly. “No, I really could not allow you to go there. You must
give me the pleasure of your company for the night.”
Gilbert protested in vain, and in the end they followed M. Maillard
through his shop, where a lank-haired young assistant was putting away
bottles, to his domicile behind.
“Perhaps,” whispered Louis hopefully in his cousin’s ear, “the old boy
has some more nieces here.”
But he had not, and Gilbert could not help smiling at the Vicomte’s
face of dismay, when the latter, in his capacity of valet, was handed
over to the sour-visaged housekeeper who was sole ruler of M.
Maillard’s establishment. But whatever kind of evening Louis spent—and
Gilbert did not see him again that night—Château-Foix was not
unagreeably occupied with the converse of the good old apothecary. And
never, as they discussed their well-cooked meal, or fingered the books
in the little study, did it occur to Gilbert to wonder why the old man
had been so anxious to keep him, even at this cost, from going to the
Croix Blanche—where, at the same hour, the local Jacobin club was
holding its bi-weekly meeting, and where the landlord, the greatest
patriot in all Mortagne, was concluding a peroration demanding the
head of every aristocrat in Normandy.
Of these things Gilbert was comfortably ignorant, and woke in the
morning to find his cousin standing over him with a steaming jug in
his hand.
“I have brought your shaving water,” said he, shaking the Marquis
vigorously. “Kindly get up at once, and remove me from the roof which
shelters that accursed woman in its kitchen, or I shall denounce you
as an aristocrat!”
Gilbert hit out at him with his free arm, and Louis retreated
laughing. “You have nearly dislocated my shoulder,” complained his
victim, rubbing it. “Stay and help me to dress, as your duty is. Was
the lady, then, so terrible?”
The Marquis’ toilet was nearly completed when a heavy but feminine
tread was heard approaching. Saint-Ermay sprang up from the arm of the
chair on which he was perched.
“Horrors! it’s that old woman!” he exclaimed. “Here, sit down, and
give me your hair-ribbon or something!” He seized the comb from his
cousin’s hand and pushing him into a chair, began upon Gilbert’s black
locks with rather malicious energy as, in response to the Marquis’s
permission, the housekeeper bore in his coffee and rolls. The door had
hardly shut behind her ere Château-Foix snatched at the comb.
“Thank Heaven that I am not usually in your power like this!” he
ejaculated. “I should certainly cut my hair à la Titus to escape
your ministrations. No, thanks, I’ll tie it myself. Have you had
breakfast?”
Louis nodded. “Ages ago—with that charmer. Shall I give you yours?”
And the Marquis, as he tied his hair, looked at the young man pouring
out the coffee in the little prim room. If Louis’ facility for playing
at being boys in a story of adventure, when they were grown men in
real and grave peril, had caused him apprehension, and would probably
cause it again, yet at this moment, in the morning sunshine, he liked
him for it. Perhaps, in some subtle way, he felt that he was offering
his cousin amends for his suspicions.
Three-quarters of an hour later, when, after an almost affectionate
leave-taking of his host, he entered the yard of the principal inn
with Louis, the sense of peril returned upon him vividly, and was not
without its effect on the Vicomte. For two, three, four National
Guards in succession were getting into the Bellême and Mamers
diligence. The travellers’ eyes met.
“It is too risky,” said Gilbert in a low voice. “We must ride or walk,
and get a conveyance further on.” To give countenance to their entry
into the yard he enquired the time of the diligence back to Verneuil,
and also contrived to elicit the fact that by avoiding the high-road
and taking a cross-country route they could shorten their way, and cut
off Bellême altogether. On reflection Gilbert judged it more prudent
not to hire saddle-horses, and they set out on foot along the narrow
road.
“Now you see how providential it was that I lost the baggage,”
observed Louis, as they swung along. “But we are coming down in the
world. First a post-chaise, then the diligence, and now the human
foot. I wonder where we shall sleep to-night—as tramps, in a barn,
I should surmise.”
He little knew how prophetic was his jest.
“If we really looked like tramps,” retorted the Marquis, “I daresay
it might be better for us. I wish our clothes were not so new and
respectable.”
“Roll in the dust, then,” suggested his cousin. “Or slit your coat
with your penknife. We might have pawned these things at Mortagne.
I should love to be disguised as a _sans-culotte_, for I am tired
of being so neat and sober in this raiment of your choice. And
meanwhile—though as your servant it is no concern of mine—as what do
you propose to pass yourself off, supposing some patriot insists on
knowing your station in life? You can’t, with any prospect of being
believed, say you are a bricklayer, or a carter.”
Gilbert replied that he thought the speaker was going to settle the
question for him, and Louis looked at him critically.
“I am afraid it will have to be something very dull. You can’t look
like a brigand or anything really desirable. A lawyer—a doctor—no,
parbleu, I have it, of course—an apothecary, like our late host. It
will be quite a safe profession, for not having any drugs with you,
you cannot be called upon to make up pills on the spur of the moment.
And, as I know to my cost, you can talk by the hour about vegetables.”
Gilbert smiled, but conceded that the plan, if called for, might be
worth trying. “Only do not go about announcing us as druggists without
necessity,” he warned the inventor. “I can bandage a cut, but that is
the extent of my surgical knowledge.”
“Never mind; perhaps you will have a chance of putting even that
accomplishment in practice,” said Louis, switching at a wayside
thistle. And again he did not know that he was invested with the gift
of prophecy.
CHAPTER XIX
CONCERNING A HANDKERCHIEF
“If you be the Earl, as I think you be,
Sit down and drink the red wine with me;
But I rede ye, when ye shall rise from the board,
Ye commend your soul to the saints, my lord!”
At noon they came into the square at Mamers. Louis was in wild
spirits; amused with the country people who thronged the wide
market-place—it was market-day—and wanting to buy all kinds of useless
objects at the stalls as they picked their way through the crowd
looking for an inn. The Hôtel d’Espagne appeared so full that they
chose an eating-house instead, and hence, after a modest repast,
Gilbert sallied forth to enquire for a conveyance. He came back with
the disconcerting intelligence that the diligence for Fresnay and
Sillé-le-Guillaume had already started, and that there would not be
another till the late afternoon.
“We must walk it,” he said to Louis, adding in a lower tone: “It would
be unwise to wait about here so long for the diligence.”
“How many miles is Sillé?” asked Louis, who was finishing his coffee.
He made a slight grimace when he heard. “And we have already walked
about a hundred!”
“We can always stop at Fresnay, which is about fifteen, instead of
going further,” said his cousin.
“I suspect we shall,” returned the Vicomte. He got up with a little
sigh. “Well, needs must when the devil drives! I beg your pardon,
Gilbert; I did not mean to be personal. I should enjoy this walking
tour better if it were not so hot.”
At that instant the Marquis became aware of two young peasant women
who were looking at them with interest and whispering together. The
elder of them suddenly approached him. “Messieurs,” she said, with the
trace of a blush, “if you want to get to Fresnay, my sister and I are
starting back for Saint-Ouen, which is almost on the way . . .” And
she looked from one to the other of the travellers, the tint deepening
on her round, fresh visage.
“Madame, we should inconvenience you,” said the Marquis, hesitating.
“_Nenni_,” replied the damsel, and she pointed through the open door
to a large market cart which reclined on its shafts near the church.
“You see, Monsieur, that it would hold a great many.”
And thus it was settled, and in a few moments they were following the
sisters across the sunlit market-place to the vehicle in question,
Louis carrying a large basket full of their purchases. His spirits
were by no means lowered by this turn of affairs.
“We may feel particularly safe in the hands of these nymphs,” he
observed _sotto voce_ to Gilbert, “for they did not, as you may have
noticed, treat us to the eternal ‘citizen’ which I am getting so sick
of.”
Amid laughter they helped to put in the stout Percheron horse. The
baskets and a good-sized roll of Mamers cloth were stowed away under
the seats, together with a vociferous duck which had not been sold;
and, with the eldest sister and Château-Foix seated in front, and
Louis with the younger behind, also facing the horse, the equipage
rattled out of the market-place. It attracted little attention. A
swain, somewhat the worse for drink, who stood in a by-street, and
requested the fair charioteer to tell him with whom she had taken up
now, narrowly escaped destruction, the shaft catching him with some
force and sending him into the gutter, wherein he sat, still repeating
his query to the world in general.
“That was my second cousin, Michel,” observed the younger sister to
Louis. And she added, somewhat unnecessarily: “He was drunk.”
The Percheron horse did not exert himself unduly up hills, and the
miles rolled past but slowly. The sun was very hot, but the vehicle
contained a large faded green umbrella, which the cousins held in turn
over the heads of their respective partners. The heat, the hard seat,
and the jogging made Gilbert feel tired and sleepy, but Louis kept up
an animated conversation with both damsels at once. Occasionally he
declared that the captive duck was biting large pieces out of his
legs, a witticism which had enormous success. But in the end, despite
the hilly road and the horse-flies, they reached the turning to
Saint-Ouen. Great were the leave-takings; but the white caps, with
many a backward turn, dwindled at last along the side road.
“Goddesses with the machine!” yawned Louis. “Good heavens! how thirsty
I am!”
“No wonder,” retorted the Marquis. “And yet you complain of my talking
too much to M. Maillard, a really intelligent man.”
“I was paying our fare,” said Louis, yawning again. “One had to do
something. Would you rather have kissed them? Let’s get into the wood;
this sun makes one damned sleepy.” He thrust his arm into Gilbert’s,
and pulled him into the shade.
The road to Sillé-le-Guillaume lay through the heart of the forest—a
matter of some four miles, so they had been told. It was now six
o’clock; there was more than enough time to get to Sillé by dusk—time
enough, in fact, to push on to Evron some eight miles beyond, had
either of them had the inclination to do so. But, as Louis pointed out
with some eloquence, the most sensible thing to do would be to lie
down and rest in the wood. He was obviously tired, and Gilbert himself
confessed to feeling weary. So they left the main road and plunged
along a by-path until, finding a suitable tree, they threw themselves
down beneath it.
The green coolness, after the hot hilly road and the day’s persistent
sun, was delicious. In five minutes Louis was asleep. Gilbert studied
him for a little, flung at his ease on the moss; yes, he looked too
serenely unconscious for treachery. And how had he dared to put the
letters of that terrible word near those of Lucienne’s name . . . how
had he dared to! But the fatigue which, in quickening his mental
vision, had begun to bring a hundred pictures of her, finally
overpowered its own work, and he fell fast asleep.
He woke with a start, to find their late positions reversed, for
Louis, wide awake, was sitting with his hands clasped round his knees
regarding him with an air of amusement.
“I wouldn’t wake you,” he observed, “but do you know how long we’ve
slept? We have been here nearly two hours.”
The long July day was dying rapidly now, was dead rather, and the two
walked along under the trees agreeably enough, until they came to an
unexpected and perplexing fork in the road. After due discussion they
took the left-hand turning instead of keeping straight on, found after
a time that they had strayed into a by-way, but persevered, and
emerged, a little before nine o’clock, on another high-road. Along
this, a few hundred yards to the right of them, shone the lights of a
tiny village, which was obviously not Sillé. A passing rustic informed
them that the hamlet was Pézé-le-Robert, and the road the highway from
Beaumont-sur-Sarthe to Sillé-le-Guillaume.
Louis sighed. “Couldn’t we at least have supper here?” he asked
pathetically. “It’s heart-rending to think how long it is since we had
our last meal.”
The Marquis laughed. “Now that you remind me, I feel very hungry too,”
he admitted. “Let us sup here, then, if we can; we might possibly get
a bed as well.”
As it happened, the first house to which they came, a tiny low-browed
inn, displayed a faded but recognisable wheatsheaf with the legend, “A
la Gerbe d’Or.” A slatternly-looking woman with a dirty cloth in her
hand appeared in response to their knock. In her wake the travellers
exchanged the peculiar close smell of the passage for the hardly more
agreeable though varied odours of the kitchen of the hostelry, which
appeared to be its dining-room also. A couple of rough-looking men
were playing cards at a table in the middle of the room. The woman
ushered the cousins to a small oblong table nearer to the window, at
the end of which sat an individual who was making great play with his
soup. His liberal exhibition of the method of suction came, however,
to an end about a moment after the two had sat down, when, leaning
back in his chair, he pulled out a toothpick and used it vigorously.
While engaged in the performance of this merely ceremonial act—for
there was no meat in the soup—he subjected the newcomers to a steady
scrutiny, not diverted until the advent of a plate of meat, to which
he transferred his attention.
The thin soup was hot, at any rate, the stewed meat passable. The
cousins were half-way through the latter before the man at the end of
the table pushed away his empty plate.
“Pas mal, la mère,” he remarked. “A trifle overdone, perhaps. But it
is something to get meat at all. Some never taste it from week’s end
to week’s end. That’s true, isn’t it, citizen?” he added, leaning
forward and pointedly addressing his query to the Marquis, who sat
opposite at the other end of the little table.
“Perfectly,” responded Gilbert without enthusiasm.
“But you’ve never had to go without it, eh? You’ve never known a day
when you haven’t eaten good, satisfying meat? Come now, confess it!”
And he cackled with a rather unpleasant laughter.
The Marquis was taken aback, and he was also angry at the impertinence.
He was about to reply in no very conciliatory spirit when Louis
suddenly struck in.
“Do you think that we seem too fat and well-liking, citizen?” he asked
gaily. “Our looks belie us if you do. For my part, it’s a long day
since I have tasted meat like this.” Which was true.
“Come from far?” asked the other, producing the toothpick again.
“Far enough to be tired,” replied the Vicomte casually. “From Mamers,
if it interests you to know.”
“Tired!” exclaimed the questioner with a sneer. “Gentry like you
didn’t walk all the way from Mamers, I’ll wager.”
His tone was extremely offensive. From where he sat Louis could see
the table in the middle of the room, and was aware that the two men
sitting at it had stopped their card-playing to listen.
“Quite true,” he said, as he helped himself to wine. “Two charming
_citoyennes_ were so kind as to give us a lift in their cart part of
the way.”
“And shall you stop here to-night?”
“No,” said Gilbert curtly, tired of the insolent and significant
interrogatory.
“Beds not good enough for you, I suppose,” riposted their fellow-guest.
Château-Foix took no notice, but saying to Louis in a low voice, “We
had best begone as soon as we can,” he finished his plateful of meat
in silence, and the Vicomte followed his example. At the end Gilbert
knocked on the table with the handle of his knife to summon the
landlady. “The reckoning, if you please,” he called out.
As if the word had been a preconcerted signal the little man at the
other end of the table sprang to his feet. “There is another reckoning
to be settled first!” he screamed. “You shall pay it before you leave
this place. Citizens, I appeal to you to do your duty! These men are
_ci-devants_—they are aristocrats from Paris—escaping, most probably,
from the just doom the nation imposes on them—aristocrats who have
ground us down for a thousand years, and boast even now of seducing
our wives and daughters. . . .”
The two other men were on their feet. The Marquis, conscious of
unknown perils behind him, had also risen, but Louis, having a clear
view of the whole room, was still sitting coolly in his chair against
the wall. In spite of the extreme seriousness of the situation the
orator’s interpretation of their ride in the market cart was too much
for his gravity, and he was openly laughing. His sangfroid still
further maddened the denunciator.
“I tell you that it is true!” cried the latter, his voice breaking on
a high note of rage. “I denounce them—I spit on them—enemies of the
nation—aristocrats——”
“Prove it!” said Gilbert sternly, grasping the back of his chair as a
possible weapon. “You cannot!”
A positive yell of triumph and malice escaped the little man, and
plucking something white from his breast he turned it about for a
second feverishly, and then held out to his allies a fine lawn
handkerchief with a tiny coronet in the corner.
“It is his!” he cried, pointing to Louis. “He cannot deny it. It was
under the table by his foot . . . and look at it, my friends!”
The taller man snatched it from him. “It is true!” he cried with an
oath. “No one but a _ci-devant_ carries a handkerchief like that!”
Louis got leisurely up, his eyes dancing. “Ah, my friend,” he said
softly, “there are so many _ci-devants_ nowadays. You no doubt are a
_ci-devant_ scavenger or something of the sort, and the gentleman at
the end of the table——”
His voice was drowned in the hubbub that ensued, as the individual in
question, screaming “Arrest them!” flung himself towards Louis. There
was the table between them, but the young man’s fist, shooting out
like lightning, caught him between the eyes, and he staggered back, to
subside upon the hearthstone. Ere he reached it the shorter of the two
card-players was wrestling bodily with the Marquis, who had not space
to use his chair. The other was crouching in the dusky corner near the
window with the evident intention of taking Gilbert in the rear.
Suddenly Château-Foix forced his vociferating foe downwards and
backwards over the table, and at this the man in the corner sprang
forward.
“Take care! he’s coming on you from behind!” shouted Louis, and he
leapt from his own entrenched position between the table and the wall
and rushed between them. In a second he was sent spinning out of the
way, to be brought up by the centre table, over which he fell with a
crash. But he had defeated the enemy’s design. Hurling his beaten
opponent on to the ground the Marquis snatched up the scarcely-tasted
bottle of wine by his plate and broke it fair and full across the head
of his new assailant. The man collapsed groaning at his feet, and with
his fall the coast was clear. The woman had fled long ago.
“Come on, Louis!” shouted Gilbert to his cousin, who was rather
dizzily picking himself up from the debris of cards and shattered
plates. “No—not by the door—the window!”
He had the casement open in an instant; the drop was barely five feet.
Louis scrambled after him, and the Marquis, guided by instinct rather
than by sight, hurried through a little orchard, a paddock, over a
brook, through a meagre hedge, and, bearing always to the left, and
away from Sillé-le-Guillaume, was forced at last to emerge into the
high-road.
Assuring himself that Saint-Ermay was close at his heels, he started
to run down the starlit road. His own footfalls filled his ears with a
horrid sense of their betraying loudness, and it was not for a minute
or so that he realised the growing faintness of those behind. When he
did so he looked over his shoulder, and then stopped in astonishment.
Louis, now some ten yards behind, had dropped to a walk, and a
leisurely one at that. He went quickly back towards him.
“I thought you were a good runner,” was on his lips, instead of which
he cried sharply: “What’s the matter?”
“Go on without me,” said the Vicomte breathlessly. “I—I really can
come no further.” He staggered a little as he spoke; one hand was
clutching at his left breast.
A quick fear shot into the Marquis’ mind. “Are you hurt, my dear boy?”
he asked anxiously, taking a step towards him, for he looked as though
he would fall.
“He had a knife . . .” said Louis faintly but succinctly, and with the
words reeled sideways into his cousin’s arms.
CHAPTER XX
A KNIFE WITH TWO EDGES
“I must not think of thee. . . .
. . . . . . . .
But when sleep comes to close the difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.”
—ALICE MEYNELL, _Renouncement_.
Here, indeed, was a pretty problem. Louis’ head lay with alarming
inertness against the Marquis’ shoulder, and Gilbert soon became aware
that it was only the tightness of his own grip which kept the Vicomte
in an upright position at all, for he had quite lost consciousness.
After holding him thus for a moment, Château-Foix lowered his cousin
to the ground until his head rested on his knee, and, peering into his
face, felt hastily for his heart. Then he as hastily laid him down and
stood up, listening, for he thought that he heard the pursuit.
The fancied sound brought him to his senses. Louis was at least alive,
and whatever were his injury it was madness to stay to examine it on
the high-road. He looked round. Not five yards from the dark figure at
his feet there was a coppice running straight inland from the road,
and bordering a field. And . . . yes, thank Heaven! . . . there was
a gate in the field; Heaven send also that it were not fastened!
Château-Foix sprang to it. It was not secured, but swung easily open
when the latch was lifted. He came back and dragged at his cousin.
Louis was slightly built, and he himself muscular, but it was no very
easy task to lift such a dead weight from the ground. With the Vicomte
at last in his arms, staggering a little beneath the weight, he
hurried through the gate, shutting it with his foot.
The field stretched away in front and on the right with no sign of
cover. The coppice which marched with it was plainly their best chance
of safety, and Château-Foix plodded on beside it, looking for a gap in
its strong boundary hedge of thorn, over which the trees leaned with
little rustlings in the night wind, mocking him with the shelter he
could not attain. For himself he might have forced a way, but it was
out of the question to drag Louis through. A couple of sheep tumbled
up almost under his feet, and cantered off, bleating. “Enough to give
the alarm,” thought the Marquis. How heavy Louis was, and how still;
it was like carrying a dead man. With an effort he shifted him higher
over his shoulder; as he did so his cousin’s sleeve brushed against
his cheek, and the sleeve was wet. He was now thirty yards or so from
the road, and was beginning to despair of finding an opening, when
suddenly the hedge thinned, presenting a narrow gap. He stumbled
through it, took a few steps into the thickness of the coppice, laid
his burden under a tree, and sank exhausted beside it.
It was much darker in the little wood, and though there was still no
sign of pursuit, he feared to strike a light. However, he could just
distinguish Louis’ pale features when he bent over him, and on
unfastening his clothes his shirt glimmered white, except where it
was stained a much darker hue. His heart was beating faintly but
regularly, yet the Marquis exclaimed as his fingers met the lukewarm
trickle whose nature he guessed too easily. As much by feeling as
by sight he located its source, a stab in the left shoulder; how
dangerous it was impossible to tell in the starlight. Presumably its
recipient had fainted from loss of blood, a not very surprising
consequence of his hasty flight.
Gilbert tied up the wound as best he could with his handkerchief. It
was amazing that there was no sign of pursuit. Yet they were near, too
near the Gerbe d’Or; nor did he suppose that a night in the open was
beneficial to a wounded man, and he resolved to try to find a roof of
some sort. Lest Louis should recover consciousness in his absence, he
tore a leaf from his pocket-book, scribbled on it a line or two to
that effect—it was true that he could hardly read them himself in the
dim light—and closed the Vicomte’s hand round it. Then he took off
his coat, spread it carefully over the prostrate figure, and made
cautiously for the gap.
With his departing footsteps the thicket sank into silence. Now and
again the leaves rustled, and a dead bramble branch, lifted by a
gust, flung itself on to the Marquis’ coat and caught there. The
loudest adjacent noise came from the sheep cropping the grass on
the other side of the hedge; but down the road, in the direction of
Sillé-le-Guillaume, faint shouts announced a tardy and mistaken
pursuit. Louis lay stiller than sleep under his tree and heard
nothing.
* * * * * *
It might have been three-quarters of an hour afterwards that the
Marquis returned. It was grown a little lighter now, and he scanned
Saint-Ermay’s face with renewed anxiety as he bent over him. Then he
poured a little eau-de-vie down his throat, and watched the effect. In
less than a minute a contraction passed over the Vicomte’s features;
he sighed, and moved his head restlessly on the arm which supported
it. Château-Foix repeated the treatment, and Louis stirred, gasped a
little, and opened his eyes.
“What execrable brandy!” he observed feebly, but with some emphasis.
“But you ought to be thankful for it,” returned the Marquis. “I had
some difficulty in getting any. How do you feel now, Louis?”
With his cousin’s aid Saint-Ermay struggled into a sitting posture.
“Much as usual, thank you,” he replied lightly. “I cannot think how I
came to be so foolish as to faint. I remember——” He broke off, and as
his gaze fell on the stem of a tree opposite him, he seemed to become
aware for the first time that he was not where he had fallen.
“How the devil did I come here?” he demanded in tones of sudden
surprise.
“I carried you.”
“You carried me! Great Heavens!” exclaimed the Vicomte, twisting
himself in Gilbert’s hold to look at him. “How many miles, may I ask?”
“A matter of a hundred yards or so. It was nothing; you are not very
heavy.”
“But those rascals from the inn?”
“There has been no pursuit—at least not in this direction.”
“But I suppose there may be. How long have I been here?”
“Nearly an hour,” said his cousin. “I have found a place of comparative
shelter—if you think you can manage to get to it,” he added a little
dubiously.
For answer Louis began to scramble to his feet. “My shoulder may be
impaired, my dear Gilbert,” he retorted, “but my legs at least are
sound.” He got to them as he spoke, but their condition was evidently
by no means as unimpeachable as he had stated.
“I thought as much,” said the Marquis, putting an arm round him. “It
is obvious that I shall have to carry you again if you do not move
less violently.”
“Very well,” responded Louis submissively. “But it is nothing; I am
only a little giddy; I can walk quite well.” Nevertheless he hastily
put out his hand to a tree-trunk as Gilbert loosed his hold and
stooped to pick up his coat. “And how far is it, this refuge of
yours?” he enquired, as, with the assistance of his cousin’s arm, he
made his way through the gap in the hedge.
“About two fields off; but we had better skirt round by the hedges
for fear of being seen. It is a hayloft, and the owner will ask no
questions.”
“Estimable man!” commented Saint-Ermay.
“It happens to be a woman,” observed the Marquis, as they emerged into
the open field.
The Vicomte was delighted. “I might have known it!” he exclaimed. “Is
she pretty? How did you work on her feelings, Gilbert? I have always
said that if you _would_ condescend . . . (No, if I am not breaking
your arm it is quite enough, thanks.) Did you give her a kiss? Mon
Dieu, what I have missed!”
“For Heaven’s sake, be quiet!” urged Château-Foix. “It is no time for
laughing. No, I did not kiss her—I should have been afraid. She is a
middle-aged proprietress with a tongue, and she will allow me and the
friend who has met with an accident to sleep in her loft. She asks no
questions, and if we are taken, we are tramps who have sought refuge
there without her knowledge. She has no servants.”
“Excellent!” said the Vicomte gaily. “You are a general and a diplomat
thrown away. Still, your success remains unexplained. I am sure you
must have whispered soft nothings of some sort to her. Or perhaps you
bullied her; some like it, I believe. Commend me, after all, to you
impervious men for managing a woman!”
“We are certainly lucky,” rejoined the Marquis, ignoring these
remarks, “always supposing that she does not denounce us.”
“Denounce us! My dear Gilbert, you are too modest. It is evident to me
that you have inspired _une grande passion_, one of those great loves
of antiquity or romance. Denounce us! You may be sure that the lady
will be cut in pieces rather than betray your hiding-place—in fact,
after the usual fashion of heroines, she will probably have you down
from your loft, push you behind the curtains in her own chaste
apartment, and lock the door. The minions of the . . . of the nation
arrive; you know the scene . . . outraged modesty . . . ‘Ruffians,
respect at least my bedchamber! Do you dare to suggest that there is
a man in there!’ . . . Delicious! I only hope it may come to that,
provided I witness it.”
With these and similar excursions of the fancy did Louis beguile their
pilgrimage through the first field, though he stumbled more than once,
and the weight on the Marquis’ arm grew perceptibly heavier as they
proceeded. By the time they were in the second field he had dropped
his banter, having obviously little breath to spare, and the two
plodded slowly on in silence.
“Does your shoulder pain you?” asked the Marquis suddenly, noticing
his laboured breathing.
“Oh, pas trop,” was the light reply, but it was given through closed
teeth. Gilbert slipped his arm round the speaker.
“Put your right arm round my neck,” he suggested, and with an attempt
at a laugh Louis obeyed. “Your ideas are always excellent,” he said
faintly.
Five minutes more of slow and difficult progression brought them to
their goal, a collection of scattered outhouses standing in a small
and apparently deserted farmyard. Their shelter loomed before them:
below, the habitat of a large hay waggon; above, a loft and granary.
“Yes, but how am I going to get you up?” asked the Marquis. He had
found a lantern on a peg, and was lighting it, for it was very dusk in
the shed. Louis, utterly spent, leant against the upright ladder which
led to the desired haven. His breath came in gasps, and the light,
when it was obtained, showed the beads on his forehead. “I don’t
see how you will ever get up,” repeated Château-Foix, eyeing him
dubiously.
Louis glanced up. “It certainly does look steep enough . . . for the
path to Heaven,” he remarked with difficulty. “Perhaps . . . if you
were to give me an example . . . and a little help on the way. . .”
The suggestion was adopted, and by dint of a good deal of hauling the
Vicomte managed to clamber on to the floor above, where, with an
unfinished jest on his lips, he immediately collapsed in a second dead
faint. After he had seen his face, Gilbert was only surprised that he
had held out so long.
The loft, not very large, was lighted by a round aperture at the
farther side, and the hay was scarcely more than a carpeting to the
floor, except about midway, against the wall, where it rose in an
untidy pile to the roof. The Marquis, after a brief survey, lifted his
insensible cousin once more in his arms, and carried him over to the
other side of their refuge. As he picked up the lantern afterwards he
saw that his hands were smeared with his blood. He descended into the
yard, got a bucket of water from the well, and by the light of the
lantern set to work to investigate the Vicomte’s injury.
After a little hesitation he began with his knife carefully to cut
through the collar and the coat-sleeve. Louis still lay motionless.
Gilbert next attacked his shirt, but as it had stuck in one place to
the wound he was obliged to pull it away, and, gently as he did it,
the pain of the operation was evidently severe enough to bring
Saint-Ermay out of his swoon. As he opened his eyes the Marquis
paused, with a mute question in his glance.
“Go on,” said Louis, with a grimace. “Yes, it hurts damnably, but I am
sure that your intentions are good.”
With that he shut his eyes again, and Château-Foix went on with
his ministrations. The stab, just below the left collar-bone, was
sufficiently deep, though in itself, thought Gilbert, scarcely
dangerous. He was not anatomist enough to realise how near it had come
to being mortal. The palpable loss of blood impressed him most. As he
was bathing the wound Louis suddenly opened his eyes again.
“Gilbert,” he said in an odd voice, “you should not do this. I wish
you had left me on the road.”
The words woke in Gilbert’s mind an echo of Louis’ protestation in the
bedroom at the Etats-Généraux on the night of his release, and of his
own reception of it. Well, it was different now, thank God!
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said cheerfully—and even
as he said it something whispered at the back of his mind, “Supposing
you had not been mistaken. . . .” He paused in his work and looked
down at his cousin. Louis’ eyes, a little sunk in his white face, met
his full.
“You think I don’t mean it,” he said unsteadily, and without a trace
of his usual light manner. “I do, on my honour!” He put up his right
hand and caught weakly at Gilbert’s wrist. “Promise me, promise me,”
he repeated imploringly, “that if they come here after us you will do
the best for yourself!”
“I shall do that in any case, my dear boy,” replied his cousin.
“Now, if you will let go my hand and lie still I will bandage this
shoulder.”
The young man sighed, and released the hand. Nor did he say another
word while the Marquis bound up his shoulder, using his cravat in
default of anything better, except to remark, at the end of the
operation, that he was very sleepy. He seemed, indeed, to be slipping
back into unconsciousness of some kind. Gilbert arranged the
surrounding hay as comfortably as he could, found on a nail an old and
not very dirty horse-cloth, spread it over the Vicomte, and gave him
some more brandy. As he withdrew the arm which he had put beneath his
cousin’s head to raise it, Louis rallied himself for a last effort.
“If ever you loved me, Gilbert,” he pleaded, “promise me that you will
do what I ask—that you will leave me if there is an alarm. If you are
taken what will become of everybody at Chantemerle? What use is there
in sacrificing yourself . . . and for me too. . . . For God’s sake,
promise me!”
For the sake of quieting him Gilbert gave the promise he had no
intention of keeping. The light of real feeling in the anxious, tired
grey eyes had given him a little shock of emotion. He took his hand.
“I promise you that I will consider myself first. Now, will that
satisfy you? . . . My dear Louis, you absolutely must get to sleep!”
“I obey,” said the Vicomte, smiling. “I expect I shall be all right
to-morrow. If not, I rely on your promise. Good-night.”
He shut his eyes. Gilbert surveyed him for a moment, picked up the
lantern, and went with it to the other side of the loft, leaving the
recumbent figure in semi-darkness. He sat down himself with his back
against the wall, and for prudence sake blew out the light. It was not
till then that he discovered that the moon had risen.
He must have dropped off to sleep as he sat there, for he woke
suddenly with a start to wonder where he was. He remembered instantly,
and looked hastily across the half-darkness of the loft at the still
figure on the other side. A shaft of moonlight, passing through the
round aperture, lay across Louis’ breast and the lower part of his
face. The silence, the danger, the fact that he had so lately carried
his cousin senseless in his arms, suddenly tugged at the Marquis’
heart. They were playmates of but a few years agone. . . . As he
gazed, the stream of moonlight broadened and grew brighter, and, lying
like a pool of silver round Louis’ head, threw up his beautiful
profile into startling pallor and relief. Château-Foix left his place,
and going quietly through the rustling hay sat down by him.
The Vicomte was lying quite motionless, but his regular breathing and
a short scrutiny showed that he was not unconscious but asleep. He was
very pale; his hair was tangled and dusty, the ripped coat showed his
torn and bloody shirt and bandaged shoulder; his left arm lay stiffly
by his side. As Château-Foix sat with his chin in his hand and looked
at him memories full of faint fragrance stirred in his heart. It was
odd how Louis had retained his boyish appearance. At twenty-six he was
still sometimes the self-same engaging boy, “beau comme l’amour et
gentil comme un ange,” as all the countryside considered him, who
had laughed and danced away his childhood in the old garden at
Chantemerle. And there flashed into the watcher’s mental vision the
picture of a certain day in their boyhood when Louis was brought home
senseless, the result of a fall from a horse which he had been
forbidden to ride. Just so he had looked when he had been carried in
by lamenting servants, with a broken collar-bone and a livid bruise
under his curls. As it had been of yesterday Gilbert recalled his
mother’s horror, and his own terrified conviction that his cousin was
killed. There, in place of the dark loft, was the wide hall at
Chantemerle, the crackling fire, the boy, white and still, on the
carved settle, the keen snowy air blowing in through the open door,
and, breaking through the men who had just laid down their burden, a
frightened, beautiful child, who clung sobbing to him because Hector
had thrown Louis in the avenue, and he was dead.
Absurd little tragedy! Was it not Louis who, less than a month later,
was descried by the Marquise galloping wildly round a frosty meadow on
the very steed to which he owed his discomfiture? Was it not Lucienne
who was shortly afterwards discovered in tears because Louis, scarcely
convalescent, had teased her so horribly? And it was certainly he
himself who, that same winter, settled a fierce dispute with the
whilom invalid by the arbitrament of force in the shrubbery. . . .
And, for the first time, the almost forgotten blow which had left him
victor was a regret to him, for at the present moment it seemed an
outrage. Château-Foix smiled at himself; smiled too, as, at the sudden
withdrawal of the moonlight, he bent forward and put a light kiss on
Louis’ forehead.
* * * * * *
It was about six o’clock when Gilbert awoke the next morning, but
as he raised himself on his elbow and looked down at his cousin,
his hopes of quitting their hiding-place that day received their
death-blow. For Louis was moaning faintly, moving his head from side
to side with restless regularity. The Marquis got to his knees and
bent uneasily over him. It was plain that he was in a high fever, and
there was nothing for Château-Foix to do but to resign himself to a
day of waiting.
The Vicomte’s condition scarcely showed a change through the whole of
that long day. The Marquis sat by him, unable to do more than to keep
him fairly quiet, and to force him once or twice to drink some milk
which, with a loaf of bread, had mysteriously appeared in the shed
below. He was becoming seriously alarmed as to his state when, about
midday, the owner of the little farm suddenly paid her tenants a
visit. She was a small, alert, black-eyed scold of forty-five or
thereabouts, and as her rather formidable head appeared at the top of
the ladder the Marquis became more fully conscious of the magnitude of
his victory of the night before. But perhaps she had come to revoke
her permission. He rose from his place and waited.
“You may come and take this basket,” announced the woman in her harsh,
penetrating voice. “I have brought you something to eat, and there is
another pitcher of milk down below.” As she scrambled on to the loft
floor Gilbert began to thank her, but she cut him short. “Là là, that
is enough. Time enough to thank me when you get safely out of my loft,
without setting the hay on fire or trampling it all flat.” Here her
restless little eyes fell on the prostrate form of Louis. “How is the
other? He is lazy? He takes his ease, hein?” She began to wade through
the hay.
“No,” returned the Marquis, following her, basket in hand. “I am
afraid——”
“Ah, mon Dieu!” exclaimed Madame Geffroi, stopping short. She was
evidently taken aback. Even in his present plight Louis, as usual,
owed much to his looks. “Ah, the poor young man!” She knelt down by
the Vicomte and possessed herself of his wrist. “Fever,” she remarked,
shaking her head; and then, looking up at Château-Foix: “Show me the
wound.”
Gilbert complied, quite expecting to hear his bandaging condemned.
But Madame Geffroi touched the wounded shoulder gently with her
coarse, red, peasant’s fingers, and as gently drew the slashed coat
over it again. “Well enough for a man,” she remarked trenchantly. “You
shall have some more linen—but next time I will bandage it myself, I
think.”
It was such a relief to see a woman in his place that the Marquis
clung to her opinion, and asked her, rather helplessly, what he ought
to do. She told him, “Nothing, till the fever goes,” and they both
looked at the unconscious young man in silence, she sitting back on
her heels, Gilbert standing gloomily beside her. Louis tossed his head
from side to side, and flung out an arm violently into the hay, with
a heavy sigh. The Marquis thought that he heard the sigh echoed; at
any rate, Madame Geffroi put her hand for an instant on the burning
forehead. “Poor boy, poor boy!” she said almost softly, and, getting
to her feet, retired as abruptly as she had come.
The slow hours crawled on with the shifting sunlight, until about
three o’clock Louis ceased tossing and sank into a sort of stupor.
Château-Foix was consequently a good deal surprised and alarmed when,
after lying motionless for about an hour, he suddenly sat bolt upright
in the hay and addressed some unknown person by name.
Gilbert sprang up and went over to him. “Lie down!” he said. “Don’t
you know me, Louis?”
“Of course I do,” responded the Vicomte in a thick voice. His eyes
were extraordinarily bright. “You are Antoine de Bercy . . . I wish
I had killed you . . . liar! . . . you are not fit to speak her
name. . . .” His voice tailed off into something incoherent.
“Lie down!” said Gilbert emphatically, and forced him to obey. He was
becoming very uneasy. A man of the most punctilious delicacy in a
matter of the kind, he would rather have heard anything than his
cousin’s private affairs. The few words had already considerably
enlightened him as to the reason of Louis’ duel with De Bercy, which
the Vicomte had so unmistakably intimated that he did not wish to
reveal.
Perhaps the Marquis’ vigorous action had broken the thread of
Saint-Ermay’s rambling thoughts, for he went off at once on another
trail, and for about an hour wandered from one subject to another, now
fancying himself at Chantemerle, now in Paris, now playing again a
forgotten childish game, now winning or losing (and usually the
latter) at less innocuous sports. There were other matters too; and
where Gilbert recognised a name it was difficult to avoid acquiring
information. But how was it that, for the first time in his life,
he felt disposed to condone the excessive number of his volatile
kinsman’s _affaires du cœur_, fragmentary testimony to which was here
offered him? He knew why, but would not acknowledge the answer.
The stream of reminiscences began at last to run dry, and Louis
relapsed into a quieter mood, merely muttering in a low tone to
himself at intervals. He had ceased to toss, so, hoping that there was
some near prospect of his sleeping, Gilbert went and sat down by him,
and, almost timidly, took his hand. He was lying quite still now, but
his eyes were wide open and fixed on the opposite wall. Gilbert wished
that they would shut.
Suddenly, and in a voice singularly altered, Saint-Ermay uttered
another name. “Lucienne . . . Lucienne . . .” he said softly. The word
lingered on his lips and died away. Every vein in the Marquis’ body
hammered at its walls, but he sat motionless and did not withdraw his
hand. After all, Louis had every right to speak of her; indeed, the
extraordinary thing was that he had not done so before. And the fact
that he still sat there was proof enough that Gilbert de Chantemerle
expected to hear nothing that he should not have heard.
For a moment there was silence. All the little sounds of the farm
mounted up with intense clearness. A hen was clucking loudly in the
yard below. Louis gave a long sigh that was almost a groan, and the
fingers of his left hand locked themselves tightly into his cousin’s.
Then the voice began again.
“Lucienne, Lucienne . . . my love . . . I can’t . . . I can’t . . . O
my God, if things had been different! What do you say . . . he trusts
us . . . yes, he must never know . . . never know . . . nev——”
The Marquis wrenched his hand free of the burning fingers which
clutched now about his wrist, and staggered to his feet. And as Louis,
checked by the withdrawal of his hand, tried ineffectually to struggle
up on to his elbow, and fell back with a gasp, Château-Foix recoiled
still further, for he was literally afraid lest he should stoop and
strike his cousin on the mouth, and the horror of the knowledge of his
impulse floated recognisable, for a second of time, on the surface of
the fathomless tide of hate and revulsion which swept over him.
CHAPTER XXI
AT THE SIGN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN
“How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
That hear no more your voice you hear the same,
God! what is left but hell for company,
But hell, hell, hell—until the name so breathed
Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire.”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _A Last Confession_.
Madame Veuve Geffroi possessed to a singular degree the faculty of
knowing her own mind, and also, commonly, that of expressing with
accuracy and point the resolutions at which, from time to time, she
arrived by the assistance of this quality. When, therefore, she took
her way between seven and eight that evening to her hay-loft, with the
intent of presenting an ultimatum to its temporary inhabitants, the
clearness of her mental vision was momentarily obscured by the sight
of one of them seated on her chopping-log in the shed, near the foot
of the ladder, with his head buried in his hands. In the failing light
this figure startled and almost disconcerted her, and she gave vent to
a little exclamation. The Marquis raised a ghastly face and looked at
her dizzily.
“Bon Dieu! what is the matter with you?” ejaculated Madame Geffroi.
Gilbert rose mechanically.
“Are you ill too?” queried his visitor, peering at him. The Marquis
shook his head, murmuring he knew not what, and turned away to
escape her eyes. Madame Geffroi scanned what she could see of him
sceptically; then she shrugged her shoulders. “Very well then, listen
to me. How is the other up there?”
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert rather wildly. “I have been down here
. . . my God . . . how long!”
“You don’t know!” repeated Madame Geffroi with some scorn. “But he
must be either better or worse. Which is it?”
“Worse, then,” replied Château-Foix almost inaudibly.
“He has more fever?” pursued the inquisitrix. “He is perhaps
light-headed—he talks nonsense?”
“That is it,” said the Marquis, and broke—to his own infinite
surprise—into unmirthful laughter.
The note of hysteria did not escape his shrewd companion, though she
assigned it to a wrong cause. “Come,” she said, more kindly, patting
him on the arm; “you have a good heart, you suffer because your friend
is ill—or is he your brother? Never mind, but listen to me! I have
come to tell you something that will ease your anxiety. I have made up
my mind to take your brother into my house until he is better. What
have you to say to that, my young man?”
“I—but how can you?” stammered the Marquis. The twilight interview
with this insistent female was like a nightmare, from which he more
and more earnestly desired to escape, that he might be alone.
“How can I?” demanded the woman of resolution. “But as easily as
walking. You, my fine fellow, if you got him up this ladder you can
get him down again—isn’t it so?—and you can carry him to the house, a
strong man like you! I shall put him in the room I keep for my niece—a
small room, but comfortable. Then there will be no more fever—or at
least he will have some one not quite ignorant to look after him, and
he will be as snug there as a bird in its nest.”
“But, Madame,” began Gilbert, “the danger to yourself——”
“Bah!” said Madame Geffroi, “I snap my fingers at it! Besides, where
would it come from? Do you imagine that any one from there”—she
indicated Pézé over her shoulder—“would venture to come poking into my
house? Holy Virgin of virgins, no! But what would inconvenience me
would be a corpse in my loft; _that_ would compromise me! No, the
young man must be brought in. Come, up with you, my good man!” And,
feeling that he was in the hands of some higher intelligence, Gilbert
suffered himself to be waved in front of her up the ladder.
In the loft it was dimmer still. Gilbert stood like a statue when he
got there, deprived of all volition; he only felt stupidly that he
could never go near that prone, silent figure again. And yet he knew
that he was there for the express purpose of doing so. Behind him
Madame Geffroi scrambled on to the floor; he never turned his head nor
offered to help her. She walked past him, and he saw her bend over
Louis. But his own eyes were fixed on the little circular window, and
his thoughts followed them, racing round and round its circumference
like a squirrel in a cage. Then he perceived his hostess beckoning to
him. His feet carried him over to her.
“He is quite quiet now,” she said in a whisper. “See, I will help you
carry him to the top of the ladder. But you will have to take him down
it alone, only I will stand at the bottom.”
It was a real surprise to Gilbert to find that not very long
afterwards he was standing in the midst of a little, very tidy
room with a diamond paned casement, where a small white bed, ready
prepared, lay along the wall.
“That’s right,” said Madame Geffroi approvingly, as Château-Foix
deposited his unconscious kinsman upon it. She set down the candle,
with which she had lighted him up the stairs, upon a table bearing a
neat pile of bandages, a basin, a sponge, and other appliances. “Now I
shall manage better alone. I am sorry that I have not a bed for you
too.”
Gilbert, with relief, murmured something about the comfort of his
former quarters. Not to be under the same roof would be something.
Madame Geffroi nodded. “You will find some food put out downstairs;
take what you want. I will come to you in the morning.”
“You are very kind indeed, Madame,” said Château-Foix. “I do not know
why you should do this.”
The lifeless tone of his thanks appeared to reawaken his hostess’s
suspicions. She caught up the candle and held it to the level of his
face. “You are sure that you are not ill, you?” she asked sharply. The
fancy crossed Gilbert’s mind that she was more apprehensive than
solicitous about his state of health, and he answered with a grim
feeling approaching amusement that he was perfectly well, and turned
to go. But at the doorway he stopped and bent a long look on the
candle-lit bed, drawn by the very attraction of what his survey cost
him. Then he went down the stairs and out of the farmhouse, to carry
his agony back to the place where it had its birth.
* * * * * *
Very early next morning Madame Geffroi’s voice floated up the ladder.
Gilbert raised himself from where he lay face downwards in the hay and
descended into the shed below.
“Your brother is better,” said the lady. “He is sleeping quietly. But
no—you shall not see him yet. Later in the day, perhaps. And see that
you do not show yourself to-day; it is possible that they may search
for you.”
“Then, Madame,” broke in the Marquis hastily, “we must go. I cannot
think of exposing you——”
“Bah!” returned his hostess with infinite scorn. “Do you think I shall
let that young man out of his bed? He could not stand if I did. And I
should like to see those gentry try to search my house! But they may
come prowling round, so be careful. If they should come here you can
hide in the hay—or, wait a moment, there is a place up in the rafters
where no one will ever think of looking. Here is plenty of food—you
did not take any last night.”
With this somewhat casual recital of precautions she tendered him a
basket and made off. The inadequacy of the former scarcely struck the
Marquis, so little did the idea of being taken seen to matter. He
climbed back to the loft and threw himself down in his former
position.
As hour succeeded hour, the stupor which, in spite of the most active
suffering, had held his brain all through the sleepless night began to
dissolve. “He trusts us! he trusts us!” Yes, he had trusted them
indeed, and with a trust so profound as to be unconscious of its
own existence. “He trusts us!” Which of them had said that to the
other? It was round these words that the stupor, losing its hold,
crystallised into a fierce and absorbing resolution. By no word or
deed of his should Louis know that he was aware of his treachery—until
the day that he chose. Louis, too, in his turn, should be tricked,
gulled, befooled. It should be a part—a small part—of his revenge;
though indeed there was in his resolve less of the lust of vengeance
than of the instinctive self-defence of his own unspeakably lacerated
pride.
And Lucienne . . . O God, Lucienne! image of all that was pure and
untouched! . . . Yet even now he blamed her little. She was so young.
She did not know. Hers was innocency wronged, lured into an attachment
which was surely no more than a young girl’s fancy, a passing light
entanglement from which he must protect her, which he must make her
forget. Had she not written in her distress, pleading to be shielded
from it—for so, in memory, he read her letter now. She would
forget. . . . But Louis! That was different. It might be that it was
with him, too, a passing affair, like so many others. The supposition
seemed rather to aggravate than to lessen his guilt. And there was
much to support the idea. How, if he really cared for her, could he
have been so light-hearted these last few days since he parted from
her? Damn him! he was equally a scoundrel either way!
The Marquis raised himself and sat up, brushing the hair off his
forehead with a sudden gesture. He had at that moment a very distinct
vision of a certain copse at Chantemerle where there was a clearing,
convenient and remote. There, among the saplings his father had
planted, he saw himself and Louis facing each other, sword in
hand. . . .
But the solacing dream of steel was gone as quickly as it had come,
and Gilbert flung himself down again, engulfed once more in the full
tide of his anguish—an anguish all the bitterer, though he did not
know it, for the self-condemnation which he had recently been meting
out to himself.
* * * * * *
Between five and six in the afternoon he again heard the voice of his
hostess and went down.
“You can see your cousin,” said Madame Geffroi, with the air of one
acceding to a pressing request, “since it appears that that is his
relationship. He has been asking for you. And since they have been
to search the house”—Gilbert gave an exclamation—“and gone away
satisfied, it is quite safe. Come.”
“Searched the house!” said Gilbert, stupefied. “But they have not been
near me.”
“I did not say they searched the house,” corrected the lady tartly. “I
said they came to do so. They did not remain.”
“Oh!” was all Château-Foix found to say, wondering how the
representatives of the nation had been routed, but not in the least
doubting the fact.
“Don’t talk too much!” Madame Geffroi warned him, as she opened the
bedroom door and pushed Gilbert in alone.
The late afternoon sun was striking through the closed shutters in
thin shafts full of dancing motes, yet the room seemed dark, and the
Marquis stood a moment dazzled by the contrast.
“Come here,” said Louis in a weak little voice from the bed. “Mon
Dieu, how glad I am to see you!”
Grown accustomed to the atmospheric effects, Gilbert stood looking
down on this new Louis as he lay flat on his back—for in the short
time since his mishap he seemed unaccountably altered.
“Sit down,” went on the Vicomte, “and tell me what you have been doing
while I have been in the hands of this tyrannical lady.”
The Marquis complied. After all, it was quite easy to talk to him. “I
have been doing . . . absolutely nothing, but staying in the loft
awaiting developments. And, by the way, the good woman tells me that
she has had a domiciliary visit.”
Louis went off into a fit of rather feeble laughter. “It is quite
true. . . . But she routed them with great slaughter. It must have
been extraordinarily funny.”
“They did not come into the house, then?”
“No, I believe not. But she had made preparations to receive them.
Conceive what she thought of passing me off for?” He began to laugh
again. “Do you remember, Gilbert, my joking the other night about you
and this dame, and saying that she would probably hide you in her
bedroom? My utterances must have had a spice of prophecy about them.
It was about three o’clock, I believe, when these individuals came; I
was still dozing, when the tyrant entered hastily, and said with great
directness, ‘They are coming to look for you, my fine young man. I do
not fancy that they will set foot inside the house, but, if they do,
remember that you are my niece Annette, ill of a fever.’ I protested
against the libel on Mademoiselle Annette, whose chin, I am sure, does
not stand in need of a razor, but what could I do?”
“And what happened?” asked Château-Foix.
“Nothing, fortunately—or unfortunately,” said Louis, sighing rather
regretfully. “I was not called upon to play this beau rôle to an
audience. But the good lady took some pains with the staging. She
arranged the bedclothes over me in some way that nearly suffocated
me, and took away my clothes, which were hanging upon a chair,
substituting, I believe, some of her own. I was too modest to look
at them. I fancy that they are gone now, and, moreover, that my own
have not come back, so that I can’t get up.”
“I should imagine,” observed the Marquis drily, “that you could not do
that in any case.”
“Well, perhaps not,” conceded the invalid. “But, Gilbert, we must be
getting on. Couldn’t you—couldn’t you leave me to follow?”
“That is not very likely, is it?” asked his cousin. “I thought we
settled that before. You had better not talk any more and exhaust
yourself. To-morrow will be time enough to talk of getting up, and as
this visit is over I presume we are the safer for it. How is your
shoulder, by the way?”
Louis made a little grimace by way of reply. “You do not look over
flourishing yourself, my good Gilbert,” he said, scanning him from the
pillow. “I should say that you did not sleep well last night.”
“No, I did not,” answered the Marquis in a fairly natural tone.
Louis murmured that he was sorry, and there was a pause, Gilbert
feeling that he had nothing more to say. Glancing at his cousin he saw
that he was lying with his eyes shut, and also that he looked rather
spent. He got up, and Louis immediately opened his eyes.
“Are you going? . . . There is one thing that I wanted to ask you—did
I talk any nonsense when I was off my head up in that place?”
Gilbert felt a second’s spasm at his heart. It had not occurred to him
that Louis would ask such a question. . . . His answer should be the
first step along the road which he had mapped out for immediate
travelling.
“I don’t know what you mean by nonsense,” he said, fidgeting with a
spoon on the table. “You were a trifle delirious, of course. Ah, I see
what you mean. No, you were much too rambling for me to learn any
secrets.” He felt that to carry off his part with conviction he must
look his cousin in the face at this point, and did so. Was it fancy
that Louis had turned whiter than he already was? He could not pause
to consider, but went on with a geniality which astonished and
disgusted himself: “My dear boy, you can be easy on that score. You
did not tell me anything . . . which I did not know before.”
“That’s a relief,” said Louis in a jocular tone, but so faintly that
Château-Foix was aware in an instant of the strain that he had been
through, and saw, indeed, the next moment, that he had fainted in good
earnest.
The Marquis looked down at him for a minute with a smile which was not
very pleasant, then he went to the door and called for Madame Geffroi.
Amid the torrent of reproaches and lamentations which ensued he made
his escape.
And as he went back an abhorrent thought leapt suddenly into his mind,
out of nowhere—not so much a thought as a picture—of the inn-kitchen
at Pézé, and of Louis throwing himself between him and the man who
“had a knife.” It had vivid colouring, and was only a little blurred
in outline. If it were a true image he owed his life to the kinsman
who had betrayed him. It was the last intolerable drop in the cup.
* * * * * *
“Dear Madame,” said Louis politely but firmly, “if you do not cause my
cousin to come here, I shall have to go out to find him!”
He was sitting, partially dressed, in an armchair by the open window,
with a flowered shawl over his shoulders. Not far from him his hostess
and nurse, her hands on her hips, stood regarding him.
“That is easy to say,” she remarked. “But there is a key to the door.”
“And a vine, I observe, outside the window,” retorted her captive,
craning his neck to make sure. “Directly your back is turned I shall
go down it. And since you have deprived me of the use of one arm I
shall most probably break the other.”
“What use is it to bring your cousin? tell me that,” demanded Madame
Geffroi stubbornly. “And what happened the last time that he was here?
tell me that also!”
“That was two days ago,” returned the Vicomte, “and I was tired. It
shall not happen again, I promise you. . . . Madame, do not be so
stony-hearted!”
“What do you want to see him for?”
Louis looked at her for a moment quizzically. “I don’t want to see him
at all,” he said. “It will merely mean making arrangements for leaving
you, and you cannot think that I desire to make those, can you,
Madame? But consider, this cousin of mine has an adoring mother who is
anxiously awaiting him at this very moment—not to speak of a whole
tenantry to whom he is a sort of deity. You would not have me set my
own poor happiness, which undoubtedly consists in remaining where I
am, against maternal affection and feudal feeling!”
Madame Geffroi sniffed. “Huh! And is there no one who expects _you_
back with anxiety, my young man?”
Two patches of colour flared for an instant in Saint-Ermay’s pale
cheeks as he responded: “Alas, no, Madame, nobody.—I am wrong; there
is an old man who will be very glad to see me. But come now——”
“As if you were fit to think of going away,” grumbled his jailor.
“You shall see your cousin to-morrow.”
Louis shook his head. “Like all your sex, you must be convinced, I
see, by ocular demonstration. How can you say that I am not fit for
anything?” He got up suddenly from the chair, and the shawl which
adorned his shoulders slipped to the ground, revealing the fact that
his left arm was not only supported in a sling but was bound to his
side, a precaution of his nurse’s to prevent his using his shoulder.
He advanced laughing on her, a slim boyish figure in shirt and
breeches. “I swear I’ll kiss you if you don’t fetch my cousin!” said
he.
Madame Geffroi put up her hands with a squeal, and backed rapidly from
the reach of the one effective arm. “You are a graceless young scamp!”
she said from the door, but she was laughing too. “You shall have your
cousin, then!”
Louis sauntered back to his chair and flung himself down in it,
smiling, but the look of amusement faded rapidly off his face. Madame
Geffroi’s question had set his heart aching. More than once in the
past, when he had gone down to Chantemerle, Lucienne had been there
awaiting him with the rest on the terrace—a child, it is true, much
younger, scarcely noticed, and yet the same Lucienne. Those had been
happy days; all the happier that they were not poisoned by a passion
which had no right to existence, when he was a thoughtless boy and she
a child playmate, nothing more. Now she would never wait for him
anywhere, for if ever the Fates sent her back to live in security at
Chantemerle, the old house could never see him there again. . . . Why
had he not gone with her to England as Gilbert had suggested? Why had
he acted the virtuous friend at his parting with her the other day?
Why, in God’s name, had he of all people taken up that always
ridiculous rôle? . . . Since that farewell he had known that she loved
him distractedly, but the knowledge, with all that it contained of
solace, only served to make his own conduct the more bitter in the
mouth. With such a proof of her love as she had then given him, what
might their life have been had their lots fallen otherwise—yes, even
if he had but plucked his hour when it blossomed to his hand! . . . It
was the most sickening folly. He had wrecked his happiness and hers,
forsooth, for Gilbert’s—for the cold-blooded Gilbert, who regarded
her, most probably, as honoured by her betrothal, and him as a
worthless trifler. And he had taken this senseless, unnatural path, in
the first place, because Gilbert trusted him. “I wish to the devil he
did not!” he muttered fiercely—and knew not that his wish was already
granted. “The whole thing is too damnable!” He was kicking angrily at
the fallen shawl when Gilbert came in, and could not, or did not try,
to conceal his mood, but merely looked up and nodded at his cousin.
“So you are out of bed?” remarked the latter.
“Yes,” said Louis shortly. “I sent for you that we might make plans
for to-morrow.”
“For to-morrow! Do you think that you——”
“Confound you!” broke out Louis irritably. “You are as bad as the old
lady. I don’t say that I could walk far, but I can certainly ride. It
is merely a question of getting horses.”
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders. “I perceive that you are really
convalescent,” he observed. “Very well. But we shall have to obtain
Madame Geffroi’s assistance; I don’t think it would be wise for one of
us to go about them.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Louis. And going to the door he called for
his hostess.
Madame Geffroi thought that horses of some kind could be procured,
though they would probably not be good ones. But then the travellers
would not want to make long stages at first, she added, looking
warningly on Louis and almost threateningly on the Marquis. Resigning
herself with her accustomed decision to the inevitable, she presumed
that if they really meant to start early next morning, she had better
take steps about the horses at once, upon which Louis called her an
angel, and she left the room shaking her head.
“I hope this good woman will not pay for her kindness,” said Gilbert.
“I trust not,” returned Louis rather absently. “But I can scarcely
imagine any one bold enough to call her to account.”
Château-Foix, who was gazing out of the window, turned round and
took a good look at him. The bandages visible through his thin and
now much-mended shirt, the sling above it, and indeed his whole
appearance, thrust again on Gilbert that possibility which he so
profoundly wished had never occurred to him.
“How much do you remember of what happened at the Gerbe d’Or?” he
asked suddenly.
Louis, who was apparently lost in contemplation of an exceedingly
well-shaped leg, looked up in surprise. “What is the Gerbe d’Or? Oh, I
recollect. Why, I suppose I remember as much as you do.”
“Then that is not very much,” said his cousin. “Which was the man that
stabbed you?”
“Are you vowing vengeance?” asked Louis lazily. “Why, the tall one, of
course. The other had no chance; you were taking up too much of his
time. My friend had the knife in his waistbelt, I suppose; I never
saw him draw it. But, if it is any satisfaction to you, I think you
knocked him down yourself afterwards. In fact you must have done, for
I certainly didn’t; I was lying on top of their horrible dirty
plates.”
“He was behind me, was he not?”
“I don’t know,” said the Vicomte. “Are you going to write an account
of this dastardly outrage for the newspapers? because, as an
aristocrat, you will not get any sympathy.”
“I am sure he was behind me,” pursued Gilbert. “He was behind me, but
you called out to me to turn, and then he stabbed you.”
“Did I? Very likely. After all, you do seem to remember more than I.
I am sorry to be such a bad witness, but I really know nothing more
about that particular episode.”
Evidently Louis had not the faintest idea that he had any claim on
Gilbert’s gratitude, or else, for some reason, he had chosen to
forget it. At any rate, there was no more to be got out of him, and
Château-Foix abandoned the attempt.
“I shall not stay with you any longer,” said he. “You had better lie
down and rest, had you not, if we are to start early to-morrow?”
Louis assented, and bent to pick up the shawl. “I am sorry,” he
remarked in a casual tone, “that I was so uncivil just now. It is you
who have a better right to be annoyed. You must have been horribly
bored these last few days.”
“Oh no,” said the Marquis, “not bored!”
CHAPTER XXII
“MONSIEUR MILET”
“Ken ye wha supped Bessy’s haggies?
Ken ye wha dinner’d on our Bessy’s haggies?
Four good lords and three bonny ladies,
A’ to dinner on our Bessy’s haggies.
Ae gude chief wi’ his gear and his glaumrie;
Lords on the bed and dukes in the aumrie;
There was a king’s son kiver’d o’er wi’ raggies,
A’ for to dinner on our Bessy’s haggies.”
—_Bessy’s Haggies_.
Château-Foix, riding close beside his cousin, and uneasily watching
his set mouth, suddenly put out a hand and gripped him by the arm as
he lurched forward in the saddle. “We will stop at the first house we
see,” he said briefly; and Louis, recovering himself, nodded without
speaking.
It was the afternoon of the next day. All morning, under a hot sun,
the travellers had ridden through the green, rolling, wooded Maine
country at a pace regulated alike by the capabilities of their steeds
and by Saint-Ermay’s ebbing strength. It was an hour or more now since
that pace had dropped to a walk; several hours since Louis had ceased
from converse, and had jogged on silently with eyes fixed ahead.
Latterly he had been devoting his energies to the bare task of keeping
in the saddle—and all this with amazing pluck and good temper. But he
was beaten at last. Gilbert recognised it for a curious phenomenon
that he could feel for the young man beside him, in the same flash of
thought, so real an admiration, so sharp an anxiety, and so horrible a
hatred. . . .
They moved forward another hundred yards, the Marquis steadying him as
they went, and in a bend of the road came on a cottage. Château-Foix
checked both horses at the door. “I am going to ask for shelter,” he
said in his cousin’s ear. “Can you manage to stay where you are—no, I
had better help you to dismount.”
Louis made a motion of the head to be taken for assent, and in another
moment or two Gilbert had dragged his swaying form out of the saddle,
and, with his arm round him, was knocking vigorously at the cottage
door.
Hasty and feeble steps were heard to approach it, and after some
fumbling with bolts and bars a wrinkled old woman looked out. “You
cannot come in,” she said, before the Marquis had time to formulate
his request.
“We only want to rest a little,” said Château-Foix. “I can pay——”
“No! no!” reiterated the old woman, and it seemed to Gilbert that
there was an unaccountable anxiety in her tone. “I tell you that you
cannot come in!” And she made to shut the door, which she had opened
but a little way.
But the Marquis was not in a mood to be easily rebuffed, and he
planted his foot on the threshold in such a manner as to make the
closing of the door impossible, and threw a hasty look within. As the
inner darkness cleared from under the low, black beams he made out the
figure of a man sitting, with his back to the door, on a stool by the
hearth. The sight of this back, in a brown redingote, gave him pause;
he did not wish to encounter a possible municipal officer from Laval.
As he hesitated, the old woman, trying to shut the door, gave vent to
an impatient exclamation, and the man by the fire looked round.
“Do not be so inhospitable, Barbette,” he said, in pleasant and
noticeably well-bred tones.
Gilbert would have drawn back, but, with Louis clinging blindly to his
shoulder, the thing could not be done quickly enough, and the stranger
was on his feet and coming towards them. He was a man about forty.
“Your friend is ill, sir? Barbette, open the door! Permit me to assist
you,” said the easy, commanding voice.
The sound of it roused the Vicomte for a second. “I am merely tired,”
he murmured, trying to stand clear of Gilbert’s encircling arm.
“He had a fall from his horse some days ago and injured his shoulder,”
explained the Marquis carefully, seeing the stranger’s swift glance at
Louis’ arm as he moved to the other side to help him. Between them
they steered the young man’s stumbling steps to the settle by the
hearth, into the corner of which Saint-Ermay subsided, his head
against the high back.
The other bent quickly over him. “He has fainted, I think,” he
observed. “And with some cause. The fall must have been a deuced
awkward one!” And holding out his own hand, smeared with red where he
had held Louis by the elbow, he looked Château-Foix full in the face.
The Marquis bit his lip and silently cursed his incriminating lie. No
use to deny a knife-wound now. Without a word he turned away and began
to unfasten the ancient garment by which Madame Geffroi had replaced
his cousin’s coat, too stained and slashed to wear.
“Barbette,” said the stranger sharply, “bring a bowl of water! Would
you not find it easier, Monsieur, if you got him at full length on the
settle?” And thus he was helping Gilbert almost before the latter was
aware of it. “How long since this broke out afresh, I wonder?” he said
half to himself, and Gilbert could only reply with truth that he did
not know. The fiction of a fall was not referred to again, and the
stranger having called on Barbette for fresh linen, bound up the
Vicomte’s shoulder with even more skilful fingers than Madame
Geffroi’s.
“He must stay here, of course, for the present,” he said, drying his
hands on his handkerchief. “When he comes to we will give him some
brandy. And, parbleu, he is rather long about it.” He knelt down again
by the still insensible Louis, and laid his ear to his heart.
All this while the old woman, with wringings of the hands and muttered
protestations, had hovered round the group like a flustered hen. The
stranger who so coolly placed her dwelling at the travellers’ disposal
took no notice of her, but the Marquis was puzzled by her behaviour.
At this juncture, suddenly remembering that he had a flask of brandy
in his holsters, he looked towards the door—now shut—and made a
movement as if to go to fetch it. The old woman, following the
direction of his gaze, instantly cried out in accents of dismay: “Mon
Dieu, Monsieur le Marquis, the horses!” She stopped as suddenly, with
a sharp guilty intake of the breath.
Gilbert turned in astonishment, conceiving himself addressed, and
startled by the use of his title. But the other man too lifted his
head sharply from Louis’ breast and glanced up with a frown at the
speaker. Then he flashed a look on Gilbert, saw his start of
self-betrayal, raised his eyebrows—and the next moment burst out
laughing.
“There’s but one title between the two of us!” he exclaimed, getting
to his feet. “To which of us does it belong?—I fear, Monsieur, that
you have not long relinquished yours!”
Gilbert looked steadily at the thin, vivid face, with its dark eyes
and slender arching brows under chestnut hair, its cleft chin and
delicate aquiline nose. Something of charm caught him, something of
instinct cried out that this was no spy nor informer, nor even a
republican of any kind. And moved by something that was rather
chivalry than defiance he said simply: “I have the honour to claim
it.”
The other instantly capped his avowal by one far more foolhardy. “And
I too,” he said, “I am Armand de la Rouërie, at your service.”
The old woman gave a stifled scream, and Gilbert gasped, no less with
astonishment than at the magnitude of the confidence.
“You have paid me the greatest compliment of my life,” he exclaimed,
holding out his hand. “My own name is Château-Foix; I am returning
from Paris to my home near Chantonnay, and my cousin here—to give you
the real truth—was stabbed some days ago in an affray.”
The Marquis de la Rouërie wrung his hand warmly. “You are sent by
Heaven,” he declared. “Be quiet, Barbette! Monsieur de Château-Foix,
half an hour’s talk with you—that is, if you are willing . . . if your
views——”
“My views,” said Gilbert rather sombrely, “have something changed of
late.”
“God be praised for that!” broke in a faint voice, and both men,
starting, looked down at the quiet and momentarily forgotten figure
on the settle. Louis’ eyes were shut, but his own mischievous smile
played for an instant about his white lips. La Rouërie bent over him.
“My cousin may be an apothecary,” continued the Vicomte, opening his
eyes, “but you are a better surgeon, Monsieur . . . le Marquis. Permit
me to thank you with all my heart.”
“You heard?” ejaculated Gilbert.
“Indistinctly,” replied his cousin. “I am prepared not to have heard
if Monsieur wishes.”
“Not in the least,” said La Rouërie quickly. “Yes, you may sit up if
you wish. Do not try to stand yet. Barbette, where is my flask of
brandy?”
“I will get mine,” said Gilbert, hastening to the door.
La Rouërie quitted Louis and came after him. “Barbette shall show you
where to put the horses,” he said in a low voice. “You cannot possibly
go on to-night.”
“But we cannot stay here,” protested Gilbert.
“On the contrary, you can perfectly well do so. You will probably kill
that young man if you take him on to-night. Besides, I want a talk
with you.”
“But you—your own danger——” stammered Gilbert.
The prescript shrugged his shoulders. “I am only ‘Monsieur Milet’, a
merchant of Bordeaux, staying at the château of Launay-Villiers. The
person I am here to meet may not come to-night; if he does, so much
the better. Barbette would let herself be cut in pieces for me.”
“But not for us,” thought Château-Foix, and hesitated.
“That is settled, then,” said the Breton easily. “Barbette, show
Monsieur where to put the horses, and make us a bed ready at once.” He
took the flask from Gilbert’s half unwilling hand and went back to his
patient.
When Gilbert returned he found Louis propped in the corner of
the settle, talking with rather feverish animation to their new
acquaintance. And suddenly Gilbert realised how nothing, apparently,
could more than a little dim his cousin’s charm—neither illness, nor
fatigue, nor an ill-fitting coat, nor an uneasy conscience. But had he
a conscience at all?
Undoubtedly the Marquis de la Rouërie had a way with him. It seemed
but a short time after Gilbert’s re-entry that the owner of the house
had been reduced to mute if not to acquiescent submission; that Louis,
in spite of his expostulations, had been ensconced in the bed by
which, after local custom, the corner of the living-room was adorned;
and that Gilbert was sitting on the settle by the side of “Monsieur
Milet,” talking as if he had known him all his life.
Armand de la Rouërie’s turbulent past was indeed common property, and
Vendée no less than his native Brittany had heard of his light loves,
his follies and his duels, as well as of his sojourn in the Bastille
on a point of provincial independence and his service in America under
Lafayette. Gilbert knew also, vaguely, that this firebrand had made
himself the head of a secret Royalist organisation in Brittany, that
his château near Antrain was its focus, and that since the end of the
previous May he had disappeared, no research having revealed the
retreat whence he still continued the direction of his schemes. But
what he had heard of the Marquis had not particularly disposed him in
his favour, and of his plans he knew no more than rumour whispered.
And here, in a little Maine cottage, the man himself, impetuous and
magnetic, and infinitely more capable than Gilbert had ever dreamt,
was laying before him the details of an organisation astoundingly
complete, ramified throughout Brittany and awaiting only the signal
from Coblentz to put itself in motion. When the army of the Princes,
said La Rouërie, entering France by Thionville and Verdun, had got as
far as Chalons, he should give the word, and march on Paris with his
nucleus of ten thousand men.
The man himself, of a character so diametrically opposed to his own,
attracted Gilbert strangely; the organisation which his fiery brain
had conceived and carried out in less than a year amazed him by its
efficiency, but with its immediate object he could not sympathise, and
he remained silent when La Rouërie had finished.
“You don’t approve?” said the Breton, flashing a quick glance at him.
“Not of invasion,” answered Gilbert.
“Not of the return of voluntary exiles, with our banished Princes at
their head?”
“Perhaps,” said Château-Foix, “if they came back unsupported by
Prussian or Austrian levies. But they will not.”
The Marquis de la Rouërie shrugged his shoulders. “Then, were you in
my place, Monsieur, you would not, if you could, march on Paris to
deliver the King?”
“I would do it to-morrow if I were sure that I should not meet
Ferdinand of Brunswick under the walls!”
La Rouërie sprang to his feet. “M. de Château-Foix, men have called me
reckless and unpractical, but you! . . . I will strike a bargain with
you. Organise Vendée as I have organised Brittany, and in six months
we will march together on Paris with never a Prussian to help us!”
So electric was his enthusiasm, as he stood there with sparkling eyes
and outstretched hand, that the soldier’s dreams which Château-Foix
had long relinquished glowed hot for a moment before him, and he
stared up at La Rouërie fascinated, gripping the edge of the settle
with his hands. The Breton laid hold of the heavy oaken table and
dragged it nearer.
“See,” he said, taking out a knife and scoring the wood, “here is the
Loire; here is your coast-line. I began by creating a council in the
_chef-lieu_ of every department. Now here are yours—Fontenay for your
own department of Vendée proper,” he stabbed the point into the table,
“Niort for Deux-Sèvres, Angers——”
Gilbert got up and interrupted the draughtsman. “Tell me as much as
you will of your own plans, M. de la Rouërie,” he said gravely, “and
be assured of my sympathy and admiration, but do not hope to see the
like succeed on the left bank of the Loire. If our people ever rise——”
“You will wish that you had organised them beforehand,” said La
Rouërie like a flash. He had left the knife still stabbed into the
table. “You do concede, then, that there is a chance of their rising?”
“I do not know what to think,” replied Gilbert. “But if ever they do,
I am assured of this, that they will never be organised from above,
nor will political considerations have much power to sway them. If
ever it comes, the uprising will be a purely spontaneous movement from
below, due to the religious persecution which has pressed so heavily
on Vendée for the past two years and more.”
“And who will lead them?” cried the Breton. “Their priests? M. de
Château-Foix, pardon me for saying so, but you are a true Liberal—you
are refusing to look facts in the face. I will grant you, since you
are so convinced of it, that your tenantry, if ever they take up arms,
will do so of their own volition; but to whom will they come when they
have got together the obsolete fowling-pieces and the pitchforks which
will be their arms—in place of the muskets with which you might have
furnished them? Why, to you, to their natural leader! And what will
you do then? Let them go alone to be mown down by the regulars because
the Prussians——” He checked himself. “I sincerely beg your pardon,
Monsieur le Marquis, for I believe that I was on the verge of
insulting you, which was not my intention, since I know that you would
not let them go alone.”
Gilbert put his elbows on the table and his head between his hands.
“You speak nothing but the truth,” he said dejectedly. “God knows what
will happen; I don’t.”
La Rouërie studied him for a moment as he sat there, and then, casting
a sudden glance towards the bed in the corner, crossed the room
towards it. “Can’t you get to sleep?” he asked. “I am afraid we are
doing a devilish amount of talking.”
“Oh, I find it rather soothing than otherwise,” was the Vicomte’s
reply, and La Rouërie, coming back, observed in a low tone to Gilbert:
“I like that cousin of yours, M. de Château-Foix. He has the pluck of
twenty.” To which Gilbert replied rather stiffly that the Marquis was
very good. . . .
It was in truth their conversation which had kept Louis awake, for he
was deadly weary, and had already dozed off only to reawaken, after a
more or less troubled period of slumber, to hear the sound of voices,
and to see, through the faded green serge curtains of the bed, a
close-framed, ill-lit picture of his cousin, seated by the table, his
chin propped on his hands, listening, while La Rouërie, all animation,
passed in and out of the canvas. And once—or was he dreaming?—they
were both standing up, and with them was a man in the dress of a
peasant, talking as eagerly as they.
These snatches of oblivion deprived him of all sense of time, and when
he closed his eyes on the last occasion it might have been midnight,
or ten o’clock, or the small hours. It was consequently a surprise to
him when he was awakened by a hand on his shoulder, and, looking up,
found Gilbert standing over him and the room full of daylight.
“Is it morning?” he exclaimed. “Where is M. de la Rouërie?”
“Gone,” said Gilbert briefly. “It is half-past six. Are you well
enough to go on, do you think? We ought to get to Entrammes or beyond
to-day.”
* * * * * *
“I am sorry not to have said farewell to ‘Monsieur Milet,’ that
excellent surgeon,” remarked Louis later, as they moved off, with
their unwilling hostess scowling at them from the doorstep. “And, by
the way, hadn’t you a third person participating in your interminable
conversation last night, or was I dreaming?”
“No, you were not dreaming,” returned his cousin. “It was the man
whom M. de la Rouërie came here to meet—a salt-smuggler named Jean
Cottereau or Chouan.”
CHAPTER XXIII
TRAVELS OF AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN
“Well hail’d, well hail’d, you jolly gallants,
And whither are you bound-a?
O let me have your company till
We come unto the Sound-a.”
—_The Two Noble Kinsmen_.
As the sun set on Nuillé-sur-Vicoin a single horseman clattered into
its main street, and, drawing rein before the Soleil d’Or, looked
about him. Mr Harry Trenchard had been journeying in France for
pleasure, but even to his impassivity there had come an intimation
that the pleasure was well-nigh over, and that its place was being
taken by an increasing peril which was not, however, without its
own charm. The young man—he might have been thirty—was therefore
proceeding to Nantes by leisurely stages, and on horseback, as his
custom was, he having a dislike to the diligence. Tall, well-built,
well-dressed, he sat his mare with a confident aspect, and as he
looked along the almost deserted street he exclaimed aloud at the
negligence of the hostelry which hung out its sign of refreshment and
provided no ostler to hold the steed of the traveller.
He shouted; no one appeared at the moment, but, as he withdrew his
foot from the stirrup preparatory to dismounting, the figure of a
young man emerged from a side-street on his right and crossed the
cobbles towards the inn. Mr Trenchard was not sure that his voice had
evoked him, but as he looked very shabby he hailed him again in his
resolute tones.
“Hi! my good fellow, come and hold my horse! I shall be out in a
minute.” He swung out of the saddle as he spoke, and when he turned,
with the reins in his hand, was astounded to find the shabby young man
regarding him with what he instantly characterised to himself as “a
d——d insolent French stare.” He looked very handsome, rather ill, and
at the moment decidedly quarrelsome.
“You want me to hold your horse!” he exclaimed in tones of mingled
anger and astonishment.
Trenchard attributed this resentment to the form rather than to the
nature of the request, since the newcomer seemed by no means too
prosperous to be above acceding to it.
“I beg your pardon, citizen,” he said, with scarcely veiled sarcasm.
“I forgot that I was not giving you your proper title. I assure you
that I meant no disrespect to you nor to the French nation—but if you
will not hold her, will you tell me where I can find a citizen who
will?”
Instead of being further irritated by this somewhat unwise address
the shabby young man appeared mollified. The frown disappeared, and,
suddenly smiling an easy smile as one who is amused at an idea of his
own, he came nearer and put a hand on the bridle. His other arm, as
Trenchard now remarked, he carried in a sling beneath his well-worn
coat.
“There is no need; I will hold her myself, citizen traveller,” he said
with a composure not unmixed with the air of one conferring a favour.
Nor was his French, even to the ear of a foreigner, the French of the
lower classes.
Trenchard swept a hasty, half-puzzled glance over him, and went into
the tavern. Outside Louis de Saint-Ermay, who loved all horses, stood
with her bridle over his arm and talked to the Englishman’s mare.
“Was I not a fool, ma belle, to be angry? But it was startling,
confess now,” he said, stroking her muzzle. “I hope your master will
be generous to a poor one-armed devil. And are you not to get anything
yourself?” The mare, pleased by the voice, began to sniff at him, and
finally dropped her nose on to his left shoulder. Louis winced, and,
smiting her softly under the chin, induced her to remove this mark of
favour, on which she searched his pockets for apples, and the Vicomte,
whistling idly, looked at her beautiful lines and wished that he
and Gilbert had a couple of steeds like her in place of their own
broken-down hacks.
Presently out came the mare’s rider again, tapping his booted legs
with his riding-whip.
“Hallo! my beast seems to have taken a fancy to you, citizen. I have
changed my mind about going on; I shall wait until to-morrow. But I
shall want my horse put up, and there seem to be no servants at this
inn.”
“There are scarcely any,” responded Louis. “I will take your horse
round to the stable if you wish.”
“Thank you, citizen,” said Mr Trenchard, feeling in his pocket. “And
see that some one attends to her.”
“If you want that done,” advised the Vicomte, “you had better come
round with me, for most likely there will be no one there, and though
I would willingly stable her myself—she is such a fine beast—I am not
sure that I can manage it with one arm.”
Again the Englishman looked at him, puzzled at his easy tone, and the
assignat between his finger and thumb dropped back into his pocket as
he postponed the moment of recompense. Louis smiled to himself as he
turned to lead the mare; the little interlude was amusing him.
The stables, by courtesy so called, rather resembled a cowshed,
and the yard was thickly coated with various kinds of mire. Here,
however, they did find a sort of ostler, to whom Trenchard a little
suspiciously committed his mare.
“I shall come out again shortly and see that you have done your work
properly,” he said severely, and turned round to reward the holder of
his steed, fully expecting, he knew not why, to find that he had
slipped away. But the shabby young man stood at his elbow in evident
expectation of some recognition of his services.
“Thank you, citizen,” he said gravely, pocketing the blue ten-sol
assignat without a trace of embarrassment. “If you want me to hold
your horse again you will find me in the inn.” And with a species
of salute he made his way over the filth of the yard towards the
hostelry. The Englishman could have sworn that he laughed softly as
he went.
By nightfall the traveller was fully persuaded that the Soleil d’Or
was the worst of all the bad French inns on which he had chanced on
his wanderings. He had the best bedroom, which a tawdry attempt at
magnificence rendered only the more squalid, and he had also the best
supper, a meal which merely awoke in him a wonder as to what the worst
could be like. To eat it he sat at the best table spread with the best
cloth, and he thought as he surveyed the latter article with disgust,
that the inferior tables at the other end of the room, which had none,
might be preferable. And while he studied these less lofty places
he saw at one of them, to his surprise, his acquaintance of the
afternoon. Seen without his hat, in a room full of bucolic faces,
he—as well as the companion with whom he shared the little table in
the corner—seemed to the Englishman oddly incongruous with his
clothes. The discrepancy was so striking that he became curious.
“Can you tell me who those two men are—who is the one with his arm in
a sling?” he demanded of the frowsy wench who removed the thing of
skin and bone, afloat in tepid water, which the inn termed a roast
chicken.
She followed his glance. “He is a druggist’s assistant, Monsieur. The
other is the apothecary.”
“Apothecaries!” repeated Trenchard, incredulously, looking at them
again.
“Yes, sir. The citizen apothecary himself bound up my hand for me this
afternoon when I cut it. He is very skilful.”
“H’m,” said Trenchard sapiently.
He resolved to speak again with the shabby young man, whom he once saw
glance laughing in his direction, but when he had finished the two
companions were gone, and he did not see them again that evening.
Later, when Trenchard tossed in the best bed, he regretted that he had
not applied to the apothecary for some specific against its other
occupants.
But the apothecary might himself have been in the same need, for the
attic which he shared with his assistant was, outwardly at least, more
objectionable than the Englishman’s chamber. Nevertheless, on one of
the two pallets which lay, without bedsteads, on the bare floor, near
the single dormer window, Louis slumbered peacefully. Château-Foix, on
the contrary, was looking up at a solitary star, the only clear object
in view either of his eyes or his mind. At last the star, much gazed
at, seemed to grow dim and die out, and then all at once he was
staring at it again, grown brighter than ever, with the consciousness
of having heard a noise. He listened; it was repeated, and defined
itself as a gentle tap at the door.
For a moment Gilbert hesitated, then he decided not to wake the
sleeper, and got up to see what it was. When he drew back the crazy
bolt he saw standing there, a lantern in her hand, the slatternly girl
whose fingers he had that afternoon bound up. She looked completely
terrified.
“Go! go at once!” she said in little gasps. “You will all be murdered,
or put in prison at least! I heard them say it.”
“Who?” asked Gilbert, bewildered. “And who will be murdered?”
The girl glanced nervously down the staircase. “May I come in, lest
they hear me?” And as the Marquis stepped back for her to enter she
went on quickly: “You and your friend, the English milord. They say
that he is one of Pitt’s spies, and that you are aristocrats. O mon
Dieu, the dreadful threats! I heard them in the bar-room. They are
half drunk; they will denounce you to the section if they are sober
enough, but they will come up and cut your throats if they get
drunker.”
At least the girl seemed persuaded of the truth of her warning. The
lantern swayed in her shaking fingers, and her ugly features were
rigid with terror. What she said was, moreover, quite possible.
Gilbert went across to his cousin’s pallet.
But Louis had already struggled up on to his elbow. “What on earth are
you doing?” he demanded in a sleepy voice. “Is this an assignation?”
Château-Foix told him, while the trembling girl implored them to be
quick.
“Oh, let us leave by all means,” observed the Vicomte when Gilbert
finished. “Can we get at our _ci-devant_ horses; they might go faster
than we can walk.”
“Here is the stable key,” put in their protectress. “There is no one
about at the back, and a lane leads from the yard. I will help you
saddle the horses.”
“And the Englishman?” asked Louis, getting to his feet. “Has no one
warned him?”
“We cannot very well leave him,” said Château-Foix. “Still——”
“Oh, we will give him a chance,” said Louis cheerfully. “He is a good
fellow; perhaps he will tip me again. Just help me into my coat,
Gilbert, and while Mademoiselle and you get the horses ready, I will
go to the milord’s room.”
As Louis in his disabled state could be of little use in the
stable-yard, Gilbert reluctantly consented to this plan, and as
silently as they could the three stole down the creaking staircase.
So it befell that Harry Trenchard was roused from a deep though
troubled slumber by a hand which vigorously shook his shoulder, and by
a low voice adjuring him in English instantly to get up. As his eyes
blinked in the sudden candle-light he pushed his hand quickly under
the pillow.
“That is useless,” said the voice. “I took it away before I woke you.
I am the man who held your horse, and I have come to tell you that you
and I and my cousin are in danger of being murdered.”
Trenchard lay for a full ten seconds and stared at his midnight
visitor without speaking. Possibly his survey convinced him, for at
the end of that time he said slowly: “Then I will get up.”
“Pray do, and be very quick and quiet,” said Louis, seating himself on
the bed. “_Are_ you a spy of Pitt’s?”
“Oho! is that the game!” exclaimed Trenchard as he got out of bed.
“No, I am not. And—imagine your speaking English!—why should we be
murdered together?”
Louis told him, very laconically, while Trenchard hurried on a portion
of his clothing.
“Then you are a proscribed aristocrat?” he asked, surveying the shabby
figure with interest.
“So they suppose,” returned Louis with composure. “Are you nearly
ready, because we cannot wait much longer.”
Trenchard finished buttoning his waistcoat before replying. “I am not
sure that I shall come,” he said suddenly. “Why should I run away from
these rapscallions? I would rather see it out.”
Louis got off the bed and scanned him with a glance between amusement
and annoyance. “Very well, milord,” he said. “Here is your pistol.
Perhaps, then, one of us may have your horse?”
“Confound you!” said the traveller, rather angry. “Why should you take
me for a fool? Why don’t you stop too?”
“Because the next knife I have into me may go further than the last,”
returned Saint-Ermay with meaning. “However, it is nothing to me
whether you come or no. I have warned you.”
Mr Trenchard, half into his coat, stared at him across the bed, and
the dimly-seen figure may have suggested to him that, after all, the
more adventurous course lay in following the unknown out into the
night.
“I don’t know who the devil you are,” he said, “but I’ll come with
you.”
CHAPTER XXIV
“I SENT A LETTER TO MY LOVE”
“O thou unfaithful, still as ever dearest,
That in thy beauty to my eyes appearest,
In fancy rising now to reawaken
My love unshaken;
All thou’st forgotten, but no change can free thee,
No hate unmake thee; as thou wert I see thee.
. . . . . . . .
O thou my star of stars, among things wholly
Devoted, sacred, dim and melancholy,
The only joy of all the joys I cherished,
Thou hast not perished.” —ROBERT BRIDGES.
Fortune was markedly kind to the fugitives. The bar-parlour of the
Soleil d’Or, whence indeed a considerable clamour was heard to issue,
lay in the front of that hostelry; the stable-yard was completely
deserted, and its deep dirt silenced the horses’ hoofs. In less
than ten minutes after their reunion, the three men were riding
unchallenged along the high-road, into which the lane from the yard
had conveniently and unostentatiously conducted them.
“We are in luck, by Gad!” observed Mr Trenchard feelingly. “I cannot
be sufficiently grateful for your warning, Monsieur. May I, without
indiscretion, know whom I have the privilege of addressing? My name is
Trenchard.”
“Forgive me,” said Louis, “and let me present my cousin, the Marquis
de Château-Foix. He has a fancy for travelling as a druggist, and
you may address him as the Citizen Pomponne. I am the Vicomte de
Saint-Ermay, his incompetent assistant.”
“If I had only known——” began the Englishman in some confusion.
“You would not have given me ten sols,” finished Louis, laughing. “I
know it, but I shall not return your bounty.”
The Marquis remarked politely that he was glad to make Mr Trenchard’s
acquaintance, though in unpropitious circumstances, and asked him how
long he had been in France.
“Quite long enough,” responded Mr Trenchard, “to see that this
country, if you will pardon my saying so, is in a devilish bad way,”
and launched therewith into a narrative of his experiences in Burgundy
and Franche-Comté, in the course of which he contrived to impart to
his companions a quantity of information about their native land, and
to lay open his own convictions with no sparing hand. Louis, who rode
in the middle, listened with concealed amusement; the Marquis scarcely
attended to the sense of Mr Trenchard’s utterances, but the knowledge
that somebody whom he did not know was talking copiously about matters
which did not personally concern him, acted as a kind of vent for his
own thoughts, and he let his mind float away on the stream. There
reached him occasional fragments of what appeared to be a lecture on
the English constitution—“the noblest in the world,” on the English
system of local government, “which is just what your lower orders
need,” on the duty of a landlord to reside on his estate. “I am so
thankful,” he heard Mr Trenchard to remark at this point, “to think
that the tradition of our own country is that the interests of the
landlords are the interests of his tenants, and that he is always
welcome back among them. Here, I am afraid it is very different; and
this, it seems to me, is the root of the whole trouble.”
“I must tell you,” said Louis, with a note of enjoyment in his voice,
“that my cousin has always lived on his estates, from choice.”
“Indeed!” said the Englishman, a little taken aback, and Gilbert was
conscious that he was craning his neck in the darkness to look at him.
“I did not believe that there was a single proprietor in France who
did so; I had heard rumours, but discredited them.”
“There are,” said the Vicomte judicially, “a number of such persons,
and in my opinion it is they who are responsible for the Revolution.”
The champion of the resident landlord could by no means accept this
staggering statement, and he proceeded to combat it with due vigour,
evidently expecting the Marquis to bear his part in rebutting the
charge brought against him by his kinsman. But nothing was further
from Gilbert’s intentions, and the argument, which had now taken the
place of the lecture, continued as a duologue.
Owing to the inferior horses of the cousins, the little cavalcade
progressed but slowly, but it did not appear that Mr Trenchard was at
all chafing at having to accommodate his pace to theirs. Indeed, when
pressed once or twice to leave them, he absolutely refused, asserting
that since the Frenchmen were making for the Loire at Varades or
Ingrande, and he was going to Nantes, their ways lay together as far
as Candé. Dawn, therefore, found the three still jogging along the
high-road. But since the paling of the stars conversation had flagged,
and when, about six o’clock, the travellers came in sight of a little
village, they drew rein not unwillingly. Having got a good meal, they
then bought provisions, made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain better
horses, an equally abortive one to induce Louis to rest for an hour,
and set off again unmolested. At midday they rested themselves and
their nearly worn-out horses by the side of the lonely road, and,
though scanned curiously by a passing peasant or two, were unmolested
by questions. Slow as their progress was thereafter, they had crossed
the Oudon by five o’clock. A little later Mr Trenchard, who seemed
determined to find characteristics markedly dissimilar in every one of
the newly formed departments, realised that he had been for some time
on the soil of Maine-et-Loire, and began to look about him with new
interest that he might differentiate it from that of Mayenne. In so
doing his glance fell upon a clump of wayside poppies.
“That—unfortunately—reminds me of my native Suffolk!” he exclaimed,
pointing to it with his whip.
“You come from Suffolk, then?” asked Gilbert, surprised. He might have
heard the fact being imparted to him during the night, had he been
attending more closely.
“I live near Bury St Edmunds,” replied the Englishman. “But I suppose
that conveys little to you, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“On the contrary,” returned Gilbert, “I know the neighborhood quite
well. My mother’s sister married an Englishman, Sir William Ashley of
Ashley Court, near Mildenhall. My cousin and I both stayed with him
some years ago.”
Trenchard expressed considerable surprise, though he knew, it
appeared, that Sir William’s late wife had been a Frenchwoman. Having
elicited from Château-Foix that he had stayed in Suffolk partly
for the sake of gaining an acquaintance with English methods of
agriculture, he entered into a discussion of these which lasted for
another five miles or so.
“When we part,” he concluded heartily, “you must let me take some
message from you to Ashley Court. The distance is inconsiderable, and
it would give me the greatest pleasure in the world.”
“You are very kind, Monsieur,” murmured Gilbert.
“There is Candé,” broke in Louis suddenly. He had not spoken a word
since the Englishman’s revelation of his domicile.
They all pulled up, while Trenchard and the Marquis debated whether
they should enter the little place or no, and finally agreed that
the night could well be spent in a thick clump of pine trees some
quarter-mile off the road, but that the Marquis was to push on
a little towards Candé with the intention of making a sort of
reconnaissance and also of procuring further provisions.
Nineteen hours on a bad horse had not improved the condition of Louis’
wounded shoulder, but he was not particularly occupied with the
curious little shoots of pain along the top of his left arm as he sat
in the fir wood with his back against a tree, and looked at Trenchard,
busy with the horses at a short distance. For as he gazed at him he
detached him from his surroundings, and saw him riding up the wide
sweep of carefully gravelled avenue that led to Ashley Court, with a
letter from Gilbert to Lucienne in his pocket. That Gilbert would send
a letter he did not doubt. It seemed to Louis as if, armed with
the overwhelming desire which swept through him, it would not be
impossible by sheer force of will to dispossess Trenchard’s spirit
from its habitation, and himself journey to England in its place. He
shut his eyes and put his head back against the fir bole. His mind,
wrenched from its moorings by physical fatigue and pain, was floating
away from his control, and seemed to him to be curiously independent
of his body. Scene after scene of the last few days swept mistily
through his mind, but all the time, at the back of them, was some
thought which he was reaching after and could not grasp. At last,
quite abruptly, it formulated itself, and fell, as it were, into his
hand, and he held it, a tangible object, for a moment in his palm. He,
too, could send a letter to Lucienne.
The blood leaped in his veins, and he opened his eyes and saw
Trenchard beside him.
“I thought you might be asleep,” said the Englishman half apologetically.
“I believe I was dozing,” responded Louis.
“You would be more comfortable lying down.”
“I suppose I should,” returned Saint-Ermay; but he made no movement,
and continued to gaze at Trenchard so intently that the latter began
to feel somewhat uncomfortable.
“No,” said Louis at last aloud, “I can’t!” And immediately he shifted
his position, and with the aid of his unfettered arm slipped down to
his full length at the foot of the tree.
Trenchard, rather alarmed, sprang up and stood over him. “Are you
faint? I have some brandy in my holsters.”
“No, thanks,” said Louis. “I think I am sleepy.”
“Oh, very well,” returned the Englishman. “Look here, I’ll get you a
saddle. You’ll be much more comfortable.”
* * * * * *
And meanwhile, seated on a fallen tree about half a mile away, his
horse grazing beside him, Gilbert also was occupied about a letter to
Lucienne. But there was in his mind no conflict over the question of
sending it—what detained him was its contents. As he sat there, pencil
in hand, there ran through him a thrilling desire, not indeed to
accuse, but to beg for some explanation, for the recital of some
condoning circumstance. Stronger motives stifled it. The events of the
last few days had transmuted his love for Lucienne into a passion
intensely protective, half lover-like, half paternal. He could not
bear for her to have so far to humiliate herself as to acknowledge
that her heart had strayed from him. Moreover, how short a way had it
strayed! He took out and re-read the little singed letter. “I cannot
bear it! Come to me!” The cry, forlorn and despairing, seemed to
flutter across the miles which separated her from him, and to nestle,
faint as a whisper, in his heart. He put the letter back, and a
consuming rage lit his face. Yes, it was so; she _had_ appealed for
protection against Louis—Louis, the traditional _homme à bonnes
fortunes_, who had amused himself with her, no doubt, for a month or
two, and passed on, regardless of the ruin he had caused. By God! it
should be no one’s ruin but his own! Again the image of the copse
smiled at Gilbert, and this time with preciser details. It was
sunrise, and the Vicomte, in his reddening shirt, the sword fallen
from his hand, lay writhing on the woodland grass. . . .
As he came in sight of the clump of firs Gilbert perceived his cousin
lying under a tree with a saddle for a pillow, and a cloak spread
carefully over him. Near him sat the owner of both. “What an excellent
opportunity!” the rider reflected with a sneer.
Château-Foix slept little that night. Towards morning he sank into a
deep slumber, from which he woke with a start to find Trenchard
saddling the horses. Louis, apparently himself again, was assisting
him as well as he could. Château-Foix remembered that they had
arranged overnight for an early start and separation, since their ways
no longer lay together—and it was already six o’clock.
“Why did you not wake me before?” he asked.
“It seemed a pity,” answered Louis cheerfully, pulling at a strap.
“Conceive, also, the virtue I feel at being up before you. Can I help
you with that girth, Mr Trenchard?”
“Thanks, I have finished,” said the Englishman. “What is our next move
to be?”
“Breakfast,” responded Louis promptly. “Don’t I gather that Gilbert
went foraging last night? We used to think an al fresco meal the
height of bliss when we were boys.”
The Marquis went silently to his saddlebags and produced their
contents. Louis talked throughout the brief meal which followed with
his accustomed spirits. Château-Foix said very little. The minutes
were slipping away, and he wished with all his heart that he could
draw Trenchard aside to give him the letter to Lucienne, but it was
impossible to do it without attracting Saint-Ermay’s attention. The
idea that Louis would know all the time his purpose in doing so was
insupportable to him. Sooner than that he would deliver his commission
in front of him.
It was what he had to do in the end. Somewhat reluctantly the three
led their horses out of the little wood. The upland was astir with the
breath of a new morning. Trenchard’s way lay south-west; and to join
his road, whose signpost rose against the sky half a mile away, ran a
bridle path among the gorse. He mounted slowly; the others stood by
their horses in front of him.
“I wish, by George, that this was not good-bye,” he said with real
feeling. “I can’t make speeches, you know . . . but I’m deuced
grateful to you both. If there’s ever anything I can do I hope you
will command me. Ah, by the way, M. de Château-Foix, what about taking
a message from you to Sir William Ashley?”
Gilbert paled a little. “I mean to take advantage of your kind offer,”
he said, slipping his hand inside his coat. “I will ask you to convey
this letter, not to Sir William himself, but to Mademoiselle Lucienne
d’Aucourt, my affianced wife, who is at present under his care.”
“I shall be only too much honoured,” replied Trenchard, with an
inclination.
“You will be putting me under a great obligation,” said Gilbert. He
glanced mechanically at the letter as he held it, address uppermost.
Louis, leaning against his horse’s neck, was looking away into the
distance, and only his profile was visible. His air of unconcern stung
the Marquis, in some inexplicable fashion, more sharply than any
display of the vital interest he knew it to conceal. The constraint
that he had been putting on himself snapped suddenly, like an
overdrawn bow. “You have perhaps a message to send her too?” he said,
launching the words at his cousin like a missile.
The second that they were out of his mouth he would have given
all that he possessed to recall them. He saw, or thought he saw,
Trenchard’s eyebrows go up, and the color ebb from Louis’ face as he
turned sharply round and faced him. He had himself in hand again in a
moment, and with a control immeasurably stronger for his outburst.
“My cousin and I were both brought up with Mademoiselle d’Aucourt,” he
said to Trenchard with some sacrifice of accuracy. The same ease was
apparent in his tone as he turned to the Vicomte and repeated his
question. Louis had had time to collect himself, as he was meant to
have. He forced a smile.
“Tell Mademoiselle d’Aucourt that I hope she is improving her
English,” he said to Trenchard. He did not look at Gilbert, who handed
to the Englishman the letter, which Trenchard put silently into
an inner pocket. A moment later they had shaken hands with their
companion.
“Good luck to you both,” said he, gathering up the reins. “May I say
‘Au revoir’? I shall expect to see you some day, Monsieur le Marquis,
at Bury; it is a promise, is it not, if ever you come to Suffolk.”
“Certainly,” replied Château-Foix, with something resembling a smile.
Then he drew himself up. “I hope to be at Ashley Court before very
long.”
“To claim your betrothed,” finished Trenchard, crossing the t’s of
this declaration without guessing at its significance. “Naturally.
Well, I hope that day will soon come. Good-bye, sir. Good-bye,
Vicomte. I trust your shoulder will not give you much more trouble.
The invitation, of course, extends to you as well. If ever you can
contrive it, I should be glad to hear from either of you . . . The
best of luck! Au revoir!” He raised his hat and turned his mare.
Gilbert had but one thought in his mind—to repair his error. The last
thing in the world that he desired at present was to provoke an
explanation with Louis, and he bent his energies, quickened by
apprehension, into the attempt to pass off his unfortunate remark as a
natural question, or at least to prevent the Vicomte from thinking it
over. He had never seen a situation more clearly, nor acted on his
knowledge more promptly. Trenchard turned back once or twice in the
saddle to wave his hand. At last he put his mare to the trot; he
gained the signpost and was on the high-road, turned round for the
last time, was seen to cram his hat more firmly on his head, and to
set his face resolutely westward. The episode of the Englishman was
over.
Gilbert plunged instantly into action. “There goes a good son of John
Bull,” said he. “I trust that he will have a safe and pleasant journey
to his native Suffolk. There is no doubt that he will instruct his
neighbours in French methods of agriculture, but I am afraid that he
will not represent them as superior to British. Did I not hear him
lecturing you too on the subject, Louis?”
The Vicomte was looking at him rather oddly, but a smile strayed round
his mouth at the remembrance. “There was more about the country
gentlemen of England than about their farms, so far as I can recall,”
he answered.
“I suspect,” observed Gilbert, pulling at his horse, “that the English
country gentleman is to our friend the embodiment of all political and
social virtue. I am sure that he thinks it a greater privilege to
belong to that sacred class than to be born a Rohan or a Montmorency
in France. . . . Well, shall we be starting? Can you manage to mount?”
“Perfectly, thanks,” responded the Vicomte, his foot in the stirrup.
This solicitude was new, and the sudden flow of conversation amazed
him.
“My idea,” resumed the Marquis, as he turned his horse’s head, “is to
push on as far as La Cornuaille, and then, if we cannot possibly get
other horses, to proceed on foot. These creatures will certainly not
carry us further than that. We could then make up our minds whether to
cross at Ingrande or Varades. Don’t you think that would be best?”
“Certainly,” answered the bewildered Louis.
CHAPTER XXV
“OÙ PEUT-ON ÊTRE MIEUX QU’AU SEIN DE SA FAMILLE ?”
“Où peut-on être mieux qu’au sein de sa famille ?
Tout est content, le cœur, les yeux ;
Vivons, amis, comme nos bons aieux.
Les noms d’époux et de fille sont délicieux.”
—Opera of _Lucile_ (words by Marmontel, music by Grétry).
“No news, and delay again!” exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix, rising
impetuously from her chair as M. des Graves came through the long
window into her boudoir. “Antoine tells me now that the Pouzauges
diligence has been delayed by an accident on the road, so that the
newspaper has not come. It is unbearable!”
“Madame,” said the priest, “I am going this afternoon to see old Mère
Blandin at La Guyonnière, and I will return by the village and see if
the paper has come.”
“Pray, Father, do not do anything so foolish!” exclaimed the Marquise
sharply, for, as had been anticipated, the priest was now an inmate of
the château, and practically in hiding. “I will send Antoine down
again shortly.” She paused, sighed, and said: “It is a terrible pity
that Gilbert has been so punctilious about the date of his marriage
(and that you supported him in it, added her tone). Poor dear Adélaïde
d’Aucourt, she little knew what she was doing when she made that
stipulation. But for her there would not have been all this anxiety
on Lucienne’s behalf—But there,” she added, with a more feeling
resentment, “there is always Louis as well. I feel convinced that he
is at the bottom of this delay. If I had been consulted a little
more——”
“Gilbert did his duty in going to Louis’ assistance, Madame,” said
the priest gently. “It is not for us to lament over the consequences.
Moreover, you have had no bad news.”
“No,” said the Marquise, not noticing that he used the second person
plural where the first would have seemed more natural. “No, there has
been nothing but silence. But that is enough. None, I suppose, but a
mother can understand a mother’s anxieties.” She bit her lip. . . .
“Are you going immediately, Father? Ask Mère Blandin if she would like
me to send her some soup. . . . He is remarkably unconcerned,” thought
the Marquise to herself, as the priest passed out into the sunlight.
“And yet I am sure that, in his own way, he is very fond of Gilbert.”
For more than a fortnight the two had lived together, and it spoke
well for the restraint of Madame de Château-Foix that not until
the last two or three days had she allowed herself to betray how
overwrought she was becoming. The unsettled state of the country was
not in itself sufficient to account for the entire absence of a letter
or message of any kind from Gilbert, and the news of the temporary
popularity of the King since the events of the 20th of June, which had
filtered through to the provinces, was more puzzling than reassuring.
On one count at least—that of Lucienne—the Marquise quite realised the
need of her son’s journey to Paris, but her anxiety caused her to feel
that even for that necessity there must be blame somewhere, and who
was so near at hand to bear this as M. des Graves? There was no fault
to find with him, and sometimes she wished that there had been.
Moreover, his personal safety was beginning to be a care to her. She
watched him now as he went down the steps to the terrace. Supposing
that he met some official from Chantonnay?
There lay open on her table a copy of Saint François de Sales, which
her duty caused her to study. _La Vie Dévote_ was a favorite book with
M. des Graves, and one which he usually carried in his pocket—a fact
well known in the household since the celebrated day, years ago, when
Louis, having obtained possession of his copy, had cut out its
contents and, neatly substituting for them _Manon Lescaut_, had
restored the metamorphosed volume to the priest’s cassock. The
Marquise turned the pages at random and read: “La conduite la plus
parfaite est celle qui est pleine de tranquillité, de quiétude et de
repos.” She did not proceed any further, but glanced at the clock and
shut the book with something like a snap. It was as if M. des Graves
himself had spoken, and there were some things which M. des Graves did
not understand, one of them being, she suspected, the heart of a
mother. Madame de Château-Foix was a good woman and a dutiful daughter
of the Church, but her piety was cast in the mould of action rather
than of contemplation. Some women would have passed the hours of
suspense in prayer, but with her to pray was to work. She spent the
afternoon in a tour of inspection of all the living-rooms in the
château, and it was nearly six o’clock when she returned to her
boudoir, having satisfied herself that Gilbert’s bed was thoroughly
aired. This gave her a feeling of his imminent arrival.
About the same time M. des Graves was walking slowly homewards, his
head and shoulders bent with the weight of care he carried. He was
horribly anxious. Two days ago the newspaper had contained a somewhat
veiled and evidently delayed account of the discovery of a Royalist
conspiracy, followed by a number of arrests. There were no names
given, and the Marquise, if she had even seen the announcement, had
mercifully not connected it with Louis’ political escapade nor,
consequently, with Gilbert’s errand. But the priest had every word of
it by heart. Moreover, he knew what Madame de Château-Foix did not
know—that Gilbert’s name had once figured, by accident or design, on
the list of conspirators. For two days he had kept silence, but he was
beginning to feel that he could bear the suspense no longer, that it
was not right to let slip any more time in waiting for news. But what
could he do? He was himself a proscribed man. “Blessed is the man that
feareth the Lord,” he murmured, “he will not be afraid of any evil
tidings.” No, not for himself, perhaps, but when disaster threatened
another, how hard to say that! . . . And all the way up the avenue,
where the shadow of the elm trunks lay long and barrier-like in the
setting sun, he thought of the two boys who used to run to meet him
there, and to escort him on his way with laughter. Of these he had
perhaps helped to send the better-loved to his death.
The Marquise was not on the terrace, as he had somehow expected. He
went slowly up the steps to the salon window, which was open. The room
was empty, but from behind the folding-doors which led into the hall
came the sound of voices, a laugh which rang impossible in his ears,
and a smothered sob. M. des Graves hurriedly pushed open the doors.
In the hall, with his back to him, stood a dusty and travel-stained
figure on whose breast Madame de Château-Foix was laughing and crying.
Another, not at once recognisable as Louis, in an exceedingly old coat
drawn all awry over an invisible left arm, leant rather wearily
against the tall cabinet which enshrined the penultimate Marquis’
collection of Chinese porcelain. Gilbert turned his head, and the
Vicomte sprang forward.
* * * * * *
The most poignant moments of life are always liable to be impinged
upon by the commonplace. Perhaps if the travellers had not been so
palpably tired and dirty the scene might have prolonged itself, but
the Marquise, drying her eyes, soon disengaged herself from her son’s
arms, and declared that she would ask no questions until the two were
rested and fed. Neither the Marquis nor Louis demurred at this fiat;
only the latter turned for a moment with his foot on the bottom stair.
“You didn’t expect us at all—ever!” he whispered to the priest. “I saw
that you didn’t.”
M. des Graves bowed his head. “God’s mercies are too high for us,” he
answered. “Let us not forget to thank Him for them.” But, indeed, as
he knelt in the chapel five minutes later, it seemed to him that he
could not realise so great a restitution.
The prosaic medium of a meal brought them all together again. At
the bottom of the table sat the Marquise, and M. des Graves, on
Gilbert’s right hand, faced Louis across the plentifully spread board.
Unconsciously the priest found himself studying the face opposite to
him, wondering what change not only a perilous journey, but nine
months of absence and a hazardous existence had written there. The
outline of the Vicomte’s head was dark against the unshuttered window
behind him, but his face was in full candle-light. Yet the priest
could read nothing, while he was penetrated by the conviction that
there was something to be read. The young man looked white and tired,
but that was only natural, and he smiled across at his very good
friend with exactly his old half-mocking gaiety. Was there, or
was there not, some impalpable difference? Perhaps the soft,
half-submerged candle-light was baffling, for Louis’ visage remained
an enigma.
But since the observer is himself in no way exempt from observation,
Louis, too, looked between the pointed candle-flames at M. des Graves.
He saw beneath the priest’s eyes the unmistakable black rings whose
recurrence he remembered well in his boyish days, and he attributed
them without hesitation to one of those daylong fasts of which he used
then to hear rumours in the village. But he was wrong, for it was
anxiety which had set the marks there.
It was obvious that the travellers were hungry, and it was equally
obvious that the Marquise, despite her disclaimer, was hungry also—for
information. As soon as the two were served the servants were
dismissed, and when Madame de Château-Foix, after a struggle of short
duration with her nephew, had succeeded in cutting up his viands for
him, it was plain that she would shortly attempt to satisfy her
curiosity. Seeing this the priest, not without malice, entangled her
in a conversation of some complexity concerning one of her pensioners,
the very old woman whom he had that afternoon been to visit. The
Marquise became restive, but it was some time before she could break
free, and meanwhile Louis at least, a prey to an undutiful amusement,
made the best use of his time. At last the poor lady succeeded in her
efforts, and dismissed the obtrusive topic.
“Well, I will send her some soup to-morrow,” she said. “Gilbert, will
you not have some more meat?”
“No, thank you,” replied her son, filling his glass; “we have not been
actually starving, ma mère.”
“Well, then, I do not wish to hurry you, nor to tire you with talking,
but I cannot help being anxious to hear now what has happened to you.
Why did Louis have to come back in those extraordinary clothes?” It
had already been briefly explained to her why he wore his arm in a
sling.
“Because I am a druggist’s assistant,” murmured the Vicomte to his
plate.
“Did you say that you wanted the bread?” enquired the Curé across the
table. Louis took a piece without explaining, but as he did so he
lifted his eyes to the priest’s. Their meaning—which M. des Graves did
not visibly acknowledge—was “You are beaten!”
Gilbert pushed away his wine glass with a sigh. “It is a long story,”
he said slowly, trying mentally to arrange it under headings.
“Suppose you give us the outlines,” suggested the priest.
“Tell me first,” put in Madame de Château-Foix quickly, “what has
become of dear Lucienne. I am most anxious to know what you finally
arranged about her. I wished so much afterwards that I had insisted
upon accompanying you, for what with not hearing from you, and
fancying that you might have been arrested——”
“We are here at all events now, my dear mother,” said Gilbert,
smiling down the table at her. “And Lucienne is, I hope, long ago in
safety in Suffolk. I saw her leave Paris with that excellent woman,
Madame Gaumont, of whom you may have heard.”
“But when was that?” asked the Marquise, in rising bewilderment. “And
what did you do before that—and why have you been so long in coming
back?”
“We did not have a very peaceable journey down here,” responded the
Marquis in answer to the third and last query.
“My dear Gilbert,” said his mother, with a suspicion of tartness, “I
can see that with my own eyes. Do start at the beginning, and do not
assume that we know everything!”
“Dear aunt,” broke in Louis suddenly, “you are not aware of it, but
you are putting too heavy a strain on Gilbert’s modesty. It is more
fitting that I should relate the story. When he got to Paris Gilbert
found that the suspicions which had brought him there were quite just;
at first I did not think so, and stood out against his arguments, with
the result that I spent a night in La Force.”
“You _were_ arrested!” gasped the Marquise.
“I was,” returned her nephew, “and it is owing to Gilbert that I am
not still in that condition. Some of the other poor devils are. When
I was released——”
“One moment!” interrupted the Curé. “What do you mean by saying that
it was owing to Gilbert?”
Louis seemed, as it were, pulled up. “I mean . . . that he got me
out.”
“But how?” enquired his aunt, now grasping the point of discussion.
The Vicomte was silent for a moment and glanced at his cousin.
“Louis, fortunately, had an influential friend among the Girondins,”
interposed the Marquis shortly. About this point the priest began to
understand that he had better have left his question unasked. “It was
through this person that I was able to procure an order of release.
The difficulty of getting out of the city we solved——”
“But I still can’t understand,” said the Marquise persistently. She
turned to Louis. “This person must have been greatly in your debt to
do you such a service.”
“Not that I am aware of,” returned the young man. “Indeed, the whole
affair is a mystery to me. Gilbert must have been very persuasive.”
Here, looking across the table, Louis found the priest’s eyes fixed
upon him. “Were you aware of his powers in that direction, Father?” he
asked mischievously.
“Perhaps I am, my son. Go on with your story,” said the Curé, with the
suspicion of a smile.
Thus urged, Louis gave a vivid account of their exit from Paris,
the Marquise hanging on his words with evident joy at having secured,
if only for a time, a circumstantial narrative. The recital, full
of colour and vivacity, came down to their arrival at the inn at
Pézé-le-Robert, where it suddenly stopped.
“Yes?” said Madame de Château-Foix, her eyes shining like a girl’s.
“Oh, then,” said Louis carelessly, “we had an unfortunate little
affair, which was the real cause of our delay in getting here. As
usual it began in my carelessness—and ended in a knife. An inquisitive
citizen picked up one of those handkerchiefs which you embroidered for
me on my last birthday, my aunt, and grudged the poor druggist’s
assistant his finery. If Gilbert had not dragged me out and carried me
about forty miles to the nearest habitation——”
“My poor boys!” ejaculated the Marquise, shuddering. “How far did you
say it was?”
“Louis is romancing,” said Château-Foix coldly. “The farm was about
three-quarters of a mile away, and he went most of the way on his own
feet.”
“A farm!” said the priest. “Was it safe?”
“I hope you got into a comfortable bed, my poor Louis,” observed the
Marquise.
“A hay bed, my aunt. No, the place would scarcely have been safe for
suspected aristocrats if Gilbert had not again employed his powers of
persuasion with the fair sex, and won us a shelter in the lady’s
loft.”
“Oh, it was a woman! But you did not tell us about any other woman?”
exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix, with every appearance of a lively
interest groping for light.
The Vicomte’s pause at his slip was only momentary. “Quite true,” he
returned in a tone of cheerful surprise. “I forgot to mention the
chambermaid at Dreux, who was so much impressed by his _bel air_ that
she gave us almost clean sheets.”
The Marquise looked disappointed but satisfied, M. des Graves bit his
lip, and Gilbert was not at all amused.
“And did this woman look after you well, Louis?”
“Almost too well, aunt. She hauled me down from the loft and
imprisoned me in her own fastness, whence Gilbert, who might have
been speeding back to you and safety, had a good deal of trouble in
extricating me.” The momentary smiling glance at Château-Foix came
back to the Marquise. “So you see, my dear aunt, that you owe nearly
all your anxieties to your unworthy nephew.”
Gilbert suddenly sat up in his chair. “Louis has quite omitted to
state that if he had not taken the knife in his shoulder it would have
been in my back. It was like this,” he went on rapidly, while all
three stared at him. “When they fell upon us we had each to fend for
himself, but one cannot see all round one, and if Louis had not thrown
himself in between——”
“Rubbish!” interposed the Vicomte, looking both surprised and
disconcerted. “I never knew that the man had a knife till I felt it.”
“That does not alter the fact that you probably saved my life,” said
the Marquis. “Surely after that one would owe everything——” His voice
and eyes dropped, and his fingers played with the stem of his wine
glass.
“Will you bring me some more wine, my dear Louis?” asked the Marquise
in a low voice; and when the young man, rising, brought it from the
sideboard and filled her glass, she laid her hand on his and kept him
for a moment in converse by her chair. Gilbert too got up, and helped
himself to a plateful of the meat which he had not long ago refused.
M. des Graves sat quite still, and looked out at the tops of the elms,
dead black now against a dying green sky. Was that the voice of
gratitude? Not indeed that there had been the faintest note of
grudging in the tribute, but because, to his fine ear, it was pierced
by the sharp consciousness of a counter-claim which might, in a man of
Gilbert’s temperament, have been the very motive of its payment. He
was troubled.
“Will you hear the rest to-night, ma mère?” asked the Marquis,
sitting down again. After all, he had left the plate on the sideboard.
“I must have a conversation with M. des Graves this evening, and it
grows late.”
The Marquise let her nephew go. “We must hear it to-night,” she
answered. “But I hope that you do not all intend to sit up till
morning.”
“You need not distress yourself about me, my dear aunt,” retorted
Louis, dropping into his chair. He looked indeed extremely fatigued,
and even his gaiety rang to the priest a little forced. “I hope,” he
went on, “to be asleep in another half-hour. There is no need for me
to take part in the council. I have always known that there were
advantages in not living on one’s estate. One pays the penalty of
one’s model dairies—though that English milord, by the way, was not
looking after his tenants in the prescribed British fashion. You might
tell them about him, Gilbert.”
The narrative, losing in the Marquis’ hands the lively humour with
which Louis had previously invested it, was listened to in silence.
Nine o’clock struck as Gilbert finished with almost obvious relief.
Madame de Château-Foix sighed, and rose with more obvious reluctance.
“Louis, I release you. You will find your old room all ready for you,”
she said to him, as he lifted her hand to his lips. “And may God bless
you for what you did,” she added softly, kissing him. “Promise me that
you will not keep Gilbert long, Father. Good-night, my son.”
“Good-night, my dear mother,” said Château-Foix, kissing her tenderly.
As he released her, she caught hold of him again. “Thank God that she
is safe too,” she said, emphasising the pronoun. “I wish that she knew
you were so.”
“She will soon know that we reached Candé at least in safety,”
answered the Marquis unhesitatingly. “You may trust an Englishman to
fulfil a promise. I sent a letter by him.”
“You never told us that!” remarked his mother, a little surprised.
“Dear Lucienne! I fear that, once knowing she was safe, I have been
remiss in my enquiries. How did she bear the parting?”
“I had some difficulty in persuading her to leave Madame Elisabeth,”
replied Gilbert in the same level tones. “As far as safety and comfort
are concerned, I am sure that she is in good hands, and after the
events of the 20th that must be some consideration. But I will tell
you all about her to-morrow,” he said, concluding this answer which
was none at all.
“I must be content with that, then, I suppose,” said Madame de
Château-Foix, kissing him again. “And I am forgetting that I can apply
to Louis too,” she added quickly, turning to the Vicomte where he
stood silent, waiting to lead her out. “After all, you really know
more about the dear child just now than Gilbert. How often have we not
been glad that you were near her!”
“Yes,” put in the Marquis slowly, looking at his cousin, though he
spoke to the Marquise, “you must make him give you a full description
of events before I got to Paris.” His voice grated ever so slightly.
Louis made a supreme effort. For the last few moments, between mental
turmoil, fatigue, and real physical pain, all he could realise was
that he was nearing disaster, and he snatched blindly at the forces
which were slipping from him.
“I shall be happy to tell you everything about her to-morrow,” he
said, with an inclination towards his aunt. Yet the ring in his voice
seemed to the priest, who was watching his white face, to be meant for
some one else. “But to-night. . . .” Unconsciously he caught hold of
the high back of his chair to steady himself.
“To-night, my dear boy,” interposed the Curé, coming round to him, “we
can see that you will be back again in the apothecary’s hands if you
do not go to bed at once. Is it not so, Madame? And I want the
apothecary’s entire attention myself.”
“Yes, indeed; I know that I am being selfish,” rejoined the Marquise,
moving forward. “Come, Louis, I will not keep you a moment longer, and
you shall let me dress your shoulder for you.” She swept past him up
the table, and Louis threw a flickering glance of gratitude at the
priest and followed her without a word.
As he went Gilbert awoke to a half-alarmed realisation of what he had
done. If Louis left the room without speaking to him—and, from
whatever cause, he evidently intended to do so—his mother and the
priest would certainly regard it as an extraordinary lapse, on this,
of all nights. He hastily poured out a glass of wine and intercepted
the Vicomte before he got to the door.
“Had you not better drink this before going up the stairs?” he said,
holding it out to him.
Louis took the glass. His brain was by now too confused to transmit
anything but a vague conception of hostility embodied somehow in
Gilbert, whose figure, in a nightmarish fashion, was tending queerly
to vary in size. Whatever happened he must not seem to notice this. He
drank; and, less by the physical stimulus than by some inner succour
of blood and breeding, was restored to speech.
“Thank you,” he said, carefully putting down the glass. “I am all
right now. Good-night, Gilbert.” He paused a second and then held out
his hand; it scarcely shook.
The Marquis took it unhesitatingly. “Good-night,” he returned. “I hope
you will sleep.”
“I hope so too,” said the Vicomte, and with a little white, half-defiant
smile he gave his arm to the Marquise at his elbow. Gilbert held open
the door and the two passed out.
The observer by the hearth had barely had time to feel puzzled and a
trifle hurt at the absence of any farewell from his former pupil, when
Madame de Château-Foix reappeared alone upon the threshold.
“Louis desires your blessing, Father,” she said. “Will you give it him
out here, for I think the poor boy is really too worn out to move a
step further than he need.”
When the priest came back he found Gilbert standing as he had left
him, staring into the fire, but when he put his hand on his arm the
Marquis turned and followed him without a word.
CHAPTER XXVI
BELEAGUERED
“What shall be said of this embattled day,
And armèd occupation of this night!”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _Parted Love_.
M. des Graves paused to shut the library door behind him ere he turned
to Gilbert with the light of a great thankfulness on his face.
“_Deo gratias_!” he said. “Gilbert, it is like a miracle to have you
here, for this afternoon I had a terrible conviction of disaster.”
The Marquis, who had passed him and gone straight to a chair by the
hearth, threw himself down in it as he replied, in a voice by no means
remarkable for grateful feeling: “Oh, I was never, that I know of, in
real danger. But I suppose one is lucky to be back.” He gave a short
laugh devoid of merriment, and leant his head against the back of the
chair as if he were weary.
“You are tired, my son,” said the priest, looking down for a moment
compassionately at his figure, with its air of something deeper than
fatigue. “Go to bed now, and we can talk to-morrow morning.”
“What! when I have not heard all about you!” exclaimed the Marquis,
looking up at him. “No—sit down, Father; I am not too tired to talk.”
At least, if he were, it was rest of a kind to be in here. Louis’
face! What had he said to him? . . . He had half forgotten already.
But with M. des Graves he would neither have the temptation to say
more than he meant to say, nor run the risk of being plied with
questions.
The Curé poked the recently-lit fire. “Then if you really are not too
tired let me hear all about it.”
“About what? You had the narration at supper.”
“Yes, but it was not altogether lucid on some points,” answered the
priest as he sat down. “I am really curious to know how you managed to
get Louis out of La Force. Am I right in concluding that the friend in
need was Madame d’Espaze?”
Gilbert nodded, and then, rousing himself, related his interview with
that lady, finding, to his surprise, that it stirred in him a certain
amount of interest and pleasure. M. des Graves appeared to find in it
the same qualities.
“Well, well,” he remarked at the end, “it will give our poor Louis a
kindly remembrance, after all, of the divinity about whom he wrote so
warmly. And so you brought him out of Paris as your valet? But tell me
about his hurt, for I fear by his looks, poor boy, that it is still
causing him a good deal of suffering.”
“That is quite probable,” remarked Château-Foix, and proceeded to a
more detailed narrative. His strong will carried him successfully
through this recital, but it could not infuse sympathy into his voice.
However, M. des Graves did not seem to notice anything, and, indeed,
Gilbert himself was hardly aware that there was anything to notice.
“Yes, we must look after him well now,” said the priest thoughtfully.
“No doubt rest is all he needs after the continuous travelling. . . .
And Lucienne! How the poor child must have suffered—first that
dreadful experience on the 20th of June, and then the separation! God
grant that it be not long, for both your sakes!”
As he uttered these words the Curé happened to glance across at
Gilbert, and what he saw in his face effectually deprived him for the
moment of further speech. Startled and shocked, he looked hastily
away, and, hardly knowing what he was doing, again took up the poker
at his feet and thrust it into the fire.
“You will put the fire out, mon père,” said Gilbert. “There is too
much wood on it, or else it is green. Let me take off the top log.
That is better. . . . Let me see: what were we talking of? Oh,
Lucienne’s journey. . . . The Princess and Madame Gaumont were most
kind; and I wrote, of course, to my uncle Ashley.”
“The child must be in Suffolk by now,” observed the priest, following
his lead.
“Long ago, I imagine.”
“You have not heard from her since, then?”
“Not unless there is a letter awaiting me here. But I know that there
is not. No doubt I shall have one in a day or two. . . . And now,
Father, it is getting late, and I must hear about you and events
here.”
The priest bent forward. “Gilbert, I must tell you first a very
serious piece of news which concerns you personally, but not
Chantemerle. I did not want to tell you immediately upon your
arrival—nor before the others. There was a rising last week in the
Lyonnais. Château-Foix, among other places, was attacked——”
“And is now no longer in existence,” finished the Marquis coolly.
“How did you know?” ejaculated his companion.
Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. “I did not know. I merely guessed. I
assume from your tone that I am correct?”
“The house was burnt to the ground. I am afraid that there is not a
doubt of it. There were no lives lost; that is one thing to be
thankful for.”
The Marquis continued to be unmoved. “No, I am not in the least
surprised. The whole district was in a ferment of revolutionary ardour
when I was there last spring. I thought that this would happen sooner
or later. As you know, I was never fond of the place, and the wreckers
have relieved me of a few thousand crowns of income and an uncongenial
responsibility. Let me be assured that no one has been burning
anything here!”
“That is hardly likely. There is not really much to tell you. It was
on June 30th, four days after you left, that the Directory decreed the
attendance of all non-jurors at Fontenay. We had warning of their
intention the day before, and Madame, on hearing of it, bade me take
up my residence here at once, in case of a search being made for me in
the village. But there has been no search, and I have not felt obliged
to debar myself from visiting my flock as usual, though I have not
returned to the _presbytère_.”
“I should think not, indeed!” commented the young man. “And, Father,
for God’s sake be careful how you show yourself in the village. Are
you saying Mass in the church?”
“No—here, for the present. Madame allows the villagers to attend—as
many, that is, as the chapel will accommodate.”
Gilbert stared into the fire. “And what will be the next move of these
scoundrels? If only we were not so helpless—if only we were organised
in some way!”
“Organised!” exclaimed M. des Graves in surprise. “Organised as what?”
Gilbert made no immediate reply, but continued to sit, with his elbows
on his knees, staring into the heart of the fire. “I met a remarkable
person on my travels,” he said, without removing his gaze, “a man whom
I never thought to see in the flesh, still less to like—the Marquis de
la Rouërie.”
“You met La Rouërie!”
“Yes, near Laval. He was in hiding. He offered to help me to organise
Vendée as he has organised Brittany.”
“And what did you say?” asked his companion, with the deepest
interest.
“That it could not be done. I am persuaded that it cannot. But I wish
it could.” He sighed. “And then, if it could, I am not sure that it
would be the right course to take.”
The priest, with compressed lips, contemplated Gilbert as though he
found in him a study of absorbing interest. But before he could make
any pronouncement the door opened, and the Marquise was visible on the
threshold, with a candle in her hand.
“I wish that one of you would come and look at Louis,” she said with a
troubled air. “I am afraid that he is in a good deal of pain, and his
shoulder is by no means in a satisfactory state. I am not at all easy
about him.”
“Is he light-headed?” asked Gilbert abruptly.
“Light-headed? No,” answered his mother. “Why should you think so? Oh,
I suppose he has been so?”
“Once,” said Château-Foix shortly; and then, partly for the sake of
torturing himself, partly because his answer seemed to require
expansion, he went on: “He was delirious for several hours the day
after he got his hurt, but then he was in a high fever. I asked
because I wondered if he had any fever to-night.”
“That is just what I cannot make out,” said the Marquise. “I do not
think he has, but he does not seem himself. I should like to send for
a surgeon.”
“You have an excellent one in the house, Madame,” put in the priest
half-jestingly, looking at Gilbert.
The Marquis winced almost perceptibly, and made hasty disclaimer.
“No,” he said, “I know nothing of surgery, and it seems I have done
little good. Will you go up to him, Father?” He turned away as though
the matter were settled, and, with a renewal of the impalpable sense
of discomfort, the priest followed the Marquise out of the room.
Madame de Château-Foix recited symptoms and apprehensions to him all
the way up the staircase, but she let him go in alone.
The shield of Chantemerle, woven in the faded tapestry of the great
bed, replaced above Louis’ head the elegances of his Parisian couch
with a sort of symbolism. He had exchanged the tutelage of his Cupids
and poppies for the guardianship of the nine red merlettes on a golden
ground, quartered with the saltine azure on a field of silver—the coat
of that honourable and very ancient Poitevin house of which, with
Gilbert, he was the last male representative. Since it was summer the
four gaunt posts stood up unclothed, and by the light of a couple of
candles burning on a console by the side of the bed, the priest, as he
entered, saw its occupant turn his head towards him. He looked faintly
surprised and pleased.
“I have come to see how you are,” said the Curé, smiling down upon
him. “Are you in pain, dear boy?”
Louis smiled back. “I do not see that there is any heroic purpose to
be served by denying it,” he replied with his usual light manner, but
in a voice that betrayed him. “Yes, I am.”
“May I look at your shoulder, Louis?”
“Certainly, Father,” responded the Vicomte politely; and as the Curé
came round to the other side of the bed he sat up, shaking back his
loosened hair, and unfastened his shirt.
“Madame has been dressing it, has she not? It is rather a pity to
disturb her work,” observed the priest as he gently unwound the
bandages. “But I should like to see the place. . . . My dear Louis,
it is only half healed!”
“I know it,” said the sufferer, smiling ruefully. “It keeps on
breaking out again, and that is why I am getting so tired of the
confounded thing.”
“Does it pain you more when I touch it?” asked his visitor, making
the experiment.
“It makes no difference. Or perhaps I should be nearer the truth,”
added Louis in his most graceful manner, “if I said that it made it
easier.”
The priest smiled too, as his long skilful fingers replaced the
bandage. The two understood each other, as always, very well.
“Now lie down, my son. This needs looking after, and, please God, we
shall have you as sound as ever in a day or two. You have not had a
fair chance. I wish I could ease the pain.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Saint-Ermay, obeying. “Only it is wearing
to the temper. I have it every night now, but it was rather worse this
evening. By the way, you understood why—why I went out without your
blessing? Just then I was afraid of alarming my aunt.”
“I quite understood.”
“I thought you would forgive me. I believe I scarcely said good-night
to Gilbert either. . . . I really did not quite know what I was
doing. . . . Don’t go, Father!”
The priest returned to the other side of the bed, where there was a
chair drawn up, and sat down in it. “Louis,” he said with gentle
reproach, “it is not conversation but sleep that you require.”
“Well, I can’t sleep,” retorted the Vicomte. “And I don’t know that I
want to talk. I only want you to stay a little.” His tone was light,
but there was something of strain in the smile with which he slipped
his right hand over the bedclothes to his visitor.
M. des Graves took the hand between his own. “What am I to do with
you?” he asked, with a charming half-playful severity. “Do you want me
to tell you how glad I am to have you back—for I believe that I have
not done it yet?”
“It is strange to be back,” said Louis, half to himself. “There was a
time, you know, Father . . . in Paris . . . when I did not think that
I should ever come back.” He gave a toss in the bed. “One doesn’t ever
really come back, does one?”
“My dear Louis, what do you mean?” exclaimed the priest, rather
startled, as the bright eyes fixed themselves on his.
The Vicomte gave an odd little laugh, and looked away again. “I
meant . . . you never come back the same . . . anywhere . . . and
when——” He stopped and caught his breath. “Forgive me—I believe I am
talking nonsense.”
It was true that the pulse in his wrist was hammering hard beneath the
priest’s fingers, but somehow M. des Graves did not think of fever.
Never in his life had he seen Louis so bereft of his usual airy
composure, nor heard him make such a speech, which was the last kind
of utterance one would have expected from him. Was it all due to his
physical condition? The strange scene at the end of supper rose up
again before his mind. Like a wise man he said nothing, but kept the
hot hand firmly in his own cool grasp. And for perhaps two ticking
minutes by the clock Louis said nothing either, but lay staring at the
foot of the bed. Suddenly he flung himself over on to his side.
“Father. . . ”
It was to the priest as though, after many years of acquaintance with
a pleasant lighted window, hung over with a fine and impenetrable
curtain, some one had suddenly pulled aside the veil, and for the
first time a living countenance had looked out from the unsatisfying
glow. It was Louis’ decently buried self which came and looked out at
him in that moment, and it was not at all light and gay like the house
in which it lived, for in the eyes which held him so fast M. des
Graves knew the face of a soul in need. He was afraid to speak or
move.
“Father, I wonder if——”
What was it that the eyes asked so insistently of him? He was ready
to give anything to answer them. With Louis’ hand—clenched and
rigid—between both his own he bent nearer, and said in a voice full of
comprehension and gentleness: “You want me, Louis?”
Suddenly the eyes wavered, the hand in his own lay limp. Louis drew a
long breath between set teeth, then he turned away his head. “Perhaps
it would be better to go to sleep—if I can,” he said faintly.
To whatever disclosure it was the broken prelude, the moment was gone,
perhaps for ever. But even if it had been the priest’s way to attempt
to elicit unwilling confidences—and the Poles were not further apart
than he and that practice—he would have known better than to attempt
it with his present companion. His taciturn cousin would have been no
more difficult subject. The claim for help was withdrawn half uttered;
it was the bitterest disappointment to him, but all that he said was:
“Would you like me to read to you, Louis? Perhaps that might send you
to sleep.”
The Vicomte was regaining his usual self, deeply shaken though it had
been. “Thank you,” he said gratefully. “Yes, I should like it.”
“What shall I read to you, then?” enquired the Curé, not without a
thought of the interrupted conversation downstairs. But that could
wait.
“I will be ill for a long time if you are going to nurse me, mon
père,” observed Louis parenthetically. This time the look in his grey
eyes was very pleasant to see. “Surely you have . . . some book or
other in your pocket. Read me some of that; I don’t mind what it is.”
And with a mischievous twitch of the mouth he settled himself for
Saint François de Sales.
But M. des Graves, quite innocent, sat down and felt for _La Vie
Dévote_, only to find that it was not in the pocket of his cassock. “I
have not got it,” he said, acknowledging by the pronoun the identity
of the volume. “Is there nothing here?” He looked round, and seeing a
little pile of books by the candlesticks took one up.
“Oh, you won’t like any of those,” interposed Louis quickly. “They are
all Crébillon, and so forth. If you look in the bookcase——”
But he stopped, for the priest had with great deliberation put on his
spectacles (concerning which Louis had always held the theory that
they were unnecessary), and now opened one of the deprecated works.
“My dear Louis,” he said, looking at him over the top of his glasses,
“do you imagine that I meant to read sermons to you? I am an old man;
if you can read . . . Voltaire, I see this is . . . I suppose I may. I
shall begin from this marker. Now shut your eyes and try to fancy—if
you can—that you are in church and listening to a homily. That ought
to be efficacious.”
The Vicomte’s mouth twitched again, but he closed his eyes obediently,
and as a kind fortune had placed the marker in the opening pages of
_La Princesse de Babylone_, the reader’s feelings went unlacerated,
and his hearer’s attention wandered off into slumber about what time
the fair Formosante was beginning her lengthy conversation with the
phœnix.
But long after his regular breathing showed that Louis had fallen
asleep, the priest sat and looked at him. If only he could have helped
him! The deepest and tenderest pity filled him for that careless
nature, so wilful and so engaging. And what crisis had faced him now
that he should have attempted to speak of it? Could it have any
connection with Gilbert and his inexplicable constraint? They would
neither of them tell him, because they were neither of them dependent
on him, as he might have made them had he been himself less strong.
But there had been times when the consciousness of that abstention,
far from being sustaining, was beyond words bitter to him, and even
to-night it had power to pierce him with a tiny pang. Things might
have been so different. . . .
The candles flickered gently, and the little feetless, beakless birds
of the coat of arms caught a passing semblance of life other than
heraldic. To the priest those bearings were now more familiar than the
golden cinquefoils of the name which had once been his. . . . He might
almost be a Chantemerle himself by absorption. . . . And suddenly he
saw himself, an ageing man, effaced from the memory of his world, more
than a little tired with two-and-twenty years of monotonous labour
among a people religious indeed, but better served, perhaps, by a
priest of their own class, the schoolmaster of two boys who had
forgotten his teaching, the friend of two young men who would bring
him any troubles but those he most desired to hear, on the verge of
being taken away even from what work he had been able to accomplish
either for them or for his flock—an ageing man, with nothing done,
nothing to show. . . .
Yes, the Allwise had indeed taught him his own impotence, even in this
lower sphere into which He had thrown him. And yet he was content. He
sat there by the bedside, and thought with indescribable horror of
those long years when he could not say that. He thought of the times
without number when he went through his round of duties, visiting,
reading the offices, teaching the two boys, even saying Mass, longing
all the while to get away into some solitude where he could throw
himself into that conflict which was the outcome of rebellion against
his self-imposed sacrifice—a conflict which was all the fiercer
because the citadel of his will was never really shaken. Every time,
at the end, he made the sacrifice anew; every time he found relief,
though it was but the relief of physical exhaustion; every time he
was tempted to think that the offering was not accepted, because he
was left so long in what he now knew to have been the night of
dereliction. How deeply he had learnt during those years the truth of
what had been said to him when, clothed in all the first enthusiasm of
renunciation, he thought that he had already plumbed the deeps of
self-immolation: “You have but entered on the way of sacrifice; I
doubt if you will reach your Calvary for many years.”
All that strife was over now—had grown weaker and less frequent with
time. God had closed that lesson-book; the scholar had learnt content.
He was even resigned that the little which was left him, the
confidence of the two young men for whom he had come to care so much,
should fail him. And he thanked God for the grace to feel this
. . . and came out of his reverie.
Louis was undoubtedly fast asleep now. The priest got up, replaced the
_Princess of Babylon_ on the console, and blowing out one candle took
up the other. He stood for a moment by the bed, shading the light with
one hand, and looking down at the young man lying sunk among its many
pillows, but certainly thinking less at that moment of his physical
than of his spiritual needs. Then with a little sigh he roused
himself, and, making the sign of the cross over the sleeper’s head,
turned and went quietly out of the room.
CHAPTER XXVII
HOUSEKEEPING OF THE VICOMTE AND THE CURÉ
Gilbert slept late next morning. When he at last came downstairs he
could not find the Marquise, and as he was looking for her he met the
Curé emerging from the library. He greeted him, and asked where she
was.
“Upstairs, I believe,” said the priest. “Do you want her, or were you
looking for me?”
“Both, I think,” answered Château-Foix with a smile. “I will wait till
she comes down. I want to finish last night’s talk. By the way, how is
Louis?”
“I am afraid that he is rather worse this morning—a little light-headed,
Madame said. She has sent to Chantonnay for a surgeon.”
“I must go to him,” said Gilbert, turning very pale. Everything, then,
was leagued against his secret; if Louis were really delirious again
it might in an hour be common property, not only in the château but in
the village itself. “I must go to him at once,” he repeated, and
before the priest could protest that it was unnecessary he had
vanished.
About an hour later the door of Louis’ room was heard to unlock, and
the Marquis, emerging, went downstairs to the library.
“I have been thinking over our conversation of last night, Father,” he
began, walking straight to the writing-table. “As soon as it can
possibly be arranged I shall take my mother to Nantes and see her off
to England. It is increasingly dangerous here, and I should like her
to be with Lucienne. I shall only be away a few days.”
The priest looked at him. “I expect you are quite right,” he said,
after a perceptible pause. “But how is Louis?”
“Asleep,” returned Gilbert shortly. “He was not really delirious. I
don’t think he will need the surgeon.”
“I am glad of that,” observed M. des Graves. “I told the Marquise that
it was best to leave you alone, and that she need not alarm herself
because the door was locked.”
* * * * * *
In this way it came about that, five days later, Louis, lying on a
_chaise longue_ just inside the open windows of the library, was
able to remark cheerfully: “And so we are going to have a week’s
tête-à-tête, Father!”
Outside, on the flags of the balcony, M. des Graves was pacing to and
fro, reading his office, and for some minutes the young man’s gaze,
half affectionate, half mischievous, had been following the cassocked
figure, until this time, as it passed, he addressed it.
The priest closed his breviary over his finger, and coming to the
window looked down at the speaker. “A dismal prospect for you, my dear
boy, isn’t it?” he said, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Horrible!” returned Louis, with a mock sigh. “Tell me, has my aunt
left you in charge of the commissariat, for I know that you will
forget to order any meals? . . . No? How fortunate! Please come and
talk to me, Father, or else let me go round the garden. I shall lose
the use of my legs if I have to lie still much longer.”
“My dear Louis,” said M. des Graves, still with the twinkle,
“delighted as I should be to sit down and amuse you to the best of
my poor abilities, I must point out that a parish priest, even
dispossessed, has his duties. In the first place, I must finish saying
my office, in which you have interrupted me; and then I have to hear
confessions in the chapel. As regards the second point, unless you
promise to obey my orders I shall lock you in here until I come back.
I should have thought you had had your fill of exercise lately. Now
promise me!”
“Very well,” said the Vicomte, with exaggerated submission, “I tender
you my oath. And pray don’t let me keep you from fulfilling holy
Mother Church’s behests. I will lie here meantime and think of my
sins. Would you allow me to come as far as the chapel if I succeeded
in raking up sufficient of them?”
If Louis had really meant this request he would probably not have
phrased it differently. M. des Graves was quite aware of this, but he
was not for a second deceived. Nor did he reproach his former pupil
for jesting on sacred subjects. But the humour died out of his face,
and his tone became singularly impressive as he said quietly: “I
should be very glad, as you know, Louis, if I thought that you really
meant to recall your sins. And while I am gone I will leave you
another idea to think over. I am sure you do not know it, but when you
took that knife in your shoulder, there was little more than the
thickness of a sheet of paper between you and almost instant death.
The merest trifle more to the left, and the blade would have severed
the artery. You would have bled to death where you fell. There would
not have been any time to think of your sins then. . . .”
He turned away abruptly, and going out of the window disappeared along
the balcony, revealing to the Vicomte’s notice, not by any means for
the first time, that stern profile which was in such marked contrast
to his full face. “I suppose I brought that on myself!” reflected the
young man, with a half-rueful smile. “One can never depend on his
sense of humour; he is largely endowed—for a priest—but it fails you
when you least expect it.” And for a moment or two he contemplated,
not very seriously, the picture called up by the Curé’s piece of
information. “It would have been a very dirty floor to die on,” he
thought, “and singularly unpleasant company.” He further pondered on
the possible consequences to Gilbert, concluding dispassionately that
it would have been extremely inconvenient for him. “He would never
have left me till I had finished with this bleeding to death which
seems to afford M. des Graves so much relish. Even then he is so
deuced conscientious that if he got away he would probably have
encumbered himself with my corpse—more awkward still.” The idea rather
amused him, until from imaginary pictures his mind slipped on to real,
and for the twentieth time since his return he knitted his brows over
the question of what Gilbert had meant by his tone when he asked him
if he wished to send a message to Lucienne, what precisely had passed
between them at supper a few nights ago, and why his cousin had locked
himself in with him the other morning. Did he, could he know anything?
But there was in a sense nothing to know. . . . And since Louis was
still easily tired, and it was always his habit to live in the
present, he abandoned these problems, and lying there in the sunlight,
half dozing, half watching the lazy clouds in the afternoon sky,
thought of more recent events. That morning had witnessed Madame de
Château-Foix’ departure under Gilbert’s escort. Louis imagined—but as
he had been confined to his room he could not verify his surmise—that
the Marquise had not proved too easy to uproot. But there was no
arguing with Gilbert when he had definitely made up his mind. The only
thing which really surprised the Vicomte was the very short space of
time which had sufficed his cousin to carry out his intention. Lazily
he ran over the details of the departure as he had witnessed them from
his bedroom window; lazily he calculated the time that it would take
the Marquis to get to Nantes, to see his mother off, and to return.
Still more lazily he came to the conclusion that, without his cousin’s
presence, there was a sort of holiday feeling in the air for which
he could not wholly account. On that thought he fell comfortably
asleep.
A couple of days later Louis did go round the garden on the Curé’s
arm, and at the end of two more days ordered a horse to be saddled for
himself. Enquiries, on its non-appearance at the stated hour, revealed
the fact that M. des Graves, who had just heard of his design, had
countermanded the order. Laughing, but not altogether free from
vexation, the Vicomte made his way to the library.
“Your Eminence,” he began mockingly, putting his head suddenly in at
the door. He had the satisfaction of seeing the priest jump.
“Now, my dear Louis,” said the latter quickly, getting up from his
writing, “it is no good being angry with me. As long as Gilbert is
away, you are absolute master here in everything except matters
relating to your own health, of which you are no more fit to take care
than a child. Come now, you know I’m right!” And he came up to the
young man as he stood with his back against the door.
“Eminence,” said Saint-Ermay with great gravity, repeating his
new-found appellation, “I desire you to command me in all things. Is
it invidious to the absent to say that I wish your reign could be
extended? Make the most of the two days remaining to you, before the
State comes back to dispossess the Church!” He slipped out again.
But the priest remained for an instant looking at the just-closed door
with troubled eyes. “He meant that, for all his jesting tone,” he
thought to himself. “Why does he not wish Gilbert to come back the day
after to-morrow?”
True or feigned, Louis’ wish seemed to possess the power to fulfil
itself, for the eighth day brought, not Gilbert himself, but a letter
which astonished both the Curé, its recipient, and the Vicomte. The
Marquis wrote that, having met in Nantes, apparently by chance,
certain agents of the Marquis de la Rouërie’s, he was going off with
them to Eastern Brittany to see that leader. He did not intend to stay
long, but was unable to say precisely when he would return. He would
write again.
“It is so extremely unlike Gilbert,” said M. des Graves in puzzled
tones to Louis, as they stood outside the library window in the
twilight. “He says”—he referred again to the letter in his hand—“‘I do
not think that my détour should delay me more than a week or ten days,
and at that cost it seems to me well worth the making. I am very
anxious to see La Rouërie again.’ La Rouërie must have made a great
impression on him.”
Louis did not answer for a moment, but began to pull the petals off a
rose which he had just plucked from the balustrade against which he
was leaning. “Well, I daresay that we can manage to get on without him
for a little,” he said slowly, his eyes bent on the flower. “It all
seems quiet enough in the village just now, and there is no sign of
the Directory’s molesting you any further.”
“I was not thinking of myself,” said the priest.
“I know that perfectly well,” retorted Louis coolly, “but I was.” He
threw down his rose and lifted his eyes. “I know that I can’t be
Gilbert to you, Father, but I’ll do whatever you wish, and between us
we might manage to keep the place going till he comes back.” He looked
at his companion with frank and almost wistful eyes, and in spite of
his anxious thoughts the priest was greatly touched.
“My dear Louis,” he said. . . .
* * * * * *
And, as if a bargain had been struck between them, the old man and the
young settled down to an odd, peaceable, and even humdrum existence in
the house whose master was away they knew not where, and which served
one of them as a hiding-place. The long, fine August days fell into a
sort of routine. Every morning at six o’clock M. des Graves said Mass
in the little chapel; then he breakfasted and betook himself to his
devotions and his correspondence in the library, which had come by now
to be considered as his special sanctum. About ten or eleven o’clock
Louis would invade this retreat, unless, indeed, he had been for an
early ride in the cool of the morning, in which case he generally
appeared an hour or two earlier. But as a rule he came down late,
which was scarcely surprising, for he had nothing whatever to do with
his time.
After déjeuner—or dinner as it usually was—at midday the two walked in
the garden, and probably had a conflict on the subject of the Curé’s
going down to the village, which he was commonly determined to do,
while the Vicomte set forth many prudent arguments—which sounded
strangely in his mouth—on the unwisdom of the priest’s showing himself
there. In the end M. des Graves would go, and Louis, fuming, or
affecting despair, would accompany him. And while the priest visited
the sick, the young man, waiting about in the village street, renewed
old acquaintances of his boyhood—even of his childhood—and found how
deep-rooted in the solemn-faced Vendean peasants was the respect and
confidence accorded to their nobles. After a little while, being
accepted as one of their own _seigneurs_, and accredited, from his
constant companionship of the Curé, with a religious fervour which he
certainly did not possess, Saint-Ermay found himself pretty well
posted up in the temper of his cousin’s tenantry.
And one day the idea came to him of visiting his own. Having a capable
steward, no interest whatever in improving his property, and a
tolerable horror of the country, his appearances among them, since he
came of age, could easily be counted on one hand. He had even—without
the slightest intention of doing so—talked of getting rid of his
embarrassed estate, because he knew that the suggestion annoyed
Gilbert, and bred in the Marquise the sort of horror that amused him
to witness. Now, after talking of this great project every day for a
week, he at last set off for Poitiers, intending to be away about ten
days. . . . He came back in three. The chance of visiting his property
was gone for ever, for it had been declared confiscate to the nation
some three weeks before. Louis found that his steward had fled, that
he himself was supposed to have emigrated, that he could not even gain
admission, and that the attempt to establish his identity had led to
consequences so threatening as to give even his reckless temper pause.
So, furiously angry, and yet not incapable of recognising the ironical
justice of what had happened to him, he returned to his mornings in
the village, his afternoons with rod or gun, his evenings of chess,
talk, books, and early bed. After a day or two he threw off his
resentment, announced a remote intention of taking steps to recover
his stolen property when things were quieter, and congratulated
himself that at least he was saved the expense of keeping it up.
There was also the ineffaceable consolation that the mortgagees
were probably as hard hit as he was himself.
More than a fortnight had passed in this renewed seclusion when there
came a rude shock to its peace. One hot afternoon, after the usual
contest, M. des Graves set out to visit, at some distance, a farmer
injured by a fall from a hayrick; Louis and a spaniel accompanied him.
The priest entered the building, leaving his companions outside, for,
like most farms in Vendée, the place had but one large living and
sleeping room. In a little while the farmer’s wife, learning that the
young _seigneur_ was outside, went to offer him some refreshment after
his long walk. She came in again very hastily, and in a low voice
besought the Curé to go out to Monsieur le Vicomte, for something was
wrong.
The priest went anxiously forth, and found Louis sitting on the bench
by the door with his head in his hands. Between his feet, on the
trampled bracken of the courtyard, lay a newspaper. A dreadful fear
tore at the priest’s heart.
“Louis! what is it?” he exclaimed, stooping over him and laying a hand
on his bowed shoulder.
The face which the young man raised to him did not allay the fear.
“Is it Gilbert?”
The Vicomte shook his head, and then found speech. “It is the King,”
he said hoarsely. “The Tuileries are sacked, the Swiss massacred . . .
the Royal Family are under the protection of the Assembly . . . _the
protection of the Assembly!_ My God!”
M. des Graves was too stunned to offer comment.
“Think of it—the Queen trailing through the streets . . . through a
mob!” He ground his teeth together. “God! why did I leave Paris! I
might have died there with the rest—as I meant to . . .” He choked
suddenly, and his head went down into his hands again.
M. des Graves sat down beside him, and put his arm about his
shoulders. “My dear lad,” he said tenderly, “you had no choice—you had
no choice! And we want you here, Louis. I want you, Gilbert wants
you . . .”
But Louis would not be comforted, though his spaniel, whimpering,
stood up and licked the hands which covered his face, and the farmer’s
wife stood in the doorway clasping her two frightened children, with
whom, a few minutes before, the Vicomte had been playing. Gradually it
came out that he had had the newspaper in his pocket all the while.
That they had not heard the news from anybody else was due to the fact
of their not having been to the village that day. But there was no
doubt about its truth.
At last the two turned homewards, and in that walk the priest learned
a new chapter of the book which he thought he knew so well; saw a
glimpse of the feelings which Louis kept so carefully covered up;
heard and reasoned with his bitter accusations of himself as a soldier
who had deserted his post in face of the enemy. In the end, to console
him, he hinted at the possibility of future opportunities for action
in Vendée itself. The Vicomte listened gloomily, and evidently did not
believe him.
Yet two or three days afterwards, as though to acclaim the Cure’s
prophetic gift, came the news that the peasants had risen in
Deux-Sèvres, under Baudry d’Asson and other gentlemen, and at seven
o’clock that very morning had entered Châtillon without meeting any
resistance, drums and fifes at their head. But when a deputation from
the village came to ask the priest’s advice, he counselled them to
return home, for the time was not yet. He was proved only too right.
For two days the insurgents besieged Bressuire, while in all the
country round the tocsin sounded, and from Fontenay to Nantes and
Saumur the National Guards and troops of the line mustered to the help
of the beleaguered town. The third day Baudry d’Asson tried to carry
the place by assault; his failure threw his undisciplined and
badly-armed followers into a panic. The combat became a butchery, and
National Guards returned home in triumph with severed ears and noses
decorating their bayonets. Two of the leaders who had given themselves
up as hostages were summarily shot, and Baudry d’Asson found an asylum
for the next six months in the subterranean passages of his own
château of Brachain.
Thus miserably ended the abortive rising of August 1792. The village
of Chantemerle, on the edge only of the insurgent district, and,
through the wisdom of the Curé, not involved in hostilities, was
spared reprisals, and remained untouched by the terror which reigned
long afterwards in the neighbourhood.
But over the occupants of the château there lay a gradually lengthening
shadow. It was nearly a month since they had last received news of
Gilbert. They had not the least idea in what part of Brittany he might
now be, and his long silence, his absence when he must know how much
he was needed at home, ended by convincing the Curé that some mishap
had befallen him. And when September broke without the letter which he
hourly expected, his anxiety, fed by a thousand surmises, became very
acute indeed.
It gained on Louis too. “Couldn’t I go to Nantes and see if I can
trace him?” he asked one evening.
“I think that your place is here, Louis,” said M. des Graves, shaking
his head.
“Here! What atom of good am I doing here?” exclaimed the Vicomte
fractiously.
“You are giving an old man very charming companionship, for one
thing,” replied the priest, smiling at him. “Then there are other
reasons.” His tone changed. “Chantemerle must not be without its
_seigneur_ in case—in case he is wanted. And . . . you are Gilbert’s
heir.”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Louis in a smothered voice of horror, and he put
his hand before his eyes. “You don’t really think that?”
“I try not to,” answered the priest.
At the sound of his voice, with the tiny but perceptible shake in it,
Louis looked up, and, seeing how pale the speaker had become, threw
himself impetuously on his knees beside him and seized his hand. “For
God’s sake, don’t! . . . Think rather of the difficulties and delays
he may have encountered on his way back. Why, he may easily have
written and the letter have miscarried. He might walk in unannounced
at any minute!”
It was true, and yet Gilbert did not come. And soon a fresh anxiety
mingled with their fears for him. On the very day of the relief of
Bressuire the National Assembly had confirmed, with aggravations, the
proposed decree of May 27th sentencing all non-juring priests to
deportation. By the second week in September there were a hundred and
fifty awaiting embarkation at Les Sables. It seemed inconceivable
that Chantemerle should continue longer to be unswept by the
devastation. So indeed thought M. des Graves, and in the quietude of
his retreat—for it was now impossible for him to stir outside the
gardens—he made ready for exile. But Louis showed an incurable
optimism, mingled with what the priest rather feared was a disposition
to appeal to force.
“They shall not take you out of this house while I am alive, and
here to prevent it,” he announced one morning, when they had been
discussing the situation.
The Curé shook his head, smiling a little sadly. “If they come for me,
I must go; if they even suspect that I am here, I must go. Otherwise
they will take you as well. You know that they have put several
gentlemen under surveillance for concealing priests.”
“I know of one,” returned Louis, unmoved; “Guerry de la Vergne. But
that was at Challans, a much more patriotic place.”
“Dear lad,” said the priest, “we must look facts in the face. Look
around you at all these parishes—Cezais, La Jaudonnière, Chantonnay
itself. Look where you will, their priests are gone. I will stay here
till the last moment, for it is my duty, but when the hour comes, I
must rise up and go wherever God pleases to send me. And if they come
for me, I charge you, Louis, to give me up at once.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” answered the young man resolutely.
“There are nooks in this old place where no National Guard, however
prying, would ever think of looking. I don’t suppose any one but
Gilbert and myself knows of them; we found them when we were boys.
And, parbleu,” he added, with a sudden smile, “since we are becoming
so vastly prudent, why do you not go and get your passport at once?
You know what you are risking by not doing so—either Guiana or ten
years of prison.”
“Because it is God’s will that I stay by my people as long as it is
humanly possible,” said M. des Graves steadily.
“Very well,” returned the Vicomte; “and it is equally in the designs
of the Almighty that I do my utmost to prevent your being removed
therefrom. But, mind you, no more excursions to the village! If you
want to send your benediction to your parishioners I’ll take it to
them; if they want ghostly counsel they must come to you here. . . .”
M. des Graves saw very little of Louis that day, but about seven
o’clock he strolled into the library.
“Haven’t you got a fire?” he asked, as he flung himself into a chair;
“the evenings are getting chilly. Well, everything is beautifully
arranged. I have been to every single house in the village—I think I
have interviewed every individual man, woman, and child. I am
perfectly hoarse with talking, but I think they all understand now.”
“Understand what?” asked the Curé, rather puzzled.
“That you are gone to La Rochelle, with the intention of emigrating
to England, instead of waiting for deportation elsewhere. That is what
they will all say if any Blues or municipal authorities come to
investigate your whereabouts. Then I have settled how many of your
flock may attend Mass every morning—very few; they must take it in
turns. Personally, I don’t think a single one ought to come, for
nothing in the world will put the authorities sooner on the scent than
hearing that the faithful are trooping up here early in the morning.
But I knew that if I forbade it altogether I should have a conflict
with you. Then nobody is to come to see you unless it is absolutely
necessary; that, I think, is also clear.”
“My dear Louis—” began the priest, not knowing whether he were more
touched or amused by this unwonted activity.
“Now, don’t protest, Father. I am the lord of this domain; you are
non-existent. You went to La Rochelle weeks ago (I vow I shall end by
believing it myself). I am having a very special hiding-place made
habitable for you in case of need; one in which I once shut up Gilbert
for four hours, and whence nobody heard his yells. . . . I told my
aunt that he had run away to sea—so likely! . . . I have also let it
be known that I shall myself immediately shoot any informer.”
“Surely you did not say that to my parishioners!”
“Well, not in so many words; it did not seem necessary. But I read
them a tremendous lecture on indiscretion. . . . Satan reproving sin,
eh? Yet they listened to me as if I had been an archangel!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
LAND OF EXILE
The decades of shearing and rolling undergone by the bowling-green had
rendered it of a fabulous smoothness. Yet the bowl which a cunning
hand had launched with confident care trickled slowly to rest a good
half-inch from its goal.
“Well, I’m hanged!” remarked Sir William Ashley, raising himself from
his stooping posture. “George, you scoundrel, you’ve beaten your
father. Where’s the filial respect of the present generation, hey?”
Sir William was large and ruddy. As he now gazed jollily upon his
victorious offspring his face had some kinship with the westering sun,
which at the moment lighted his property, and glowed upon the dull-red
brick of the Queen Anne house behind him, the trim box hedge, the very
green grass, and upon his own blue coat and gilt buttons.
“I’ll have no more to do with you, George,” continued his parent.
“Here come the ladies—not to congratulate you, but to console me, I
hope. My dears, this villain has had the effrontery to win, after
all.”
“I am sure, papa, that it is good for you,” responded the voice of
Miss Amelia Ashley, as, dark, bright-eyed, and clad in a rose-sprigged
muslin, she came through the opening in the yard-thick hedge. “And
here is Lucienne thinks the same.”
“Do you, Miss Lucy?” asked the Squire, turning towards the white
figure which followed the pink. “No; I am sure that pretty head of
yours never harboured such an idea.”
“But no,” said Lucienne, smiling at him, in her slow, careful English,
“I do not think so, for if it is good for you to lose, then is it
perhaps bad for Monsieur Georges to win, and——”
“Hear that, George?” broke in Sir William, slapping on the shoulder the
tall, silent young man who had, to Lucienne’s eyes, so extraordinary a
look of his cousin Gilbert. “Lucy don’t wish you ill; she has a care
for your character.”
“She is too kind,” said George. “Shall I get you chairs, Amelia?”
“No, thank you, brother,” replied Miss Ashley; “we will sit upon the
seat. Go on with your game, and let papa beat you this time.” She
unfolded and spread upon the stone of the bench an Indian shawl which
she was carrying over her arm. “Now, Lucienne, sit down, and pray that
papa may have better luck. . . . No, don’t allow Rover to put his
paws on your gown. Rover! Down, sir! Lie there and be quiet.”
The setter subsided at their feet, and, to the accompaniment of
criticism or applause from the two girls, Sir William and his son
began a fresh game.
As she sat there looking at them the golden content of that English
afternoon swam into Lucienne’s soul. It was so peaceful; they were so
kind to her—Sir William, George—if only he had not reminded her oddly
of the Marquis—and above all Amelia, with her brisk high spirits and
her warm heart. The memory of those last racking days in Paris was
beginning to grow a little less unbearable, or, rather, there were
things here which made it possible for her to keep from thinking of
them always—even little things such as those which soothed her now,
the click of the bowls, the sun on the grass, Amelia’s pleasant
chatter, the silky coat of the setter at her feet. Perhaps in time
such influences would lay those two spectres of her own creating—her
possible betrayal of Louis to Gilbert, her certain betrayal of herself
to Louis.
Presently a servant came out and spoke to the master of the house,
who, when the man retired, broke off his game and came over to the
girls.
“Mr Harry Trenchard of Dewlands has just ridden over to see us, my
dear,” he said to his daughter, pulling down his waistcoat. “I’ve told
’em to show him out here. Can’t think what he wants; we don’t often
see him in these parts. He’ll make yet another beau for Miss Lucy
here, eh?”
Lucienne, looking up without any particular enthusiasm, beheld,
walking along an alley, an alert and personable young man in riding
costume. He came up, was greeted by Sir William and his son, paid his
respects to Amelia, and was presented to Mademoiselle d’Aucourt, at
whom he looked with an interest which he was at little pains to hide.
“Well, and what wind blows you here, Trenchard?” asked Sir William
bluntly.
“A wind from France,” replied Harry Trenchard, smiling, inspired
perhaps to this unwonted diction by the remembrance of his mission.
“Oh, ay!” assented the Squire, after staring at him for a second, “I
had forgot you’d been abroad. Admired the ladies of Paris and come to
see my new French niece, perhaps?”
“Papa!” exclaimed Amelia reprovingly.
Sir William laughed gently. “Lucy don’t mind my jokes, I know,” he
said, patting her arm.
And Lucienne, smiling and sketching a curtsy, said: “Mais non,
Monsieur mon oncle.”
“And when I was in France,” said Trenchard, directing his remarks at
no one in particular, but keeping the corner of his eye on Lucienne,
“I met with a little adventure, which might have proved exceedingly
unpleasant had it not been for the kind offices of two French
gentlemen.”
“Oh, tell us the story, sir,” urged Amelia. “Come and sit down here
beside us, and make the tale as long as possible, I beg of you!”
So Trenchard, nothing loth, seated himself with the two girls on one
side of him and Sir William on the other. Many exclamations greeted
him at the end of his recital.
“And did you never find out who the gentlemen were?” asked Amelia, for
the narrator had cunningly concealed the names of his acquaintances.
“Perhaps they are in England now; so many aristocrats are over here.”
“No, they were going back to Poitou. And what would you say, Miss
Ashley, if I told you that they—or at least one of them—was a very
near relative of your own? . . . Yes, Sir William, it was your nephew,
M. de Château-Foix, and his cousin—not so nearly connected with you, I
suppose—the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay. It was he who pulled me out of
bed.” And he surveyed with pride the profound sensation he had
produced.
“Well, I’m . . . astounded!” said Sir William.
“Well done, Cousin Gilbert!” murmured George, where he leant over the
back of the seat. And the beautiful French girl, on whom Trenchard’s
gaze was fixed—she had changed colour, was staring at him with wide
eyes and parted lips, had half risen and sat down again.
Trenchard got up. “I am proud, Sir William,” he said handsomely, “to
be in debt to connections of yours. And as a slight token of my
gratitude to Monsieur le Marquis I undertook to be the bearer of a
letter from him.” His hand went to a pocket. “When we parted he gave
me this—for Mademoiselle Lucienne d’Aucourt.”
He held it out, with a deep bow, towards the young lady in question,
where she still sat with Amelia on the Indian shawl.
And would you not have thought, he reflected to himself afterwards,
that a girl would snatch rosily at such a letter? But not a bit. All
the colour had ebbed from the face of Monsieur le Marquis’ betrothed
as she put out a trembling and by no means an eager hand. But Amelia
instantly intervened to shield her discomposure.
“Go into the arbour, dear, and read your letter there,” she suggested
kindly. And Lucienne, murmuring she knew not what, got up and left
them.
They all looked after her as her white dress vanished through the
hedge.
“Poor child!” said Sir William. “It is terrible for her, this
separation from Gilbert. This is the first letter she has had from
him. A good fellow, didn’t you think, Trenchard?”
“Excellent, sir, I am sure, if a trifle serious for his age—you’ll
forgive my criticising a kinsman of yours, I hope.”
“That seriousness is just what I liked in him,” replied the Squire.
“He might have been an Englishman. None of your confounded French airs
and graces, like that young scamp of a cousin of his.”
“Why, papa, I am sure,” protested Amelia, “you yourself spoilt Louis
de Saint-Ermay when he was over here!”
“Well, well,” said her parent, not denying the charge, “I daresay I
did. I am afraid that young reprobate always has been spoilt, and
always will be.”
But Trenchard had a sudden vision of the spoilt child of fortune with
his fettered arm and his set, smiling mouth as they jogged along the
interminable road to Candé. “Still, do you know,” he said frankly, “I
was very much taken with him. He was hurt, you know, but he—— Ah, here
is Mademoiselle coming back.”
Amelia got up to meet her guest. Trenchard reflected that the
girl had not spent much time over her lover’s letter. On the other
hand, the missive had undoubtedly had a salutary effect upon her
appearance; she looked much happier than she had done when she took
it from him. He supposed—and had a glow of self-congratulation on his
perspicacity—that she had hurried back in order to hear from him
further details about her betrothed. Well, to furnish her with such
would be a pleasant enough occupation.
“Mademoiselle will no doubt want to hear more about Monsieur le
Marquis,” he said in pursuance of this idea. “Anything further which I
can tell her is very much at her service.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Lucienne shyly; “but I shall be tiring
your patience, and, besides, we had your interesting story. . . .
Still, there are one or two questions. . . .” There were a hundred;
would she have time to ask them? Surely, since one of her ghosts was
laid, laid by the letter. Gilbert had not interpreted her swoon as she
had feared; had he done so, he could never have written like that.
The secret was still safe, thank God!
. . . Was it she, afterwards wondered Trenchard, who had withdrawn him
from the rest, or had he led her apart? Perhaps it was the others who
had melted tactfully away. At any rate, he soon found himself, by no
means to his displeasure, pacing up and down the bowling-green alone
with this beautiful creature in her clinging white and her large black
hat.
“And now I want to hear about M. de Saint-Ermay,” she said in a light
tone, after a few questions duly answered about her betrothed. “I know
him very well. He was not badly hurt, I hope?”
And Trenchard had no idea that, under the filmy scarf which floated
about her in so graceful a manner, her hands were gripped together
till the nails dinted the flesh.
“No, I suppose not,” he answered a little doubtfully; “otherwise he
could not have ridden so far. But perhaps that was his pluck. He
looked deuced bad at one time.”
The girl put up a hand to the ribbon at her throat, and he wondered
why women could not leave their fallals alone. The brooch on the
velvet was not unfastened.
“I didn’t quite understand how he got this stab I spoke of,” continued
Trenchard after this reflection. “It was in some brawl at an inn, I
believe. Does not M. de Château-Foix mention it? Oh, I beg your
pardon!” he interrupted himself in confusion; “I had no intention of
asking what was in your letter.”
“He doesn’t say anything about it,” said the girl, and her voice, so
light a moment ago, was charged with emotion of some sort. “And I
wondered . . . I mean I thought . . . you see I have known M. de
Saint-Ermay for a great many years . . .”
Her distress was patent now, and a momentary speculation shot through
Trenchard’s mind. He suddenly felt paternal.
“I quite understand your very natural anxiety, Mademoiselle,” he
said kindly. “Shall we sit down for a moment, and I will tell you
everything that I can remember about the Vicomte.”
“Oh,” she said gratefully, “would you?” Then, with an attempt at her
former light manner, and the ghost of a laugh: “It would be a great
weight off my mind, I assure you!”
“Ah, by the way, Mademoiselle,” said the Englishman, suddenly
stopping, “M. de Saint-Ermay gave me a message for you which, ’pon my
soul, I was almost forgetting.”
And now he saw something leap up in those violet eyes. Apologetically,
almost shamefacedly he said: “I am afraid that it was not much of a
message. Monsieur le Vicomte said that he hoped you were improving in
your English.”
Lucienne drew a little sharp breath and looked away. The corner of her
mouth quivered for a second, then she turned and faced him, and said
without apparent effort: “You will have to be the judge of that,
Monsieur. . . . Shall we sit down over there?”
So they sat down at the farther end of the bowling-green, on a rustic
seat by a horrible Georgian nymph, who, fortunately, was fast falling
to decay. The others had entirely disappeared, but their voices could
be distinguished from a neighbouring lawn. In the hearing, therefore,
of the nymph alone, Mr Trenchard gave his fair listener a most full,
true, and particular account of every hour that he had spent in the
company of the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, beginning with the episode of
the horse-holding and ending with the farewell at Candé. When he
ended, saying, “That is really all that I can remember about M. de
Saint-Ermay—except that I took an uncommon fancy to him,” how was he
to know whether the glance of gratitude which he then received was for
the trouble which he had taken or for that last remark alone? At any
rate, he had a most agreeable feeling of confederacy with its giver;
so that when, on departing, he was warmly urged by Sir William and his
daughter to come again, the probable arrival of the Marquise de
Château-Foix being held out as an inducement, he replied no less
warmly that he would do so. The pressure of Lucienne’s little fingers
was still lingering in his as he rode away; for she had already learnt
the English salutation, though he had supplemented it, as was fitting
in a traveller, by the French.
“They have a way with them, a style, a something, these French
girls,” he reflected. “Now look at Louisa Oxenham, though she’ll
make a treasure of a wife.” Would this commendation be merited by
Mademoiselle d’Aucourt, as the spouse of M. de Château-Foix? He
wondered. And as he turned in at his own gates, a half-hour later, he
said abruptly: “God bless my soul! If I were a girl, I know which of
those two men I should have chosen. I believe she regrets it! I’m sure
she does! And that good-looking cousin . . . has he been playing fast
and loose with her? I’d give something to know.”
The same evening Mr Trenchard enormously startled, dismayed, and
shocked the venerable relative who kept house for him by saying
suddenly, as he stood in his drawing-room, and looked upon its brood
of chairs, all clad in the most hideous chintzes procurable: “If a
Frenchwoman had this room, now, aunt, she’d make something very
different of it!”
“Henry!” ejaculated the poor lady, absolutely petrified with horror.
And before she slept that night she penned a long and tremulous letter
to her brother the Admiral, detailing her conviction that Henry,
while on his recent tour in France, had fallen into the clutches of
one of those _dreadful_, _designing_, and _immoral_ women over there,
and _probably a married one_. To the end of her days she never quite
got rid of that most baseless and unworthy suspicion.
It is to be noticed that Mr Trenchard had not selected Miss Amelia
Ashley, the nearest to his hand, for the typical Englishwoman of his
unflattering comparison. He had not forgotten that Amelia was half
French. Yet many people were disposed to do so, though over the
drawing-room mantelpiece at Ashley Court hung the grave, gentle face
of Caroline de Sesmaisons, whom an impetuous Englishman had met in
Paris in his _Wanderjahr_, had wooed and won in forty-eight hours
(defeating her parents in an ensuing three months of hard fighting),
and had carried off, still knowing nothing but her native tongue, to
Suffolk, where she had lived, gracious and idolised, through a short
but singularly happy married life. Not even the fact, abhorrent to
Sir William, that his children must needs be brought up as Roman
Catholics, had disturbed his felicity. He had faced this contingency
when he married Mademoiselle de Sesmaisons, and Lady Ashley never had
cause to complain of breach of faith. She herself repaired to her
duties at Fountainhall Manor, the home of one of the very few old
Romanist families in East Anglia, which was visited at intervals by a
mission priest. The crux had come when she died. But Sir William was a
man of his word, and her memory was too dear to him for outrage. The
children (George was seven, Amelia three years younger) should
continue to be brought up as Papists. But after two or three years
(and it was impossible for Sir William not to regard it as the direct
interposition of Providence) Fountainhall Manor, on the death of its
octogenarian owner, passed into other hands; there was no one to
instruct the children in their mother’s faith, and no chapel at which
they could attend its services. So they accompanied their father to
the parish church, little brands plucked from the burning, and sat
very sedately under the Rector, lifting their infant voices in unison
with Sir William’s, though not always with the choir.
When George came of age his father, with great solemnity and a
dreadful sinking of the heart, asked him whether he would be a
Romanist or an Anglican. The youth not unnaturally chose the
Established Church, and Amelia, when her turn came, made the same
decision. So all was comfortably for the best, and the detested name
of “Rome” had no more need to be mentioned within the walls of Ashley
Court.
Neither their mother’s creed, then, nor any undue trace of her blood,
had clung to George and Amelia. The former was a particularly silent
and undemonstrative young man, and Amelia, under her more Gallic
exterior, had the same equable temperament. Kind, sensible, practical,
spirited, she had ruled her father’s house since she could remember,
and would shortly rule Mr Philip Harbenden’s and make him an excellent
wife, though she was very little in love with him. He loved her and
required taking care of, which was sufficient. Eight years ago her
heart had gone out to the taciturn French cousin, who was already
affianced and whom she had never seen again. It had never wholly
returned to her. Nobody suspected this, and she never intended that
they should, having put the episode behind her, in all the maturity of
her four-and-twenty years, as a foible of her girlhood.
* * * * * *
The letter which Trenchard bore to Ashley Court, although he had
delivered it immediately upon his arrival, preceded by but a few days
another from the same writer, dated this time from Chantemerle, and
announcing to Sir William the approaching advent of his sister-in-law.
Two days later that worthy man, who had not expected her so soon, was
gone to meet her on her landing and to bring her to Suffolk.
On the day of the Marquise’s arrival Lucienne, restless and rather
nervous, was trying to read _Sir Charles Grandison_ in her own room,
when she heard, from the front of the house, a faint crunching of
wheels on gravel. She abandoned Harriet Byron in the midst of her
abduction, looked in the glass to see that her hair was in order, and
went slowly downstairs.
In the hall a group composed of Sir William, Amelia, and George,
already surrounded the Marquise, very stately in a full cloak of dull
purple silk and a hood. At a little distance stood her maid. Sir
William’s setter leapt about the party, and his master’s voice, as
usual, dominated the rest.
“’Pon my soul, Madame, ’tis no use denying it—you must be tired. Down,
Rover, down; confound the dog! Take him away, George, for God’s sake!
Amelia, your aunt’s room is ready, ain’t it? Come, my lady, Amelia
will show you the way. But where is Miss Lucy?”
“Here, mon oncle,” said Lucienne, coming forward, and the group opened
for her.
The Marquise threw back her hood. “My child!” she exclaimed, as she
folded her future daughter-in-law in an embrace at once warm and
dignified. Then she looked at her kindly, said that she hoped the
English air would soon put roses in her cheeks, and was borne off by
Amelia to her room.
She supped in that apartment, and afterwards Lucienne, at her request,
went up to see her. She found the Marquise seated in an arm-chair,
all traces of travel effaced, her plentiful white hair arranged to
perfection. Her maid was unpacking her trunks.
“Come and sit by me here, dear child,” she said, indicating a stool at
her feet. “That will do for the present, Thérèse. Now, Lucienne, tell
me about yourself. You look a little paler than I could wish, but that
is natural, after what you have been through. I hope that in time you
will forget it. You are happy here, I trust, my dear?”
“Quite happy, Madame, thank you,” responded Lucienne, seating herself
on the stool, and thinking that if the Marquise was referring to the
20th of June—and she could have meant nothing else—she had almost
forgotten it already. “They are kindness itself—Sir William, and M.
Georges, and Mademoiselle Amélie.”
“I am glad to hear you call my brother-in-law uncle,” remarked Madame
de Château-Foix in a tone of approbation. “I hope the relationship
will soon be a fact. And you have quite won his heart, Lucienne.
Gilbert would be very pleased.”
At this juncture Mademoiselle d’Aucourt begged for all the news of
Chantemerle, intimating that she had heard a good deal of Gilbert’s
journey from Paris from the lips of Mr Trenchard. The Marquise
complied copiously with this request.
“But,” she said, ending her account of the journey to Nantes with her
son, and her embarkation, “you have forgotten to ask after our poor
Louis. That is not kind of you, petite, after what you owe him.”
“What I owe him?” The girl turned up to the Marquise a very discomposed
countenance.
Madame de Château-Foix gave a little amused laugh. “Don’t look so
horrified, child. I am sure he was glad to do it. The English
gentleman told you, I daresay, that he had met with an injury—Louis,
I mean?”
“Yes,” said Lucienne breathlessly.
“Perhaps he did not tell you that—though Louis, of course, denies
it—he saved Gilbert’s life in the affray they had at that place whose
name I cannot remember. It seems that one of the dreadful men there
had a knife which he would have plunged into Gilbert’s back if Louis
had not thrown himself between just in time. . . . My dear child, what
is the matter? The knife did _not_ go into Gilbert’s back, though, of
course, it is very terrible to think that it might have done so.”
But Lucienne, with her face hidden in the Marquise’s lap, made no
answer. It was not Gilbert’s peril which had struck her speechless.
CHAPTER XXIX
“LES VEILLÉES DU CHÂTEAU”
“Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
One day when all days are one day to me!
Thinking, ‘I stirred not and yet had the power!’
Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way . . .
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Song of the Bower_.
“Jasmin,” said the Vicomte, looking at his retainer in the glass,
“does this remind you of the last time you shaved me? If so, please
don’t cut me as you did then!”
For the old valet, who had at last succeeded in making his way from
Paris, and had arrived the evening before, was now, with joy, tucking
the towel round his master’s neck.
“Oh, M. Louis, don’t speak of it!” he implored.
“Well, I was even worse shaved in La Force, if that is any consolation
to you,” returned Louis teasingly. “And now, just as you are going to
begin, don’t you almost expect to hear a knock at the door?”
“Mon Dieu, I hope not!” said Jasmin with fervour, and ere the words
were out the shaving brush fell from his hand. “Mary Virgin!” he
exclaimed, for some one had knocked at the bedroom door—the quick,
decisive knock of a person who desired to enter at once.
Louis burst out laughing, for, as a matter of fact, his keener ears
had heard and recognised the step. “Come in, Father,” he cried. You
have just given Jasmin a horrible fright.”
But the sight of the priest’s face and of the open letter in his hand
had its effect on the Vicomte also. He jumped up, wrenching away his
towel. “Gilbert!” he exclaimed. “Not bad news?”
“No, thank God, good—on the whole,” answered M. des Graves. “Read it.”
“I take the earliest opportunity,” wrote the Marquis, “of letting you
know that I am laid up in Brittany—at a place whose name I will not
write lest my letter miscarry—with a broken leg. I am in good hands
and well looked after, but some weeks must necessarily elapse before I
can hope to travel. I regret this the more since I hear rumours of a
rising in Deux-Sèvres, and am very anxious to learn that you are still
free from molestation. You might, if you wished, write to me at the
address of 6 Rue Haute-du-Château, Nantes; the letter would reach me
in time. Meanwhile, though I am longing to be back, I must possess my
soul in patience. I have seen ‘Monsieur Milet.’”
Louis drew a long breath of relief. “Well, that’s satisfactory as far
as it goes,” he said, returning the letter. “Gilbert seems to be
seeing life in Brittany. I wonder how he broke his leg. Imagine
Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix climbing out of a window; for I
suppose he was escaping, or something of the kind.”
“I believe,” said the Curé, smiling also, “that you wish you were
‘seeing life’ in Brittany too.”
“Not at all,” returned the Vicomte. “As a temporary country gentleman
I am reaping a perfectly fresh harvest of experience here.” He
suddenly dropped his bantering tone, and gripped the priest’s hands
for a moment. “If you will go down, Father, I will be with you in a
few minutes. Jasmin!” For Jasmin had discreetly vanished.
* * * * * *
A broken leg is not commonly a source of satisfaction to the friends
of the sufferer, but it is undeniable that Gilbert’s injury did appear
in something of this light to M. des Graves and to Louis. So September
drew to a close in less agitating circumstances. It was true that any
day might still see soldiers coming up the avenue to hunt for the
proscribed priest—for whom they had already searched the three months’
empty _presbytère_—that he had to remain closely hidden, that he
was absolutely at the mercy of the denunciation of malice or the
indiscretion of devotion. Above all, there was the danger that the
authorities should see fit to instal a “constitutional” in the cure—a
move which would inevitably have led to the detection of M. des
Graves. But the supply of _assermentés_ was fortunately running short,
and Chantemerle, being a small village, was evidently to remain
(theoretically) priestless. Louis, who really did serve in a measure
as M. des Graves’ means of communication with his parish, was driven
one day to suggest that he himself should seek orders from the
constitutional Bishop of Luçon, and should settle at the _presbytère_.
When Monseigneur de Mercy, the dispossessed prelate, came to his own
again, he could declare the orders invalid, and the Vicomte could
resume his status as a layman without prejudice.
Louis’ spirit of persiflage could not be imagined as wholly deserting
him even in the article of death, but for some time now his gaiety had
appeared to his companion to be a little flagging. The inaction was
indeed fretting him horribly. He seemed to himself to have dropped out
from the contest, he whose ardent royalism had already gone near to
cost him his life. Gilbert and he appeared to have changed places; and
what would he not give to join La Rouërie too! And when, at the end of
August, came the news of Longwy, when, at the beginning of September,
Verdun had opened its gates to Brunswick and the _émigrés_, he
abandoned the attempt to conceal his impatience. The Princes and
the exiles were once more on French soil, would soon be marching
on Paris—and he was not with them. Again he accused himself of
deserting his comrades, for D’Aubeville was in the invading ranks, the
others still in the prisons whence he might have been helping to
deliver them. . . . But that ideal at least could never have known
realisation. Almost simultaneously with the news of Verdun came the
tidings of the September massacres, a red flood which swept away De
Périgny and all the rest with whom Louis had laughed and gamed and
plotted. Jasmin, when he arrived, had furnished terrible details of
gutters running ankle-deep in blood, of harpies dancing wild measures
on the cart-loads of mutilated corpses. And in the smoke of Valmy, a
little later, vanished the illusive hopes of the _émigrés_. That throw
was played and lost. Yet to a man of Saint-Ermay’s temperament it was
poor consolation to have staked nothing on it.
M. des Graves knew this, and sympathised with all his heart. And, as
the monotonous days dragged on, he was touched, even to admiration, by
the Vicomte’s unwearied good temper and courtesy towards himself. He
gave him, in return, much of his time, and, having always tended to
assume in the young man a side for which other people—including Louis
himself—never gave him credit, he would often talk to him of subjects
near his heart. Louis had a curious faculty of understanding.
But Louis himself had a subject not to be discussed with anybody.
Never again, since that evening of fever and weakness, had he been
tempted to speak of Lucienne to the priest. His secret and hers must
remain inviolate. He thought of her constantly. She was dearer than
ever now that the sea lay between them. He could see her in the
English autumn; he could even see her in the future—the uncertain
future—here at Chantemerle, its mistress, when he himself would be far
away fighting under an alien flag. And in the past. . . . But to think
of that was madness. He had held her in his arms and had let her go.
The sting of the thought sent him out on the long lonely rides to
which he was becoming more and more addicted—rides in which the
peasants sometimes saw him galloping like one possessed, and which
brought Saladin home in a state to horrify the stable-yard. For the
old conflict had all to be fought out again between passion and
honour, love and conscience, his duty and his desire.
And yet, though time and separation had fanned his love into a more
ardent flame, would he have done differently if he had his chance
again? He could not bring himself to say so. This seemed strange to
him. He did not know that loss and sacrifice, besides intensifying,
had purified the fire, and that the heavy price which he had paid to
keep his shield in this one thing at least unstained, had come back to
him in other ways.
Besides, it was not a purely abstract question. Nothing of the sort
ever is. Sometimes Louis thought to himself that if he had the spirit
of a man he would go over to England even now at the eleventh hour and
claim her. What kept him back? Not, assuredly, the difficulty of
getting out of the country. . . . No, it was the thought of Gilbert,
of that undemonstrative and reliable kinsman, who held such odd social
views, who was so lacking in geniality, who could be so actively
unpleasant, whose high moral standard was quixotic and irritating,
whom he heartily respected and for whose good opinion he was almost
ashamed to find how much he cared. The discovery that he really loved
his cousin Louis never consciously made.
M. des Graves, though he did not know the truth, saw quite well, in
spite of Louis’ careful and elaborate defences, that he was engulfed
in some mental turmoil. As the days went on the young man fell,
despite himself, into long and most unusual silences. Were these
things merely due to the enforced solitude of what Louis had himself
termed his “retreat”? The priest did not think so.
One event only broke the monotony of the end of October. As Louis was
standing one morning in the hall awaiting his horse, the Curé opened
the library door and came out.
“Good-morning, my dear Louis,” he said. “I wanted to see you before
you started, to tell you that, with your permission, I shall have a
guest at dinner to-day.”
“I shall be delighted,” responded the young man, pulling on his gloves.
“It is not, by any good chance, a lady—one of your parishioners, of
course.”
“If you want to give a dinner-party a to the tenants’ wives,” replied
M. des Graves imperturbably, “I do not see why you should deprive
yourself of the pleasure. No, it is merely a priest who is coming to
see me, and to whom I should be glad if you would extend your
hospitality. He will be here this morning, and has come a long
way—from Rome, in fact.”
Louis gave vent to a little whistle. “And is travelling about in
France at this juncture? Rather a dangerous occupation. Bring him by
all means. He will stay the night?”
M. des Graves replied that he was not sure, and Louis went down the
steps to his impatient horse.
He rode far that morning, and had almost forgotten about the
prospective guest, so that when he entered the dining-room he was
surprised to see, standing by the window in converse with M. des
Graves, a tall thin man in lay dress. Turning round, he revealed to
Saint-Ermay’s view an emaciated face with a bird-like nose and tight,
thin-lipped mouth.
“Louis,” said the Curé, “let me present you to Monsignor Giuseppe
Cantagalli. Monsignore, M. le Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”
The newcomer’s bow savoured as much of a court as Louis’ own. His
peculiarly polished air was indeed the first thing to strike the young
man as they sat at meat together; next, the resolution which lay
coiled beneath it, like a spring of steel. The very way he carried his
head, his neat, precise enunciation, were indications of it. Last of
all the Vicomte noticed the extreme deference which he surprisingly
paid to the Curé.
Monsignor Cantagalli did stay overnight, and at supper Louis got
another impression of him. He had been talking easily and rather
racily about the Curia, seeming to fling about great names in rather a
careless fashion, but giving the listener no clue to the reason of his
visit, which Louis, though he would have liked to know it, was much
too well-bred to ask outright. The Pope’s patronage of the arts, his
love of building, his munificence to the newly-founded Vatican museum
next engaged his tongue, and it was plain that he himself appreciated
to the full the advantages of living under a cultured Pontiff in an
almost Renaissance Rome. Thence the talk had drifted on to the
persecution of the Church in Vendée. Enquiring about the expatriated
priests, Monsignor Cantagalli had been told the story of one, old and
ill, who had been dragged, in a state unfit to travel, to Les Sables,
and had there died from the effects of his journey.
Instead of showing pity or horror, the Italian broke into exclamations
of envy. “_Dio mio_, how glorious! May I die the death of the
righteous, and may my last end be like his!” he said, crossing
himself. “And one has wondered whether there was a chance of martyrdom
nowadays! Here in France you have it. How enormously favoured a
country!”
Louis was tickled. “I think we might manage to do with a little less
of the blessing in Vendée,” he observed. “But of course it is a good
locality. Do you yearn to be a martyr, Monsignore? Personally I should
prefer something a little more sensational than to die of overwalking
myself.”
A veritable fire flashed in the priest’s eyes as he turned them on the
flippant young man. Yet it was not the flame of indignation nor of
reproof but of something else.
“It would be presumption, Monsieur,” was all he said; yet, as Louis
remarked afterwards to M. des Graves, “he threw back his head as if he
were already at the stake snuffing up the smoke.” The Vicomte added:
“If the Monsignore makes a really determined effort to get martyred I
think he has every chance of succeeding.” For Louis had not been
greatly drawn to the visitor; and another cause of offence, though one
which he naturally refrained from mentioning, was his suspicion that
M. des Graves had taken advantage of the rare advent of a priest to be
shriven, and for some reason the critic did not consider the newcomer
worthy to confess a saint like M. des Graves.
One more surprise still Monsignor Cantagalli was to cause the young
man before he departed. It was next morning, and Louis, after
breakfasting in his room, had descended to the library. There was no
one there, and it was not at once that he realised the presence of the
two priests outside the open window, for he could not see them in the
balcony. But suddenly he caught the words, “The Holy Father’s most
express wish,” something in a very low voice from M. des Graves, and
then the Monsignore’s clear, finished tones, with an additional ring
of expostulation—“But, Eminence, surely—” And then they passed along
the balcony out of hearing.
The Vicomte stood stupefied. He felt literally as though he were
standing on his head. That title, which not long ago he himself had
used in jest! No, it was impossible. His hearing had played him a
trick. Granted that the Italian was an envoy charged with some message
from the Curia—though that in itself seemed improbable—what he must
have said was “His Eminence,” referring to some Cardinal or other of
whom he had previously been speaking. But what a queer sensation the
misapprehension had caused him, the listener!
He felt a delicacy, on this, of ever asking the priest why Monsignor
Cantagalli had come to the château, and abstained from doing so. He
had a secret; probably M. des Graves had his. And his own, with the
arrival of another letter from Gilbert announcing his return in a week
or two, began to press heavily on him again, so heavily that in the
end, through no wish or knowledge of his own, it escaped his control.
It had been a long, dull day, during which depression had made inroads
on Louis’ mind so noticeable that by the evening M. des Graves had
found himself, most unusually, conducting almost a monologue, and at
last the young man, on the plea of being tired, had betaken himself
early to bed. The priest sat on by the fire reading. At eleven o’clock
he rose to look for the second volume of his book, was unable to find
it on the library shelves, and recollected that the Marquis had been
reading it before he went to Paris. It was probably still in his room,
and after a moment’s hesitation he lighted a candle and set forth in
search of it. The few servants had gone to bed, and the wide staircase
was black, ghostly, and silent as he ascended. He was still immersed
in what he had been reading, as he gently opened the door of the
Marquis’ empty room and entered.
But the room was not empty! There was a burnt-down fire on the hearth,
a couple of candles on the table, and a coat and waistcoat flung upon
a chair. For a moment M. des Graves was staggered, until he suddenly
remembered having heard that the Vicomte was a temporary occupant of
Gilbert’s apartment. Vexed at his intrusion he turned to go, hoping
that he had not disturbed the sleeper, and speculating as to the
incendiary possibilities of the two guttering candles. “I have a very
good mind to blow them out,” he said to himself. “Louis will tell me
that I am becoming an old maid, but it is really very careless of him.
As he has not heard me he is obviously asleep and cannot need them.”
Having resolved on this precaution the priest advanced softly round
the screen which cut off from his view the bed and a portion of the
table. He did not get very far.
Louis was not in bed, nor was he asleep. He was sitting half dressed
at the table, his face hidden in his arms, in an attitude whose
significance there was no mistaking. . . . And as M. des Graves stood
petrified he saw the young man’s shoulders move and his right hand
tighten convulsively at the same instant round some unseen object
which it held. The priest could not avoid knowing what it was, for
between the fingers flowed the broad blue ribbon which commonly
suspended on the wall the little miniature of Lucienne d’Aucourt.
CHAPTER XXX
FEARS, HOPES, AND MYSTIFICATION OF M. DES GRAVES
If Louis slept soundly during the remainder of that night M. des
Graves did not. He went down slowly to the library, and sat there a
long time by the dying fire, stunned. Louis in love with Gilbert’s
affianced wife! But that was only a part of the calamity. Had it
stopped there the priest might merely have pitied him, the victim of a
hopeless passion which he had tried to conceal. But the case did not
stand thus; there was more behind. All that sensation of tension which
had afflicted the observer at the return of the cousins from Paris
was explained now, and explained in the most disastrous manner
conceivable. For Gilbert knew something, and therefore there must be
something to know. What was it? That Lucienne was deceiving him? Ah
no! God grant that it was not that! Yet what of the look which he had
surprised on the Marquis’ face that evening when he had spoken to
him of Lucienne—a look which had haunted him ever since? And that
mysterious weight on Louis’ mind, of which, the same evening, he had
so nearly unburdened himself—his fits of depression now. . . . Alas,
it was all too clear. . . . Yet he could not believe that the Vicomte
had acted treacherously. He was in love with Lucienne, granted; it was
a misfortune, but that was all. Back came the other argument; if that
were all, how explain Gilbert’s behaviour, Louis’ own dejection? It
all came round to the same heartbreaking inference. . . .
Between these two verdicts the priest was tossed all the next few
days. He began almost to dread Gilbert’s return; he found himself for
ever gazing at Louis, wondering, hoping, saying to himself that the
boy whom he had loved, whom he had brought up, with whom he had always
been on such terms of semi-intimacy, could not have done such a
thing. But he was always faced by the same conclusion, till at last it
became too painful to be much in the Vicomte’s society, and, feigning
stress of occupation, M. des Graves withdrew more and more into
solitude and the library, because he had not the heart to sit or walk
with the young man and think such things of him. But Louis, absorbed
by the mounting tide of his passion, and dispirited by the conflicts
into which it threw him, noticed nothing. Once or twice indeed it
occurred to him that he was seeing very little of M. des Graves, and
that the dullness was becoming intolerable. He really longed for
Gilbert’s return.
Late one afternoon in November he came riding slowly up the avenue.
Under Saladin’s hoofs the ground, covered with dead and rotting
leaves, plashed soddenly; chill drops descended at intervals from the
half-naked boughs on horse and rider, and the Vicomte, usually a
particularly gallant figure in the saddle, had visible dejection in
his air, as he went up under the elms. Instead of summoning a groom to
take his horse or riding round to the stables he dismounted at the
steps, flung the reins on Saladin’s neck, and, slapping him on the
flank, left him to find his own way to his quarters, while he went to
look in upon M. des Graves. Perhaps the Curé would not now be too busy
to speak to him, as he had been all morning.
The library was sufficiently lit by the firelight to show him that the
priest was not there, but the fancy coming upon him to sit down and
wait a few minutes for him he advanced towards the fire—and suddenly
stood motionless. The glow had revealed to him the top of a familiar
black head resting against the back of one of the arm-chairs.
“Good God!” he said softly. “Is it possible?”
It was. In a second Louis was round the chair, bending over it,
shaking its half-dozing occupant. “Is it really you?” he cried,
dropping to his knees beside him.
The Marquis opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said, with his usual composure;
“it is I. I have been back an hour or more.”
Louis, kneeling there, embraced him. “Ma foi, but I am glad to
see you! I can hardly believe you are here! And you have not got a
crutch, or a wooden leg?”
For answer Château-Foix got to his feet. “No, I am perfectly sound.
And you, Louis?”
He suddenly put both hands on his cousin’s shoulders, and, holding him
at arm’s length in the firelight, gave him a long, intense scrutiny.
“Oh, I am all right,” responded the Vicomte easily. “It is you who are
the more recent invalid now. Let us have a little more light on you.”
He freed himself and went to the mantel-piece for a couple of candles,
while the Marquis dropped back into his chair.
“To think of your coming in upon us in this undramatic fashion,”
remarked Saint-Ermay, a candlestick in either hand. “I should have
liked to organise a triumphal reception for you, mon cher.”
“M. des Graves tells me,” responded Château-Foix, again looking at him
very keenly, “that you are a great hand at organisation—that you have
got the whole village under your thumb.”
Louis lit the candles. “It is very lamentable,” he said deliberately,
“to what an extent holy men will give way to exaggeration. All this is
because I said I’d be shot if I’d have the entire population trooping
up here every morning to Mass. Come now, my dear Gilbert, let me hear
all about your wanderings. You owe us a very detailed account to make
up for all the anxiety you have given us.” He sat himself down on the
arm of his cousin’s chair.
“You must wait till M. des Graves comes back,” said the Marquis
quietly. “I was just beginning to tell him when he was called away,
about twenty minutes ago.”
“What a nuisance,” observed Louis. “Well, tell me at least how you
broke your leg. Were you climbing out of the window with a regiment of
Blues after you? I had a vivid picture of your doing so.”
“No, it was nothing so romantic. I got kicked by a horse.”
“But that might have happened to you at home!” exclaimed the Vicomte
in tones of profound disappointment. . . . “Father, he was _not_
escaping by the window!” For the door had opened, and M. des Graves
was standing there looking at them. And a few minutes later, with the
priest in his accustomed chair, and Louis, still booted and spurred,
leaning against the hearth, the returned traveller began his promised
recital.
“The whole thing was the merest chance. After I had seen off my mother
I happened to go into a certain eating-house in Nantes, and sat down
at a table alone. Behind me were two men—not peasants—talking Breton,
which, as you know, I do not understand. But in the midst of their
conversation, to which I was paying no attention, came suddenly,
several times repeated, the words ‘Monsieur Milet.’ And instantly I
found myself devoured by curiosity to know what these men were saying
about La Rouërie—supposing, indeed, that they were speaking of him. I
waited a little, and then in a pause of their conversation I leant
over to them and said: ‘Gentlemen, I do not understand Breton, so that
I have not been eavesdropping on you, but I could not help overhearing
a name which you mentioned. I once had an acquaintance of that name—a
Monsieur Milet.’
“They looked at me in a curious manner, and one of them—he was quite a
young man, and, now I saw him closer, a gentleman—said: ‘It is not an
uncommon name, sir. Of what profession was this friend of yours?’
“I hesitated for a moment, and then, remembering how La Rouërie had
described himself to me, I said: ‘A merchant of Bordeaux.’”
“Tableau!” exclaimed Louis.
“Not at all. On the contrary, we fenced for fully five minutes, I
afraid alike of compromising M. de la Rouërie and myself. For all I
knew they might be police spies, and I suppose that they had the same
conjecture about me. Well, in the end we satisfied each other most
fully. They were confidential agents of the Marquis reconnoitring in
Nantes—a pretty perilous business—and were just about to return to
the interior. As they saluted me and left the ordinary I had an
overmastering desire to send a message to La Rouërie. I cursed myself
for having let slip the opportunity, paid my score and hurried after
them. I found them standing at a corner, talking and looking back, and
as I came up it was evident to me that I was the person they were
waiting for.
“‘Messieurs,’ said I, ‘would it be imposing too much on your kindness
if I asked you to take a message from me to Monsieur Milet?’
“To this they answered that if I would go with them to their lodgings
they would do better, if I liked. I was perfectly convinced of their
good faith, and (I confess it was foolish of me) it occurred to me
that they possibly meant that La Rouërie himself was in hiding there,
and I wanted very much to see him again, so I accompanied them.”
“Do you know,” commented the Vicomte, “that for a rather particularly
prudent person you have the most extraordinary lapses from sagacity?”
A smile glimmered round Gilbert’s mouth. “I went in with them,” he
pursued. “There was, of course, no La Rouërie there—but directly the
door was shut the younger man took my hand and said: ‘I remember now
the Marquis speaking to me of a Vendean noble whom he met recently
near Laval. Are you not he?’ I said that I was. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘if I
know Armand de la Rouërie, he would give a thousand pounds to meet you
again.’ I believe I replied that I would do the same. Well, to cut a
long story short, I arranged to go with them (as it would be a matter
of a few days only) to see La Rouërie, who was supposed to be still at
Launay-Villiers.”
“And he was not?” asked the priest.
“No. Nor was he at Mauron, whither we went afterwards. Finally, after
a fortnight’s travelling and adventures, with which I will not bore
you, we ran him to earth right in North Brittany, near Lamballe.”
“And then?”
“Then, after I had seen him and talked with him, I found it was not so
easy to get back as it had been to get there. The Blues were hunting
vigorously for him; he had constantly to change his hiding-place and I
was forced to go with him. Nor could I send a message to you. So it
happened that I was with him when the news came of Valmy, with all
that it meant to his plans. Calonne’s letter was the final blow.”
“Calonne’s letter?” enquired Louis.
“The minister wrote bidding him defer action till March. That was
really the end of everything. The confederates dispersed, and I, too,
could delay no longer. I started homewards. Then came my accident. I
was nursed at the _manoir_ where it happened, in the family of an old
gentleman, a M. de Saint-Gervais, who had just been sheltering La
Rouërie himself. That was why I dared not give you the name. As soon
as I was fit to travel I started again—and here I am.”
“Then where is La Rouërie now?” asked both his hearers in a breath.
“Somewhere in the heart of Brittany. He absolutely refused to seek
safety in Jersey. I understand that he left the château of La
Fosse-Hingant, near Saint Malo, at the beginning of October. If
Chalons had fallen he and his Bretons would be in Paris now; perhaps
the King would be back at the Tuileries.”
Gilbert spoke with a fire new to him, and the priest looked at him in
a contemplative silence. Yet the recital, whose beginning had been
full of promising description, had disappointingly tailed off when it
came to the real issue. Both men were conscious of this, but Louis’
attempts to extract more particulars met with small success.
“Then what,” asked the Curé at last, “do you consider to be the
result of your journey?”
“To be frank,” replied the Marquis, “nothing at all.”
But the priest did not believe him.
He was more mystified than ever. He had re-entered the room that
evening—he had paused at the door with a prayer on his lips—strung up
to a most uncomfortable pitch of expectation, prepared to see he knew
not what menacing interview going forward within. Instead of that he
had beheld Louis, his depression banished, sitting laughing on the arm
of his cousin’s chair, in amiable converse with the kinsman whom he
had (perhaps) deeply wronged, and who (perhaps) knew it. It was more
than M. des Graves could fathom. Must he accuse Louis of being,
besides a traitor, the most consummate of hypocrites? No; the most
finished acting in the world could not simulate so well. He _was_
pleased to see the Marquis back; his spirits _were_ genuine. And
Gilbert . . . what of his past bearing? M. des Graves knew the
Marquis’ power of concealing his feelings, his reserve, his mastery of
himself; but he did not credit him with adding to these gifts that of
pretending to an emotion which he did not feel. Therefore the ease
which he displayed in Louis’ presence must be real. What had happened
to him? Did he know nothing, after all? Or—blessed supposition—was
there nothing to know?
Of one thing, however, the priest went to bed that night convinced.
Though he could not yet define or measure it, Gilbert had suffered
some moral transformation during his absence. Next day, however, its
nature was made clearer to him, in the course of a long conversation—a
talk more intimate indeed than they often enjoyed—wherein Château-Foix
frankly admitted some change in himself. Contact with facts had at
last shattered the Liberal ideals which he had so carefully cherished.
La Rouërie’s influence possibly counted for something in the process
of iconoclasm. At any rate, M. des Graves was struck with the
attraction which the Breton had exercised upon him; for in this
interview, perhaps because Louis was not present, Gilbert was much
more prodigal of details about their intercourse.
And it was scarcely a surprise to M. des Graves to find that Gilbert
had brought back from Brittany, besides the increased zeal and energy
for which he could not altogether account, a perfectly formulated
desire of emulating, in some measure at least, the work which La
Rouërie had done in that province. For several days the two discussed
this possibility in all its bearings, before Gilbert, once so opposed
to the mere idea, would yield to the priest’s conviction that to set
on foot throughout Vendée a Royalist organisation analogous to that of
Brittany was not yet desirable and would only court disaster.
Moreover, Château-Foix had changed in other ways—or so it seemed. A
day or two after his return a recrudescence of the search for hidden
priests had led both Gilbert and M. des Graves to the conclusion that
prudence demanded the suppression, during the day, of any sign that
the little chapel at the château was still used for worship. It had
therefore been dismantled one morning after Mass, and later in the day
the Curé took Gilbert to look at it.
Everything was gone—the houselling-cloth from the rails, the peasants’
little votive candles from the shrine of the Madonna, the holy water
from the stoup at the door; and the altar itself, stripped of
everything, even of its crucifix, stood deserted and lightless against
the bare wall.
“Jerusalem is indeed made an heap of stones,” said M. des Graves
sadly, looking at the empty tabernacle. “This is the first day for
half a century at least that you have been without the presence of
the Blessed Sacrament here.”
The Marquis said nothing, but when they got outside he began suddenly:
“I saw a thing in Brittany which struck me very much. When I was at
Mauron there was a riot in the church, in which several lives were
lost. In the midst of the turmoil a man, a young man—I learnt
afterwards that he was a noble—sprang up the altar steps and stood
with drawn sword in front of the tabernacle. It was a fearfully
conspicuous position, and he was shot down by a soldier from the end
of the church. The instant that he fell a peasant took his place,
snatching the sword from his hand. I think it was the finest thing I
have ever seen.”
“I agree with you,” said the priest, his face shining. “Yet your
own countrymen might show you a devotion as lofty. Do you remember
the sublime retort of the dying peasant in the troubles at Saint
Christophe eighteen months ago, when the soldier shouted to him,
‘_Rends-toi!_’ ‘_Rends-moi mon Dieu!_’”
“Yes, I heard of it,” said the Marquis, and fell silent.
M. des Graves went to his room. He had by now given up trying to
penetrate the mystery of Gilbert’s relations with Louis. It was
evident that in Château-Foix’ mind there was no room at once for the
resentment which the priest had feared and the new interests and
enthusiasms whose presence he welcomed with ever-increasing surprise.
The Marquis seemed a different man—a man who was at last perhaps in a
fair way to be able to use his own dormant qualities.
And then . . . was this the prelude to a still greater change? The
priest flung himself down before his prie-dieu. Oh, if what Gilbert
had said this morning only meant that his eyes were opening at last to
the greatest motive power of human life, he would not grudge these
years of anguish in which he had been forced to watch the dying, as it
seemed, of early faith and early enthusiasms in the man whom he had
loved more than a son. He would not grudge his own retirement during
these long twenty years, his voluntary serving of a simple and
credulous people, the despair which had threatened sometimes to
overwhelm him. He would be a thousand-fold repaid.
But gradually, as the weeks wore on to Christmas, the priest’s hope in
this respect died out. Yet his conviction of a change in Gilbert had
become certainty. The Marquis’ moderation was gone; he was filled with
a restless zeal for a cause on which, before his journey to Paris, he
had looked almost as a spectator. Not Louis himself was more enraged
at the imprisonment of the Royal Family, more horror-struck at the
King’s trial. At last the supreme shock of the 21st of January hurried
matters to a crisis.
Gilbert would not lay a finger on his own tenantry; it was not a time,
had it been possible, to collect powder or arms, but he must try, if
not to establish, at least to discover some accord among such of the
neighbouring gentry as had not emigrated. There were, for instance,
Gabriel Baudry d’Asson still in hiding at Brachain, Grelier de
Concize at La Chapelle-Themer, M. de Verteuil, the three De Béjarry
brothers. . . . All this, stern, resolute, and eager, he propounded
one snowy evening at the end of January in the library to M. des
Graves and to Louis, who, white as a sheet in his deep mourning, sat
at the end of the table with his chin in his hand and stared at him,
for once deprived of speech by the catastrophe. Before them lay a
printed sheet, which began by stating that the Directory of the
department had considered “that the death of a tyrant might lead the
slaves who served him to excesses likely to disturb the public
peace. . . .” It was the latest proclamation against priests and
_émigrés_, the King’s execution having, ironically enough, stirred up
the authorities at Fontenay to fresh activity against those who were
most crushed by it.
So, in the hush of horror that lay heavy on them all, Gilbert, with
the example and the precept of La Rouërie before him, began to make
plans. But the apathy of the countryside was remarkable. He could see
quite well from the attitude of his own tenantry that the King’s
death, instead of stirring them to action, had numbed them. And with
them he held his hand. The idea of influencing ignorant peasantry, of
pushing them like sheep into they knew not what, was intensely
repugnant to him. If they themselves moved, well and good. Louis, who
had no such quixotic scruples, was made to give his word that he would
say nothing to incite them. Therefore anything that Château-Foix could
accomplish must be done amongst men of his own class, and of these
there were not many remaining. He entered into correspondence with a
few; he thought, he planned, but the day of action seemed after all a
long way off.
Suddenly the promise of it sprang into much nearer view. Lulled by the
quiet reigning in the department, the authorities had not thought it
necessary to replace the troops of the line, which had been drawn off
during the previous summer. Now, at the beginning of February, it
occurred to them to reorganise the National Guard on a more solid
basis, and they issued a decree to that not very unreasonable effect.
Commissioners were to be sent into every canton, and all persons
capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, if necessary by force.
And at once it was made clear to the misguided Directory how deceptive
was the apathy on which they had relied. The commissioners met almost
everywhere with the most lively opposition, which sometimes ended in
actual affray. Even the village of Chantemerle was in a ferment, and
the peasants at first refused absolutely to send their contingent to
Chantonnay. But the thought that, if they did not, the commissioners
would presently descend upon them, finally decided them, very
grudgingly, to do as they were required. Gilbert had advised them to
this course. It did not seem to him, nor to M. des Graves, that the
crisis had come, but . . . was it coming?
CHAPTER XXXI
WAX FLOWERS
“O merry was the lilting amang our ladies a’
They danc’d i’ the parlour, and sang in the ha’,
. . . . . . . .
But they canna dight their tears now, sae fast do they fa’.”
—_Lament for Lord Maxwell_.
“Poor Caroline!” said the Marquise, looking up at the portrait of her
sister. “How she must have suffered!”
Lucienne, taken by surprise, very nearly ejaculated, “Why?” for, as
far as she had been able to gather, Lady Ashley’s English life had
been extremely happy. But, feeling that silence was more sympathetic,
she said nothing.
“And yet,” pursued Madame de Château-Foix, “her exile was voluntary,
whereas ours——” She flung out her hands expressively.
“Perhaps,” hazarded Lucienne, “we shall be able to go back sooner than
we expect. Or perhaps . . . Gilbert will come here before very long.”
The Marquise shook her head. “Neither is at all probable. And really,
if I continue to suffer from my digestion as I am doing at present, I
doubt if he would recognise me should he come. I am getting positively
haggard.” And she then spoke, with the candour permitted by her
nation, of her stomach, and of the state to which English food and the
methods of its preparation were reducing it. Under her handling the
subject seemed as tragic as that of separation and exile—and perhaps
it really was so.
But the not very refined cuisine of Ashley Court was the only feature
in its hospitality open to criticism. The family had proved the
kindest and most thoughtful of hosts. Amelia’s tact prevented the
Marquise from feeling, as she might have done, the delicacy of her
position in a household ruled by her young unmarried niece. Sir
William kept open house, and all through the autumn, what with
shooting parties, guests staying at the Court—of whom Madame Gaumont
had been one—and occasional visits of ceremony from other _émigrés_ in
the neighbourhood, dullness was successfully held at bay. And though
with George Lucienne never attained any degree of intimacy, with
Amelia she soon became fast friends. One bond which drew her to Miss
Ashley was the fact that the English girl had known both Gilbert and
Louis. Not that Lucienne wished to be always talking about the former,
like Madame de Château-Foix, who was only really happy, so Amelia
surmised, when speaking of her son. Indeed it had struck Amelia on one
or two occasions that Lucienne might have displayed more interest than
she did in some recital of her future mother-in-law’s. It never
occurred to Miss Ashley that there was one person conversation about
whom never failed to interest Mademoiselle d’Aucourt. But then there
was never in the nature of things a great deal of talk about Louis de
Saint-Ermay, who was merely a connection of the household. Lucienne,
however, soon contrived that there should be more.
“And what did Louis do when he was over here?” she would ask, as she
and Amelia walked alone about the lanes—a freedom so strange to the
French girl—or sat in each other’s rooms at bedtime.
“Oh, he amused himself; he wore a different costume every day and rode
about with George and Cousin Gilbert; he—— Really I can’t remember,”
the unsuspecting Amelia would reply. “I was only sixteen, you know. I
chiefly recollect how gay and amusing he was, and how good-looking. I
believe I was rather in love with him.” Amelia’s own heart could best
tell her why she soiled her lips with that last gratuitous lie.
Yet if Lucienne had tried she would have found that Gilbert’s doings
were much better stored in Miss Ashley’s memory. But she never made
the experiment. Instead, she would relate to Amelia, with all the
carelessness of which she was mistress, anecdotic fragments relating
to the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay. Had Amelia ever heard that he was
considered the handsomest young man in the bodyguard; that when he was
a boy in the royal pages the Queen had specially noticed him; that he
had fought three duels before he was one-and-twenty; that for a wager
he had once swum the whole length of the Grand Canal at Versailles, an
exploit which had procured him a fortnight’s arrest? And sometimes, in
return Amelia would repay herself for listening to these reminiscences
by drawing out of Lucienne, half against her own will, details about
Gilbert’s daily life—as far as Lucienne knew them.
Thus the autumn went by and winter approached, a season chiefly
welcomed, so it seemed to the two _émigrées_, because it was that of
the pursuit of the fox. The neighbouring squires who had shot Sir
William’s coverts now pranced jovially round the house on their
steeds, or consumed enormous quantities of cold beef and ale within
its precincts, for Sir William was master of the local pack. Amelia’s
betrothed, Mr Philip Harbenden, was his deputy, and it was from the
conversation of these two gentlemen that the French ladies were able
to rate at its true importance the national sport of their adoptive
country.
A rider who often discovered that his way home after a run led
him past the Court, a gentleman who found that the well-being of
the kennels called for frequent visits of inspection—Mr Harry
Trenchard—had carried on since the summer a very agreeable friendship
with Mademoiselle d’Aucourt. It is true that at first she had
not seemed to understand what he wanted, but, by the exercise of
unsuspected tact and perseverance, he had gained her over to a
considerable measure of it. Amelia was amused at his attentions, and
indeed the two girls were apt to laugh a little over him. But in an
odd way Lucienne was grateful to him for his frequent visits. He was
another person to whom she could, if she wished, talk of Louis—though
any possibility of his giving her the smallest detail of fresh
information on that topic had long ago been exhausted. She found
him more amusing than Mr Harbenden (who was, besides, occupied
with Amelia), more sensible than Sir Francis Stansfield (a youth
who, obviously smitten with her charms, was precluded from an
intelligible expression of his sentiments by his lack of French and by
a fashionable jargon of his own which Lucienne could not understand),
less paternal than that distinguished traveller, agriculturist, and
near neighbour, Mr Arthur Young of Bradfield Hall, who paid her rather
charming compliments in her own tongue. George Ashley she placed in a
category apart. She did not understand him, while aware, every time
that she encountered his quiet, observant gaze, that he probably
understood her only too well.
And Lucienne’s instinct was not at fault. The critical George was
classifying his cousin’s betrothed, not, however, without error. In
the summer he had not made up his mind; in the autumn he had ranked
her as a flirt; during the winter he took back this accusation and was
somewhat at a loss. It was plain to him that Lucienne did not care a
pin for any of the young men with whom she seemed to enjoy laughing
and jesting, and this not because she was heartless—rather the
contrary. It seemed to George that she was using their admiration and
their friendship as temporary distractions. Somebody had her heart;
how else account for the fits of dejection and silence which had been
gradually creeping upon her through the autumn? Well, of course, she
was affianced yet separated indefinitely from her betrothed. It was
quite natural to set down these accesses of depression to regret for
him. Sir William did so, sometimes rallying his “niece” openly on the
subject; Madame de Château-Foix probably took them as not improper
tributes to her son’s attractions. Amelia’s opinion George had never
asked, for, except as a student of human nature, he was not interested
in Lucienne, and had no desire indirectly to learn her secret. But it
seemed to him that there was more than the pain of parted love in her
eyes; it appeared more like unhappy love. That look alone, surprised
once or twice by him when she was off her guard, obtained for Lucienne
her release from the class to which she had been assigned, and caused
the young man to regard her with a more lively attention than he
himself quite realised.
Had he known, Lucienne’s heartache was at once a simple and a complex
suffering. It was simple, even commonplace, in that it arose from the
fact that she was in love with a man whom she could not marry. But it
was complicated by several other anguishes, such as the knowledge that
she was deceiving the betrothed whom, had there not been that other,
she fancied she could have loved so well, whom as it was she trusted
and admired, and with whom, after his return from Brittany, she kept
up a regular correspondence. Then there was the constant companionship
with his mother, to whom also she was obliged to show a deceitful
bearing, and who would always be talking of him, especially during
that time of anxiety when they knew him to be in danger in Brittany.
Last and sharpest of all, there was the wild, agonising regret and
shame for her own conduct in that scene of farewell with Louis, for
having at that supreme moment irretrievably cheapened herself in his
eyes, so that, in all probability, she had slain his love for her—a
passion which she had not enough altruism to wish dead. For Lucienne
had gradually been building her lover a pedestal, whose base was his
withstanding of her pleading in that hour. Since Saint Lucian’s Day
their parts had been reversed, and it was Louis, not she, who stood
for honour now. What must he have thought of her even at the time
. . . and afterwards! So she tortured herself into thinking the
absence of any letter or message from him a proof that he no longer
cared for her—forgetting that the elevated rôle she had assigned him
would have precluded him from writing in any case. And the more she
exalted him and conceived him now cold to her, the more did her
passion increase, so that he was always the one stable thought in her
mind, the one figure always before her eyes—except when the presence
of strangers distracted her. And the thought of Louis, barbed with
this humiliating remorse, having become a veritable torture to her,
she ended by craving for this distraction and welcoming it, when it
came, with all her heart.
Meanwhile Christmas approached, with its promise of festivities, and
the neighbourhood was not more astonished than was Miss Trenchard
when Mr Harry Trenchard announced his intention of giving a ball on
Christmas Eve. A bachelor, he had never before thus entered the lists.
Miss Trenchard was not exactly displeased; the embers of ancient
gaiety still smouldered in her respectable breast, and she thought it
not unbecoming that Henry should exhibit the resources of his mansion
to the public. But all her questions, discreet or indiscreet, failed
to wrest from her nephew the motive of his sudden outburst of
hospitality. At Ashley Court that motive was guessed at, though not
formulated in speech.
It was already the 23rd of December, and an afternoon so dark that
Amelia had abandoned her needlework, and, obedient to Lucienne’s
request that lamps should not yet be called for, was sitting with her
hands in her lap, a posture which had been her companion’s for some
time.
“I wonder what they are doing just at this moment at Chantemerle,”
came meditatively from Mademoiselle d’Aucourt through the firelit
dusk.
“Do you know, Lucy,” said Amelia, “I was just wondering the same
thing. Poor Cousin Gilbert is not, I fear, preparing as we are for
festivities.”
“I had a letter from him two or three days ago,” remarked Lucienne
rather listlessly. “There was not much news in it. He says that he
does not know what is going to happen.”
“He is not alone there, is he?” enquired Amelia. “M. de Saint-Ermay is
with him?”
“Yes,” answered Lucienne in a hard little voice. “At least I suppose
so.” She bit her lips at the remembrance of how she had hastened
through the letter for the mere mention of Louis’ name, and had found
none. “And then there is always M. des Graves.”
“Ah, yes,” returned the English girl, “I am always meaning to ask you
about M. des Graves, when I hear you and Aunt Felicity talking about
him. What is he like?”
Lucienne sat up in her chair. “He is the best person in the world. He
understands everybody. You can guess that when you know how fond two
such different people as Gilbert and Louis are of him. And I too love
him,” she added warmly.
“Whom does Miss Lucy love?” enquired a hearty a voice at the door. “I
hope she was declaring her passion for her old uncle, but I am afraid
it is improbable.”
“It was for some one older than you, mon oncle,” retorted Lucienne, as
three male forms advanced into the twilight.
“Is that Mr Trenchard?” asked Amelia, getting up from her chair.
“It is,” replied that gentleman, bowing, while Sir William cried: “Why
the deuce you girls sit in the dark like this I can’t conceive!”
“Well, you might guess why, papa, from what you overheard,” returned
his daughter. “But now that you are here I will ring for lights.”
“Mr Trenchard has come,” announced the Squire, when the lamps were
brought, “to ask you ladies a question. I don’t know what it is,
except that it is vastly important. Is it a secret, Trenchard?”
“Not at all,” responded the young man. “I merely wished to enquire of
Miss Ashley and Mademoiselle d’Aucourt the colour of the respective
gowns with which they intend to dazzle our eyes to-morrow night, and
whether——”
“Oh, by Gad!” interrupted Sir William, “to remain is indiscreet.
Secrets of the toilet! I’m off. Come, George.”
“No,” said his son. “I am going to stay,” and he sauntered to a chair
and sat down.
“Papa, do be quiet!” urged Amelia. “Do let us all be seated, and Mr
Trenchard can deliver himself of his message in comfort.”
“I do not think,” put in George Ashley, unmoved, “that Trenchard has
any business to ask that question. I stayed on purpose to remonstrate,
and I suggest that it be not answered.”
“Wait till you hear why I asked it,” retorted the master of Dewlands.
“Ladies, I was going very humbly to beg your permission to present
you to-morrow with a few flowers, if there were any prospect of
your honouring me by wearing them. And so the colours you would
prefer . . .”
Amelia rose and swept him a curtsy. “You have the most charming ideas,
sir! We are immensely obliged to you, Lucienne and I.”
“You will really condescend to wear them? Then what may I offer you?”
“Present Amelia with a nosegay of holly,” suggested her brother. “I
can conceive its becoming her well.”
“But not my dress, thank you,” responded Miss Ashley. “Let us be
serious, for this is a serious question.”
Trenchard went and bent over Lucienne. “And you, Mademoiselle?” he
asked in a lower tone.
“I shall wear lilac, Monsieur,” answered the girl softly. “I am still
in half-mourning for my mother, you know. If I were at home I should
not perhaps be going to a ball. But here Madame permits me to go.”
“Indeed, I should hope so,” murmured the Englishman to himself. “Then,
Mademoiselle, would you permit me to offer you a few violets?”
“Ah, no, Monsieur!” said Lucienne suddenly; “not violets!”
“You dislike violets?”
“I would rather not wear them,” said Lucienne.
“What, Lucy?” exclaimed Sir William, overhearing, where he stood
leaning against the harpsichord, his hands in his pockets. “You
dislike the violet—the modest violet, the flower so suitable to a
young girl! Fie!”
“Oh no!” said Lucienne, confused. “I never said that I disliked them.
I . . . I would rather not . . . I mean, if Mr Trenchard were so kind
as to offer me anything else.”
“Aha!” exclaimed her host, chuckling. “Now I see the reason!” And
approaching Lucienne he bent down and observed in a tone perfectly
audible to the whole assembly: “A little sentimental reason connected
with Gilbert, is it not, my dear? Quite right—quite right and proper!”
Lucienne flushed crimson, and precisely at that moment the Marquise
entered the room.
“Amelia——” she began. “Oh, I beg your pardon! I did not know that you
had visitors.”
“It is only Mr Trenchard, aunt,” said Amelia quickly, and George
placed a chair for Madame de Château-Foix, with whose entrance a
slight constraint appeared to have fallen upon the company. Sir
William endeavoured to dissipate this by informing his sister-in-law
of the object of Trenchard’s visit.
“Indeed!” said the Marquise, elevating her beautifully pencilled
eyebrows, and looking at Trenchard where he stood by Lucienne.
“Monsieur is really too kind.”
“But Lucy,” pursued Sir William, unheeding, “don’t want to wear
violets.”
“Indeed, I should hope not!” exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix, with so
much of meaning in her voice that Sir William was suddenly stricken
silent.
“Perhaps, Madame,” said Trenchard with that boldness which cloaks
timidity, “you would give us your assistance in the choice of suitable
flowers.”
“I am afraid, Monsieur,” returned the elder lady with growing
coldness, “that I cannot be of service in the matter. I do not
consider it good taste to wear flowers of any description while in
mourning—even in half-mourning—for a near relative.”
Lucienne looked down, and no one said anything.
“For myself,” pursued the Marquise, evidently gratified with the
effect which she was producing, “I have never worn them since the
death of my husband—except at my son’s request, on the occasion of
his annual banquet to his tenants. And even then,” she added with
increased dignity, “the flowers were not real.”
“Dear me, what were they, then?” enquired Sir William, impressed.
“Immortelles, perhaps,” irreverently murmured Trenchard to himself.
“Wax,” said the Marquise. And in the silence produced by this
disclosure George remarked evenly:
“I doubt, aunt, if Mr Trenchard’s hothouses can put any such blossoms
at his disposal.”
“No, egad!” ejaculated their guest, rather dismayed. “But surely,
Madame——”
“No!” suddenly cried Lucienne, with colour in her cheeks and sparkling
eyes, “Madame is perfectly right. I ought not to have thought of
wearing flowers. Perhaps indeed it would be better if I did not go at
all.”
Amelia, Trenchard, and Sir William cried out at this.
“No, no,” said the Marquise, coldly mistress of the situation; “that,
I think, is an unnecessary deprivation. Lucienne shall go by all
means, but I certainly think that she would do well to postpone the
receiving and wearing of flowers till a later date.”
It was left to the judgment of her hearers to fix this epoch.
Trenchard, mortified, bowed in silence, stealing a look at Lucienne.
He had never admired her so much, for though her type, the clinging,
most appealed to him, as to the majority of his sex, he liked on
occasion what he considered a spice of the devil, and Mademoiselle
d’Aucourt was plainly angry. But, the question of Amelia’s flowers
having naturally lapsed, he shortly afterwards took his departure,
invoking dubious blessings on the head of Madame de Château-Foix.
That lady, left alone with Lucienne, who was possibly too proud to
flee, had produced some embroidery. From time to time, as the needle
passed in and out under the lamp she threw a glance at the girl
sitting by the fire, in the forlorn and dreamy attitude which was
becoming habitual to her.
“I am sorry, my child,” she said at length, “to have been obliged to
speak to you as I did about your flowers. Yet it was not the question
of wearing flowers while still in half-mourning which distressed
me—for, after all, there are many persons comme il faut who do so—but
that you should permit yourself to receive them at all.”
“Madame,” responded Lucienne in a suffocated voice, without turning
her head, “you made that perfectly plain.”
The Marquise laid down her embroidery. “And if I did, Lucienne, whose
was the fault? I am astonished that a young girl of your birth and
breeding should need a public reprimand to become acquainted with a
matter so elementary. You, an affianced woman, to receive flowers from
an unmarried man, who is already——”
Lucienne rose. “Who is already—what, Madame?”
“Doing his best to compromise you,” finished the Marquise unflinchingly.
Lucienne was so angry that she laughed. “And Amelia, your niece?” she
asked. “Is it Mr Trenchard’s intention to compromise us both? For he
offered her flowers also, and she, though she too is affianced,
accepted them without hesitation.”
“Amelia,” retorted Madame de Château-Foix, “is English, and to English
girls much is permitted—much, I must acknowledge, that seems strange
to me. Sit down, my dear, and let us have this matter out. I have long
intended to speak to you on the subject of Mr Trenchard, and since I
stand to you in the place of your mother, you must allow me to do
so. Lucienne, you are seeing a great deal too much of this young
Englishman. He comes here day after day, he who before your arrival
was scarcely more than an acquaintance of the household. You are
always together; you permit yourself little secrets with him—ah, yes,
I have noticed it—and it does not need very great perspicacity to
guess for whom he is giving this ball to-morrow night.”
“You mean, Madame, that he is giving it for me?” enquired Lucienne.
“If so, this is the first that I have heard of it. And to think that I
could prevent it assumes on my part a degree of intimacy with Mr
Trenchard of which I trust even you, Madame, will not accuse me.”
“I do not accuse you, my child, of anything more than thoughtlessness,”
replied the Marquise gravely. “It is others who are apt to make
accusations when they see you so listless when we are alone, so
animated when we have company—provided the company include a young man
or two, and especially if one of them be Mr Trenchard. No, Lucienne, I
do not find your behaviour becoming, and I allow myself to speak thus
frankly to you for your own sake, and a little, too, for Gilbert’s.”
“Madame,” returned Lucienne, shaking a trifle but very stately, “I
thank you for your concern about my conduct, and I pray you to excuse
me.” She crossed the room, and added at the door, in tones less
assured: “I only know this, that if Gilbert were here, he would not
permit even you to speak to me as you have done!”
Still less, when she was in the harbour of her own room, did Lucienne
maintain her dignity of bearing. But the tears, when they came, were
tears of rage. To accuse her of flirting with Trenchard! The
preposterousness of the indictment stung her to a momentary vision of
herself saying unanswerably to the Marquise: “If you only knew who
has my heart, and will always have it!” . . . She hated Madame de
Château-Foix, hated her!
But her hot anger, a little like a child’s, for all her self-control
downstairs, began to sink, and in its place came the child’s
instinctive desire to turn to some one for comfort. If that frail and
beautiful mother, who had served to the girl as an object of
admiration rather than of love, had still been in life, she would not,
probably, have had her daughter’s confidence. But dead, dead a little
more than a year, she was invested with qualities which had never been
hers. And Lucienne wanted her more consciously than she had ever done
before.
She had little craving for Madame Elisabeth. It was true that the
incident which had caused the explosion had but a slight obvious
connection with the hard trial through which the Princess had
supported her, but in Lucienne’s mind it had merged into that source
of her general unhappiness, from which in truth it was not deeply
separated. And the Princess stood for that renunciation which she had
never been able really and fully to make. Though in act she had done
so, she had never been strong enough to renounce her lover in thought;
these last months she had been farther than ever from such a
consummation. She knew it, and she perhaps a little realised that it
was Madame Elisabeth who, in elevating the matter to higher spheres,
had caused her love for Louis to become not merely a conventional, but
a moral and spiritual burden as well. So, in soul, she turned her face
from her; the atmosphere her mistress breathed was too rarefied for
consolation.
Yes, it was Louis himself that she wanted; Louis, whom she could have
least of all—not because by her own will she had once kept him at bay,
nor because the sea now tossed between them, but because, to her, that
old Louis, with all his wilful charm, was gone, and in his place
stood quite another person, dearer still, even more desirable, but
infinitely above her—her lover once, her hero now, whom, were all that
separated them to vanish, she could never have, for she was not
worthy. . . . Yet, as she cast herself down by the bed in a passion of
abasement, she called on his name with endearments, she evoked an echo
of his voice, gay and caressing, saw the way he smiled at one with his
eyes. . . . Lost—lost for ever, for he could not love her now!
Where was she to turn? She felt herself so desperate, so friendless.
If Gilbert were here at this moment she felt that, in her extremity,
she would tell even him. Why “even” indeed? He was like a rock. And
though he were wild with anger he would be just, he would help
her. . . . What folly! But . . . but there was some one else who gave
that sensation of just dealing and stability. . . . Why had she not
thought of him before? Would it be possible?
Slowly she got off her knees, poured out water and bathed her eyes,
possessed by this new idea and reflecting on it. Then she went as
slowly to her escritoire, unlocked it, sat down, and pulled out a
bundle of new quills and several sheets of paper. At these she sat
staring a long time. Suddenly she leant forward, and plunging her hand
into a recess at the back of the escritoire, drew out a red morocco
letter-case stamped with little gold pomegranates up the back, with
tiny gold pinks at the corners. Several years ago—and quite without
_arrière pensée_—Louis had given her this receptacle, which was
divided within into compartments for the months. She opened it; but
there was nothing there save, in the division consecrated to January,
a few flattened, withered, and brittle dark objects, not very
reminiscent of a handful of violets.
Lucienne put away the case, selected a quill, drew a sheet of paper
towards her, and began.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE CUP BRIMS OVER
“He was first always. Fortune
Shone bright in his face.
I fought for years; with no effort
He conquered the place.
We ran: my feet were all bleeding,
But he won the race.
“My home lay deep in the shadow,
His full in the sun.
Whatever service he called for
It straightway was done.
Once I staked all my heart’s treasure:
We played—and he won.
“Spite of his many successes
Men loved him the same;
My one pale ray of good fortune
Met scoffing and shame.
We sinned: and men gave him pity,
And me only blame.”
It was that very moral change so rightly diagnosed by M. des Graves in
Gilbert which accounted for the bewildering subsidence of the emotions
that the priest had expected him to manifest. The metamorphosis
was like a river which, suddenly swerving from its course, invades
a valley and makes of it a lake. A new landscape surprises the
traveller, but underneath the encroaching waters lie all the time the
features which were there before them, to emerge, perhaps, but little
altered from their burial. So, under the new interests which flooded
Gilbert’s mind, partly submerged by them in a wholly natural manner,
but in part voluntarily thrust down and held down, there existed,
unforgotten, the turmoil of feeling with which he had left his home in
July. But he had come back full of ardour, on fire with schemes, and
quite consciously he had resolved that his own affairs should wait a
little. The carrying out of this resolution demanded, even in his new
frame of mind, not a little carefulness and self-control. He had been
at some pains, by laying stress, in his narrative, on the force of
circumstances, to hide deeply from his hearers—perhaps even to obscure
from himself—how much less he had snatched at the opportunity of a
journey into Brittany from political desire than from the craving for
a respite from his own private passions. It was true that, on the
journey so undertaken, the secondary motive had at last swallowed up
the primary and sharper. He knew that, but it was his concern that
others should be ignorant of the double incentive.
Yet his feelings towards Lucienne, far from having paled, were
infinitely fiercer. That intensification of the powers of his will,
which was really the heart of the change in him, had reacted on his
attitude towards her, of which it was itself in part the offspring.
His love for her, since passion had flowed into it that day in the
Tuileries, had suffered neither diminution nor increase, but his
determination to possess her in spite of everything had immensely
grown. That same feeling, at once loverlike and paternal, which had
dictated the terms of the letter sent by Trenchard, still ruled his
thoughts of her and the letters which he constantly wrote to her.
But the natural result of his wilful exoneration of the girl was
insensibly to throw heavier and heavier odium on the man who had
entrapped her. In spite of his resolution the old nightmare of his
wrongs began to press on him again, yet not so heavily but that he
could control the expression of it. Indeed, he had slipped back so
insensibly to the cold reserve of his pre-Brittany relations with
Louis that neither of them had been quite aware of the reversion.
Even the priest could only ask himself sometimes whether his manner
to Louis was not suspicious, and could not answer his own question.
As for the Vicomte himself, he had always been accustomed to a certain
occasional moodiness and lack of cordiality in his cousin, and that
scene at the supper table in July was blurred by time, by his
recognition of his own physical condition at the moment, and by the
absence of hostility in the Marquis’ greeting when he came back in
November. It was further obliterated by the shock and horror of the
King’s execution, and by the very welcome, if fruitless, activity into
which, with Gilbert, he had plunged. Ere February was out he had
ridden some three score miles on various errands, had enjoyed two
narrow escapes from arrest, and the sensation of a bullet through his
hat. The personal danger, the excitement after the long months of
inaction, was like wine to him, and even had there been any signs of
approaching catastrophe, he might have failed to observe them.
* * * * * *
One evening at the end of February Gilbert found by his plate at
supper-time a letter, dirty, worn, and looking either as if it had
travelled far or had been a long time on the road. Letters were not
now very frequent at Chantemerle, for though the Marquise and Lucienne
wrote regularly, a good proportion of their communications never
reached Vendée. This missive, however, was addressed not to the
Marquis, but to Madame de Château-Foix, seeing which he pushed it
aside.
The three had that evening a not altogether agreeable topic of
conversation, the two-days-old decree of the Directory of Fontenay
requiring all fathers of _émigrés_ to take up their residence at the
_chef-lieu_ and report themselves every morning to the authorities.
“And if Gilbert is not the father of an _émigré_, he is the son of
one,” observed Louis. “Where will you settle at Fontenay, mon cher? I
will come and see you sometimes.”
“It is no jesting matter, Louis,” said the priest. “Not only the
fathers of _émigrés_ are summoned, but their relations and other
persons who, as the decree puts it, are likely to trouble the public
peace by their anti-revolutionary conduct or discourse. You may find
yourself there.”
“I wonder,” said the Marquis thoughtfully, scanning the letter by his
plate, “if this letter to my mother can possibly have any connection
with the decree—be a means of ascertaining whether she has emigrated
or no? I do not know the writing. The postmark is Paris.”
“In the circumstances,” suggested the Vicomte, “had you not better
open it?”
“I think I had,” said Château-Foix, and took it up. But Antoine coming
in at that moment he laid it down again.
“How did this letter come here, Antoine?” he asked as he helped
himself to another dish.
“By the post, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“You did not hesitate about receiving it, or say that Madame la
Marquise was not here, I hope?”
“Certainly not, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied his retainer fervently,
and as he left the room there were signs that he was hurt at the
question.
“By the way, Gilbert,” remarked M. des Graves, “I suppose you know
that there was rioting at La Caillère on Sunday, over the recruiting
for the National Guard?”
“Yes, I know,” answered Gilbert, taking up the letter again. “And
Chevallier the commissioner was stoned, so I hear.”
“There was,” observed Louis, “a much more amusing affair on Sunday at
Fontenay, at the meeting of the Society of the Friends of Liberty and
Equality. It seems that Laparra, the president of that precious club,
has met with a great dressing-down from one Pranger, a professor who
writes poetry and has called Laparra an artisan of discord. That was
in print, but on Sunday——”
And since Gilbert was reading his letter he continued his recital to
the priest.
“This can’t be meant for my mother,” said the Marquis suddenly, and
apparently to himself. Then he folded up the letter and put it rather
quickly into his pocket. “What were you saying about Laparra, Louis?”
But to his cousin’s account of the feud which was rending society at
the _chef-lieu_ he seemed to pay only a divided attention, and when
the meal was ended he disappeared.
M. des Graves looked after him. “I fear there was some cause for
anxiety in that letter,” he said. “Are you coming with me to the
library, Louis? That’s right.” And he smiled at the Vicomte, as the
latter held open the door for him with his usual politeness.
* * * * * *
In his own room, standing by the two candles he had lighted on the
mantel-piece, Gilbert was re-reading the letter addressed to Madame de
Château-Foix.
“I have never forgotten you in my prayers; and now that death is
coming very near to us I wish to send you a line of farewell, though I
fear that it will never reach you. I make no doubt that you are
married now, and finding, perhaps, the happiness that comes from doing
right. But my heart bled for you, my child, in September, for I cannot
hope that he escaped the fate of the other prisoners. Yet he died, I
like to think, a noble gentleman; let this be the reward of the
sacrifice that you both made. God bless you and give you strength.
Pray for me.—ELISABETH.”
These words, when he had made acquaintance with them downstairs, had
seemed to the Marquis simple nonsense; they had conveyed to him
nothing whatever, except a conviction that they could not be meant for
his mother—unless she maintained some very cryptic correspondence of
which he was ignorant. Yet during the short remainder of the meal a
desire had burnt in him to read them again; for, after all, they must
mean something. Now he had his wish.
The characters of the single word of the signature, clear and pointed,
as large again as the others, were beginning to dance before his eyes.
In them lay naturally the key to the rest. But it was impossible! The
Princess was a prisoner, closely watched; how could she conceivably
have got a letter out of the Temple? But argument on that score was
futile, since here was such a letter. And to whom of the name of
Château-Foix could she have desired to send a farewell message save to
the girl who was soon to bear that name? “I make no doubt that you are
married now . . . and finding, perhaps, the happiness that comes from
doing right.” What did that mean?
And this reference to some one killed in September, a prisoner, who
had “died a noble gentleman”? Gilbert’s hand shook. He was beginning
to be unable to think. What, in God’s name, was this mystery? Feeling
that he was on the brink of something unimaginable, he laid the letter
down and lit yet another candle, as if that would make it easier to
read between the lines. What was the sacrifice? Who was the dead man?
It could not be himself . . . nor Louis . . .
God! had Lucienne then yet a third lover!
Horrible ideas began to flash before him. . . . He caught hold of the
mantel-piece to steady himself. . . . Then all at once, with a rushing
illumination, his brain cleared, and he saw everything.
Madame Elisabeth had been Lucienne’s confidante; had known, had
sympathised with Louis. She had heard of the arrest of the young
Royalist plotters; she had heard, in her prison, of their fate in the
September massacres; she had never known that he, the dupe, had saved
his cousin. And Louis was the “noble gentleman,” who had evidently
died, to the Princess’ thinking, in a sort of odour of sanctity—Louis,
the thief, the traitor! He laughed; the situation was full of humour.
Louis as a martyr to honour!
But his brief contemptuous mirth was whirled away like a leaf in the
blazing wind of fury which descended on him. What stung him beyond
endurance was the thought that this meddlesome saint was praying that
Lucienne might have strength to bear her married life with him. To be
the subject of such a petition! . . . And his secret was common
property, then; no doubt there were others who knew of his cousin’s
perfidy, of his own disgrace. . . . For what woman had Louis fought De
Bercy? Do not ask, had said the courtesan from whom he had stooped to
beg the life of the betrayer. Why, even she knew!
He tore the letter in two, and flinging it blindly into the fire,
watched it shrivel, and began to stride up and down the room sick with
rage, and with one word of the expiring handwriting a-dance before his
eyes. _Sacrifice!_
_Sacrifice!_ That meant—the Princess meant—that they had parted.
_Sacrifice!_ What did the fatuous woman know? Evidently, from the
whole tone of the letter, it had been no light thing with either of
them, no passing fancy such as he had insisted on believing it on
Lucienne’s part. Well, Madame Elisabeth might have been duped too.
Since there had been so much between them, there might have been more.
How should the Princess know? And that terrible thought, which had
hitherto spared him, raised its snake-like head and looked him every
moment a little nearer in the face. What exactly had been Louis’
relations with Lucienne?
CHAPTER XXXIII
AT THE FORD
“You let him try to give
The story of our love and ignorance,
And the brief madness and the long despair—
You let him plead all this, because your code
Of honour bids you hear before you strike.”
—BROWNING, _A Blot in the Scutcheon_.
The Vicomte de Saint-Ermay whistled softly as he went down to the
river next morning. This, the last of the month, was one of those
warm, sunny days in February when the spring seems so much nearer than
it really is, and one forgets that March winds have yet to sweep
between. But the young grass was already thrusting aside the dead
leaves. The rough path which Louis was pursuing through the thicket
brought him at last to the little ford, where the bright water lapped
a level shore; on the other side the bank rose gently to wooded
heights. The Vicomte stopped, for it was a spot beloved of his
childhood, where both he and Gilbert had known the dear delight of
wading over when the stream was swollen and foothold difficult. For a
moment he stood still, marvelling at the heat, and then flung himself
yawning on the grass against a log, to lie there thinking vaguely how
charming M. des Graves could be when he chose, and wondering why he
had so chosen last night, alone with him in the library.
The stream rippled past; in the thicket a thrush broke into song. How
little the place had changed; even the unstable water seemed to swirl
about in exactly the same spots as of old. He heard steps coming
through the copse.
“Hallo!” he said, looking up. “Isn’t it hot? Do you remember this
place? I was once carried down by the stream as far as the bend . . .
What years ago! I forget if you ever fell in.”
Gilbert stood there in the sunlight and said nothing. And as he looked
at the young man lying idly stretched on the grass, his hands behind
his head, the last spasm of yesterday’s deadly rage took him by the
throat, and for a moment there danced before his eyes the black specks
of a physical faintness. The spasm passed, and left him more coldly
master of himself than he had ever been in his life.
He walked over until he was within two or three feet of his cousin.
“I have something that I want to ask you,” he said, in a cool,
conversational tone. “Since my return from Brittany I have received
several letters from Lucienne. She has changed perceptibly; she
evidently is not happy. Can you account for this in any way?”
Louis gave a start. “I?” he exclaimed, looking up. “How should I?”
The Marquis sat down on the stump of a tree near him. “Because,” he
said very calmly, “you are the last member of the family who saw much
of her before she left France. Besides, I happen to know that you are
the person best able to explain it to me. It has taken me a long while
to ask you this question, but now that I have asked it I mean to have
an answer.”
He could not, had he sought with the most diabolical ingenuity, have
given his query a more entangling form. But Louis looked very straight
at him, his mouth suddenly set.
“I have not a notion what you mean,” he replied; “and I certainly
cannot account for any change in her.”
“Yes,” observed Gilbert in a meditative tone, “I expected you to do
that. You could not very well do anything else. Unfortunately I know
that it is not true.”
A red flush swept over the Vicomte’s face and ebbed away as suddenly,
leaving him white to the lips, and for the moment speechless. He was
so obviously trying hastily to recall some way in which Gilbert
might have known his denial to be false that Château-Foix half
contemptuously spared him the trouble.
“On the 7th of July last year,” he said, “you said something which has
left me with the knowledge, ever since, that you were the person to
explain. Tell me what happened in Paris!”
Saint-Ermay pulled himself up on to the log behind him. “Tell me what
happened on the 7th of July!” he retorted.
“It was the night that you were delirious in the loft at Pézé.”
“Then I did——” broke out Louis, clenching his hands. “And you . . .
all this time. . . .”
Gilbert took no notice, but went on in the same even tone. “Tell me
what happened in Paris. You have done what is required, in the way of
denial at least, of a man of honour.” His lip curled for a second.
“Besides, I am going to marry her. Yes,” he repeated with intense
meaning, “I am going to marry her, whatever has happened.”
He had found the key to make Louis speak.
“Good God!” exclaimed the Vicomte, “you don’t think——”
The Marquis did not move a muscle. “I don’t know,” he said.
Saint-Ermay sprang to his feet. “You can’t think it, Gilbert! I will
give you my word of honour—I will swear it by anything you please. If
you refuse to believe me it is your own doing. . . . My God, you
_must_ believe me!”
Still with his horrible and judicial calm Gilbert surveyed his cousin,
shaken so violently from his ordinary nonchalance. At last he said
slowly: “Yes, in this instance I will believe you.”
“Then, as God sees me,” said Louis solemnly, “you have not the
slightest shadow of a foundation for your suspicion. If I were dying
at this moment I could not say otherwise. I am no better than other
men—I have never pretended to it—but _that_ . . . how could you think
it for a moment!”
Gilbert’s long breath of relief was audible, but it was improbable
that the Vicomte heard it, for he had sunk down again upon the log
and buried his face in his hands.
“Now tell me,” said Gilbert remorselessly, “exactly what happened.”
In the silence that ensued the thrush broke into louder song.
“I am waiting,” said the Marquis again. “I have believed what you have
just told me. And the rest, you will concede, I have a right to know.”
Louis lifted his head. “I suppose you have,” he said slowly, looking
straight in front of him at the dancing, singing water. “But there is
not very much to tell you. I do not know how it was that Lucienne came
to be—how I came to love her, or when it began. These last two years
perhaps, if you insist on knowing dates; but it came on me so
gradually that I did not know it myself. Then, a year ago last
January, not intending to do so, and aware all the time that it was
hopeless——”
“What do you mean by hopeless?” demanded the Marquis sharply.
“I mean that I knew quite well that she did not care for me, and never
would.”
“Liar!” ejaculated Gilbert under his breath. Aloud he said: “Well, go
on. What happened last January year?”
“I lost my head, told her I loved her, and implored her to marry me.
I do not want to defend myself, but—though I suppose you will not
believe me—it was in a moment of madness. I recognised that almost at
once.”
“And then?”
“Need you ask? Lucienne answered—as you can imagine. . . . I was
ashamed of myself. I—I asked her pardon, and after that, till your
coming to Paris, we had scarcely met. I suppose that since that
unfortunate episode in January I have been less to her, if possible,
than before, though, if I understood you rightly, she was good enough
to take an interest in my fate. . . . Now you know why I did not want
to take her to England. That is all. And—as you cannot imagine that it
is pleasant for me to tell you this—you must know that you should
never have had it out of me at all if it were not for your monstrous
suspicions.” And he sent his cousin a look composed enough, and
charged with a defiance difficult to gauge.
Unfortunately, in listening to this remarkable mixture of truth and
falsehood, with its suggested picture of Lucienne as all loyalty,
purity, and coldness, Gilbert was violently conscious of a rival
picture—a sensation rather—of the girl as she had stiffened in his
arms at the news of the narrator’s arrest. That memory was more vivid
at the moment than even the Princess’s letter. He saw the position
quite clearly. Louis, with his back to the wall, was fighting
desperately, not now for himself, but for Lucienne, and since the
only way to clear her was to over-blacken himself, he had taken it
unhesitatingly. Curious! he still had some of the instincts of a
gentleman.
“Thank you,” said the Marquis as he finished. “And I am to understand
that Lucienne does not, never has reciprocated this dishonourable
passion?—No, I will not ask you that; it makes no difference. . . . I
see it all plainly now,” he continued, getting to his feet. “I am to
blame for leaving her near you. I should have known better what you
were. But you were my cousin and my friend; we were brought up
together; the idea of such treachery never entered my head. The more
fool I, no doubt! But you—trusted like a brother, you have acted like
a lackey! If you have stopped short of the ultimate betrayal, that is
all you have refrained from. There was a moment in Paris—you may as
well know it; it was when you were in prison—when . . . something
. . . caused me to entertain suspicions of you. But I put them away as
unworthy; I was ashamed of myself for harbouring them; I was ashamed
of having, for an instant, thought of leaving you to your fate. I need
not have reproached myself. Ever since that night at Pézé when my eyes
were opened I have been able to put it all together: your treachery,
your ingratitude, your callousness— your double treachery . . . were
you not trying to seduce Lucienne at the very time that you were
making love to that adventuress? You are equally heartless and
traitorous; you did not even keep your conquest secret—else why did
you fight De Bercy the morning after I came to Paris? . . . God!” he
exclaimed, his unnatural self-control slipping for an instant from
him, “how I have wished that _I_ had you at the point of my sword!”
Louis was on his feet, white with fury. “You can easily gratify that
wish!” he retorted. “I ask nothing better! Here, now—no, curse it, we
have no swords. . . .”
“No,” said the Marquis coldly, “it is too late. Our lives are wanted
for something else.”
“Even mine?” asked Saint-Ermay with bitter derision. “Well, you can
ask for it when the need is past. I shall not forget the unspeakable
things you have said to me—safeguarded by the knowledge that we cannot
cross swords over them. . . . If I have wronged you, Christ! you have
had your revenge!”
His face, perfectly colourless, amply bore out his last words. Neither
that, nor the blanched rage which lit it, nor the taunt, moved
Château-Foix a jot.
“Ah, do you think so?” he said. “I do not. But, at least, I have had
the story from your own lips. Now we know where we stand, and we must
put the question aside. For the present it is our duty to go on living
here together; but, as it happens, I can offer you a commission to do
for me to-day if you choose—to ride over to M. de Verteuil at Le
Fougerais with a letter.”
“Thank you,” said Louis, choking. “Dare you trust me?”
“In this matter,” replied the Marquis, unmoved, and turning away, left
him there.
CHAPTER XXXIV
SURGERY: THE PROBE
“Your silence, full and near,
Folded my agony;
Till it seemed the ruined way to clear
Luminously.
“Words are all harsh to hear,
A look too much may see,
But your silence, beautiful, austere,
Was God to me.” —LILIAN STREET.
That the Marquis’ missive ever reached Le Fougerais was no small
wonder, for his messenger rode thither like a madman. It happened
that the priest met him in the hall when he returned next morning,
spattered from head to foot with the plentiful mud of the bad roads,
haggard and unsmiling—he who always had a smile for his good friend.
“Where is Gilbert?” he enquired abruptly, without greeting of any
kind. “In the library? Thank you.”
He went in, leaving the door ajar, and M. des Graves heard him say in
a voice quite unknown to him: “I have done your errand. I am ready to
do any others with which you think you can trust me.”
“Thank you,” said Gilbert; “I am much obliged to you. There will no
doubt be others.”
Louis came straight out and went up to his room, and his face, as he
passed the priest, was the face of a man in hell.
What did it mean? Surely only one thing. Gilbert had discovered the
truth—had perhaps imagined more than the truth. That explosion which
the priest had dreaded in November, and whose non-occurrence had so
bewildered him, was come at last. But now he was better prepared to
meet it.
The Curé went, not to the library, but to his own room, and there,
unlocking a drawer, he took out and re-read a long letter with an
English postmark. Even as he touched it he experienced again the
overwhelming feeling of relief which had enveloped him when first he
read it, a week ago. Things were bad enough, but Louis was not, thank
God, what he had been almost forced into believing him. As for
Lucienne. . . . “Poor child! poor child!” he said once or twice. Then
he put the letter away, and sat a long time thinking. His face was
very stern.
At supper that evening both the young men made pitiable and unconcerted
attempts to behave as though nothing had happened. Gilbert’s were
crowned with a certain success. Neither of them said a word to the
other.
And next morning after his Mass, in the privacy of his own room, M.
des Graves again took out Lucienne’s letter. His coffee and rolls lay
almost untouched at his elbow. Again he put the letter away, and fell
to pacing up and down on the track which he was beginning to wear on
the Marquise’s carpet. As he walked, he reflected on the girl whose
pitiful confession he was beginning to know by heart, and on the
mysterious ways of that providence which had set her in a position
which she was not strong enough to fill. She was sweet, she was good,
but she was not strong. And now he saw that Lucienne, not in herself
remarkable, had come to be a kind of symbol in the lives of the two
men who loved her; that the idea of her stood for more than she in her
own person could ever be. Stranger still, it was the man who had
trespassed in loving her at all who was the better for it; of the
other he could not say that. For that Louis had gained nothing of
ennoblement by his renunciation, necessary and just though it had
been, the priest did not believe. But Gilbert—on what unrighteous path
was his righteous claim impelling him? He thought of the bitter,
determined line of his mouth last night; of the haunting anger and
despair in the Vicomte’s eyes. Something must be done. But since he
must proceed with the utmost caution, and since he was still in the
dark as to the amount of Gilbert’s knowledge, he resolved on a course
for him very unusual, and not a little repugnant.
He rang. “Ask Monsieur le Vicomte, if he is up, whether he will be so
good as to come and speak to me.”
Louis was up; indeed, he looked as if he had had but little sleep.
“You sent for me?” he asked, with an obvious surprise, as he came in.
“Yes; I want to have a talk with you. Sit down there, if you will.”
The priest waited until Louis had taken a chair and then sat down
himself. “I want to ask you,” he said without preamble, “what is wrong
between you and Gilbert?”
A spasm passed over Louis’ face. “I can’t tell you that,” he answered
hoarsely.
“My son,” said the priest impressively, “it will really be best for
all of us if you tell me the exact truth. Most of it I know already.
Since the beginning of last November I have known that you loved
Lucienne; for the last week I have known that Lucienne loves you. I
know of your fatal acknowledgment of your passion; I know, too, thank
God, how you have tried to undo the wrong you have done. I want to
know now how far Gilbert is cognisant of all this.”
Louis got up from his chair. “Ask him then,” he said, with dilated
nostrils. Then he laughed, not pleasantly. “And better, ask him _how_
he knows it. He is able to inform you more graphically than I. Shall I
tell him to come up?”
“No,” replied the priest, without moving—unmoved, too, by his most
unwonted rudeness. “No, I am asking you. My son, you must know that I
am aware you have quarrelled.”
“Quarrelled!” exclaimed the Vicomte with another little laugh. “Oh no,
Father—Gilbert is too magnanimous to quarrel! He has not quarrelled
with me. He has merely said things to me . . . intolerable, not to be
borne from any man alive . . . and refused to answer for them. That is
not quarrelling, is it?”
And M. des Graves saw that Louis, that hater of emotion and of scenes,
was quivering with passion. He began to have a pretty clear impression
of what had taken place at the river. He got up and approached him.
“Louis, this situation cannot go on.”
The Vicomte looked him full in the face. “Gilbert could end it—if he
would.”
“How?”
“By a very simple means, involving nothing more than a couple of
swords. But he refuses to fight me.”
“Ah!” said the older man quietly. And, despite his sympathy, he let
the gleam of steel be seen in his own hand. “And so you think, Louis,
that _you_ are the aggrieved party?”
The unexpected attack for an instant staggered the furious young man.
He swallowed down something that might have been an oath ere he
answered curtly “I do. I have every right to think so. But I will not
trouble you with my reasons. They are not worth your attention.” And
he turned to go.
“Louis . . . Louis!” said M. des Graves in a voice of such pain and
tenderness that the Vicomte stopped.
“It is no use, Father,” he replied wildly. “Nothing is any use; it is
no use my having tried to behave with some show of honour—Gilbert says
that I have none . . . perhaps he is right . . . if you say so, too
. . . I had better go. . . .” But instead of going he sank slowly down
on the nearest chair, and his head went down on his arms along the
back of it.
The priest stood there and looked sorrowfully down at the bowed head.
For a long moment there was intense silence, into which only the clock
on the mantelpiece intruded. At last he spoke. “I want to help you,
Louis; I think you know that.”
Louis lifted a pale, dangerous face. “I don’t know anything,” he said
with extraordinary intensity. “I have no feelings about anybody in the
world—except Gilbert. And I hate him. . . . Let me go!”
The priest stood aside. “You can go, Louis. . . . Twenty years of
comradeship and two days hatred. . . . Perhaps you can see better than
I how it will end. God have mercy on all of us!”
The Vicomte flashed out. “But he hates me, too! He must have hated me
for months. All the time he knew, curse him . . . all the time that I
thought I had hidden it . . . all the time that he was away in
Brittany. . . .” And the stream broke its bounds at last, and all that
he had suffered, all that he had foregone, his love, his struggle, his
victory won for Gilbert’s sake, came pouring out, tinged with the
passionate resentment which made Gilbert’s very name difficult to
utter.
The priest made no effort to stem an outburst for which indeed he was
thankful, and which left Louis spent and shaken, so that he threw
himself down at last on the window-seat and looked out of the window.
M. des Graves, who had stood without moving during the storm, began to
pace slowly up and down in his accustomed fashion, to give the young
man time to recover himself. At last he came and sat down beside him.
“Do you want me to say anything to you, Louis?”
Slowly, very slowly, the set profile turned towards him. A gleam of
humour flickered for a moment in the angry grey eyes. “I have said a
good deal to you,” was all Saint-Ermay’s answer, but he leaned his
head back against the window-frame as though he were waiting.
CHAPTER XXXV
OUT OF NIGHT INTO THE NIGHT
“Willst du, dass trotz Sturm und Graus
In die Nacht ich muss hinaus—
Willst du, dass ich geh’?” —LEMCKE
And while M. des Graves was saying to Louis de Chantemerle, on that
Saturday morning, the 2nd of March, what he had it in his mind to say,
there was travelling rapidly to Fontenay a special courier from Paris
with a thunderbolt in his pocket. That explosive he should the same
evening deliver to the Directory, and these seven individuals should
then and there proceed to give effect to the measure that was to be
the match to fire the waiting tinder. And before they slept the
printing presses of the town should be busy on it, and on Isnard’s
“Address to the French People,” setting up with approbation, for all
their haste, those rolling phrases: “France is about to fight alone
against an enslaved Europe. . . . Let the country districts retain
none of their sons but such as are indispensable. . . . Before our
fields can be improved they must be set free. . . .” In such language
did the Convention commend its decree for the levying of three hundred
thousand conscripts.
There are, perhaps, no such things as political bolts from the blue.
Such projectiles fall usually from a clouded sky, upon the heads of
persons who have already discerned threatening atmospheric symptoms.
But whether the peasants of Vendée had or had not been looking
skywards, the decree struck them with fearful force. . . . Should
they, to whom the very name of Blue was execrable—whether applied to
National Guard or to soldier of the line—should they be forced to
enroll themselves in the ranks of the men to whom they owed the
carrying out of more than two years of persecution and vexation? Were
they, the most stay-at-home, possibly, of all the peasantry of France,
to be forced to leave their homesteads to fight on the frontiers? The
hated words of conscription and _tirage au sort_ were not indeed
mentioned in the decree, but they had already been spoken in the
Assembly, and since the drawing of lots was the simplest method of
forced recruiting, to that method it would come in the end. From the
moment when the news struck the inhabitants of the town of Cholet,
busy on that Saturday in their weekly market, the cry rang hot through
all the countryside: “Down with the tirage!” “We will not give our
names!” The tinder was alight.
But the inner mental atmosphere of a house is sometimes so charged
with emotion as to resist the pressure of outer conditions, and to one
inmate at least of the château the breath of nearing revolt brought
with it, after all, nothing of exultation. So, on the Wednesday
evening, Louis was sitting on the edge of his bed hardly heeding
the disjointed tale of some affray which Jasmin poured out as he
pulled off his master’s boots. At any other time it would have been
exceedingly welcome to the young man, but now——
“That will do, Jasmin,” he said. He got up and threw off his coat
and waistcoat. “No, I don’t want you any more now. Give me my
dressing-gown and my slippers, and don’t come back till I ring.”
“Monsieur le Vicomte is not ill?” queried Jasmin anxiously, as he held
out the flowered silk.
“Good God, no! What put such a foolish idea into your head?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” responded his domestic rather hastily. “Only I
thought, Monsieur Louis, that you did not seem quite yourself.”
Louis looked after him as he went out with a frown. “Curse it!” he
said between his teeth. “Even the servants are noticing. . . .”
He caught sight of his own face in the glass, and laughed. “Small
wonder!” he exclaimed, and threw himself down moodily in his big chair
in front of the fire.
An hour and a half to supper-time. Then the meal to be got through as
best he could, with that cold, impassive face at the head of the
board, and opposite him, rather silent and sad, the old man who had
tried to help him. For it was four days since M. des Graves had
dragged his secret out of him, and it seemed to Louis, strung to the
last pitch of tension, that, but for his merciful inquisition and his
own frantic outburst, he must have been mad by now. God! had he not
paid, since that day at the ford, for every one of those few and
never-repeated kisses!
Yet with all his new-born hatred of Gilbert was mingled an unwilling
admiration. He himself, who loathed above all things the display of
what he really and profoundly felt, had had torn from him that easy,
baffling self-control which had always served him so well. But only
for a flash, down there by the river, had Gilbert let slip his
self-command. He remained now glacially clothed in it—hateful, yet
provoking to admiration. . . . But he would think as little as
possible of Gilbert.
M. des Graves, then. He fell to remembering what the priest had said
to him. He had not told him that he had behaved like . . . he could
not repeat the word, even to himself. Judge and friend, he had not
spared him; he had blamed him severely for ever having revealed his
passion to Lucienne; he had pointed out that she could never be the
same again, and that therein lay the irreparable injury dealt to
Gilbert. But he had told him that, in his efforts to repair that
wrong, he had acted like a gentleman; he had begged his pardon for
ever having doubted it. When Louis had said bitterly that it seemed of
little use, M. des Graves had replied with great earnestness—he could
hear him now: “Oh, my dear boy, that is just where you are wrong.
Believe an old man when he tells you that sacrifice is only exchange.”
Louis did not believe him—he did not even understand him, but he was a
little comforted. Comforting too, somehow—though he was not allowed to
see the letter—was the knowledge that Lucienne had made a confidant of
M. des Graves. Poor darling, was it wonderful! For himself, he had
hardly been able to think of her in these black days; it seemed to be
dragging her visibly into the presence of their enmity. Yet this
evening he began to glide insensibly into imaginations about her;
where she had written the letter—if she was happier when it was
done—whether the Marquise was kind to her. . . .
In the very midst of them came a knock at the door. “Come in,” he
called out nonchalantly, and in walked—Gilbert.
The Vicomte sprang to his feet. How dared he come here—to the one
place that was free from his presence! But Château-Foix closed the
door carefully, and came forward, unheeding the furious unspoken
greeting. He had a letter in his hand.
“I have just had very bad news,” he said, and Louis noticed then that
he looked really as if he had had a shock. And he knew, somehow, in an
instant that the news had no direct personal bearing. For the moment
the remembrance of their relations left him.
“It is not . . . the Queen?”
“Not yet,” said his cousin grimly. He came to the fire. “It is La
Rouërie—he is dead—has been dead a month.” And in spite of his iron
self-command his voice shook a little.
“Dead!” repeated Louis, stupefied. “La Rouërie! How? Killed?”
“Yes,” answered the Marquis, “by the news of the King’s death. It
seems that in the second week in January he came by night, in
disguise, to the château of La Guyomarais, near Lamballe. There he
fell ill; he got worse. Then came the fatal news, which M. de la
Guyomarais and his family succeeded in keeping from him for some
days, but which in the end he discovered. It threw him into a raging
fever, of which he died, on the 30th of January, without recovering
consciousness. They buried him secretly in the plantation.”
Louis stared at him and said nothing.
“There is almost worse to follow,” continued Gilbert, glancing at the
letter in his hand. “The man whom he most trusted had been betraying
him for months to Danton—knew all about his plans. He set the
authorities on the alert after La Rouërie’s disappearance; a few days
ago they surrounded the château and questioned the La Guyomarais and
their dependents. As old Madame de la Guyomarais was denying any
knowledge of the fugitive, La Rouërie’s head, five-and-twenty days
buried, came rolling through the window to her feet. . . . They have
nearly all been taken off to the prisons of Rennes. And in that
holocaust ends the Marquis de la Rouërie and his plans.”
He sank down uninvited into a chair—Louis was still standing—and began
mechanically pleating the letter into smaller and smaller folds. They
were both of them thinking of their first meeting with a personality
so vivid that it seemed impossible it should have been extinguished,
unknown to them, a month ago.
“No, not of his plans, surely,” said Louis at last.
“Perhaps not, perhaps not,” said his cousin. “That depends on how much
Cheftel knew and betrayed. And in any case they have no bearing on
this side the Loire.” He tapped his fingers thoughtfully on his knee.
“I want you, Louis, if you will, to go to Nantes for me at once.”
“I?” exclaimed Saint-Ermay. “Why? Do you really mean it?” A little
flush rose to his face, and he could not wholly keep out of his voice
an accent of pleasure and elation.
“Certainly I mean it,” said Gilbert evenly. “I must have some
information upon those two points; all the more if, as I believe, we
are on the edge of a great crisis. But I cannot go myself. There may
be a riot here any day; you know that in the affair at Cholet on
Sunday and Monday the tricolour was trodden underfoot and two
officers wounded. At Nantes, by the indications I will give you, you
will easily find out what I want to know. But there is danger in going
there.”
“Of course,” said Louis, and in his voice was a faint indication that
the fact was not unwelcome.
“You will not be able to get a passport; the Directory have stopped
issuing them until the recruiting is over.”
“I will do without,” replied the Vicomte, undisturbed, and he sat
down, gathering the folds of silk about him.
Château-Foix still looked hard at him. “The troubles at Beaupréau have
spread to Challans,” he said drily.
“But I am not going to Challans.”
“No; and do not go to Nantes by the main-road. But, if it is
convenient to you, I will give you my instructions here and now.”
The Marquis stretched out an arm, pulled another chair towards him,
and placing it between them spread out a map of Loire-Inférieure. Then
he plunged without hesitation or embarrassment into a lucid exposition
of his requirements at Nantes and of the safest routes thither. No
just idea of their owners’ feelings could have been gathered by a
spectator seeing the two heads bent so amicably together.
“There is a last thing,” said Gilbert at length, folding up the map
and giving it to his cousin. “When you return, do not come straight
here, but go to that little inn near La Peyratte, the ‘Etoile de
Vendée.’ I will meet you there. I might have to send you off again,
and it is just as well that you should not return to the château in
the interval. And now I will have some food sent up to you here, and
order a horse to be ready. Will you ride yours or one of mine?”
“Saladin, please,” returned Louis, ringing the bell. “I will be ready
in half an hour.”
And directly Gilbert had left the room he tore off his dressing-gown,
rolled it into a ball, pitched it violently on to the bed, and,
standing in the middle of the room, slim and tense, stretched out his
arms and said aloud, with heart-felt meaning: “Thank God—oh, thank
God!”
* * * * * *
It was a dark and clear night when Saladin was led round to the door.
Gilbert came to see off his messenger.
“You have everything?”
“Everything,” answered Louis. And then he bent from the saddle and
whispered into Gilbert’s ear: “Take heart! I may never come back
again. . . .”
His taunt had even more success than he had anticipated. The Marquis,
stung, seized his bridle violently. “My God! you don’t think that is
why I am sending you?”
And Louis, who thought no such thing, looked down on him with a
mocking smile. “No? . . . Au revoir, then: in eight days, at the place
you named.”
The hand fell from his bridle, and he moved out of the shaft of light
into the darkness, with exultation of a kind in his heart. He was
free—going away from intolerable strain into mere danger. And he had
just dealt Gilbert a thrust which had told. “He will think of that
presently when he hears that I have been arrested, as I most probably
shall be.”
And then, quite suddenly, half way down the avenue, between the
shadowy tree trunks, he dropped the reins and covered his face with
his hands. . . . A moment, perhaps, he sat thus motionless—for
Saladin, perplexed, had stopped of his own accord—then, throwing back
his head defiantly, he went forward under the naked black boughs,
between which there still dangled, low down, the sword of Orion.
CHAPTER XXXVI
SURGERY: THE KNIFE
“From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
From lethargy to fever of the heart;
From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
Accept her primal immortality,
The flesh resume its dust whence it began?
“O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath.
That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Heart of the Night_.
The solid library windows rattled under the onslaught of the gale;
rain streamed on to them furiously, then ceased as abruptly; torn
twigs dashed against the panes, and the frenzied wind seemed to be
concentrating on the glass all its attempts to get into the room,
though now and again a puff of smoke, bellying slowly forward,
testified to a successful entrance by the chimney.
There are occasions when the elements are not at variance with the
mood of the individual. The whirling wind, its noisy but useless
attack, was not, apparently, unpleasing to M. des Graves as he sat at
the long table in the library and looked out into its manifestations.
There was a little colour in his cheeks; his lips were pressed
together, his eyes very steady, and he beat gently upon the table
with his pen. It was as if there sat in his familiar chair a rather
different man, much younger, more alert, with a new poise of the head,
who seemed to be enjoying the storm.
As a matter of fact, the priest was not acutely conscious of the
elements. It was another storm which he had been contemplating, and
one not yet broken. Of the three principal inmates of the château M.
des Graves had, very naturally, lent the most sensitive ear during the
last few days to its mutterings. For he saw quite clearly that the
long-expected crisis was on them at last, and he did not shrink before
it. An observer would have said that it had revivified in him some
older self, had conjured up, out of its long sleep, the ghost of a man
who once had—who still had—all the aptitudes of command.
Yes, he could not doubt it: the moment was approaching. And all those
long two-and-twenty years spent in this obscure corner of Vendée
seemed to have been but a preparation for it; and so, too, seemed the
lives of the two men with whom his own existence was so intimately
united. How would the emergency find them? One was out there in the
gale, riding in peril of his life, with bitter hatred in his heart. It
was on just such another March afternoon that he had first entered the
house—a little bright-haired child who had so easily won their hearts,
a child for whom happiness seemed a birthright. . . . Poor Louis!
And what of the other boy who had so often sat with his lesson books
in this room, at whose feet Fate was about to fling a rôle of which he
might make something great and noble . . . if he could take it up. For
a man worthily to lead a religious war he must be more than a great
soldier, more than a natural leader, he must be a saint. And Gilbert?
Another critic would have urged to himself that the Marquis’ private
life was stainless, his dealings with his dependents marked by
invariable uprightness and generosity, his ability as a soldier,
though untried in actual practice, guaranteed to a large degree by his
brilliant studies and by his marked capacity for organisation. M. des
Graves did not cast a thought on these things; there was something
deeper than all these which was lacking. The peasantry among whom
Château-Foix lived, simply and without ostentation, and to whose
interests he had sacrificed his own, respected, admired, perhaps a
little feared him, but they did not love him. Did they, too, feel that
coldness, that intense moderation, that lack of enthusiasm which had
made of his existence, until lately, but half a life? Did they
know—they must know—what barrenness of soul was covered by his minimum
of religious observance? If they were ignorant of it now, they would
learn it all too soon, and the men ready to die for their altars would
find that their leader knew little of the inspiration which was
theirs.
The pity of it! The pity . . . yes, and whose was the blame?
Since Gilbert’s return from England to take up his father’s estates
the priest had sought, if anything, to withdraw his influence. He had
carefully prepared and trained a mind, hoping that with a right
prejudice it might go on to find its own perfection. And instead of
this—well, Gilbert was what he was now. It was the path which the
priest had chosen deliberately, carefully, not without conflict—and to
what had it led? The tool which he might have fashioned for such an
hour of need as this was useless. To what end, then, had he abstained
from moulding that beloved spirit? All these years, when he had sought
to divert allegiance from himself, he had been following an impossible
and a visionary ideal. And now it was too late.
And he loved Gilbert so dearly! Above all others he would fain have
called him his son; it was for that very reason that he had kept
himself apart from him. And this son would soon be fighting in a
holy war, living in hourly danger of death, perhaps dying alone,
unreconciled to the Church. His was not only the yearning of the
priest, but of the childless man also. What would he not give in
exchange for Gilbert’s soul, if only it might be granted to him? Yes,
awful though they were, those words, he could use them. . . . For
Gilbert’s sake he was willing to be himself a castaway.
His hands slid from his face and knitted themselves together in front
of him on the table, and his head fell forward on to them. If it were
possible. . . . God! God! if it were possible. . . .
The rain beat still more violently upon the panes, but in the room was
a long stillness like death, and in that stillness, while his body lay
bowed over the table, the priest’s will, rising into regions not
subject to space and time, made at last the supreme act of surrender,
and yielded up to the Divine Purpose, not its own eternal welfare, but
that of its best beloved.
* * * * * *
When he came back to the world of sense, M. des Graves discovered
himself leaning back in his chair, his hands no longer clenched in
entreaty but lying open on the table, palms uppermost, in a gesture of
offering. He remained so for a moment, and putting up a hand to his
forehead, found it dripping with sweat. After that he sat a long time
motionless, looking at the crucifix which stood in front of him.
And in his mind, not as a sudden after-revelation, but quite clear and
developed, as if he had brought it back from the mysterious places in
which he had been, was the sense that the circumstances for Gilbert’s
salvation existed, ready and waiting, if only he could be brought to
use them.
When the priest had first read Lucienne’s appealing letter, he had
said, “This must not go on.” After his stormy interview with Louis he
had pondered the situation deeply, not indeed because it involved two
aching hearts—for suffering or joy were to him only the accompaniments
of life, not life itself—but because of the wrong that Gilbert was
doing. Now he saw that, if it were the will of God, Gilbert’s love,
just because it had come to mean so much to him, might be the saving
of him . . . if he would renounce it. For at last the real reason of
the change in Château-Foix was fully apparent to him. The cold,
passionless man was living at fever-heat, devoured with a love
begotten of jealousy, filled with the lust of possession; he had his
motive force now. It was this overbearing spirit, this determination
to possess, this stiff-neckedness which was so well hidden that only
at a crisis could the outside world perceive it—it was this that must
be slain. If Gilbert’s passion could be diverted, then elements which,
unchecked, would go on to complete the ruin of a character might be
the means of the saving of a soul. Torn and beaten down in the
struggle Gilbert would be more receptive than at any other period of
his life. There are some, as M. des Graves knew, who will never behold
the gate of heaven save from the very dust of earth.
But the stakes were terribly high. If he failed, he lost for ever
Gilbert’s love and such influence as he had with him. If he won, it
would mean horrible suffering to the being whom he loved best on
earth.
* * * * * *
It was the same evening after supper, a meal at which they had spoken
little. The Marquis had been sitting idly in a low chair before the
fire, his eyes half closed, listening to the unceasing scratching of
the priest’s pen. At last the sound stopped, and the Curé, turning
suddenly in his chair, began to address him.
“Gilbert, I want to say something to you to-night.”
Château-Foix opened his eyes and regarded the speaker attentively. He
seemed a little startled.
“You know,” continued the priest, looking down at what he had just
written, “that there is very little doubt of the peasants coming and
asking you to lead them if war breaks out.”
“I do know it,” said the Marquis.
There was silence for a few moments; then M. des Graves began again.
“You have lived among these people all your life, you are their
natural leader, and they respect and trust you.”
“Yes,” assented Gilbert; “they respect me, but they do not love me. I
suppose I could not expect it otherwise, and yet I have given up a
good deal for them.”
“They cannot understand you,” said M. des Graves shortly.
Again there was silence. “Tell me,” said the priest at length—“all
these years I have never asked you to give me a reason, but I ask it
now—why cannot you accept the Catholic faith?”
A deep flush spread over the Marquis’ dark features. Without moving
a muscle, and looking straight before him, he replied somewhat
haughtily: “I have appreciated your silence, and honoured you for it,
though I acknowledge the right by which you have thought to break it.
You think my lack of orthodoxy will sit ill upon the shoulders of one
who presumes to lead your flock?”
The priest vouchsafed no reply.
Presently Gilbert turned round. “Forgive me,” he said in a softer
tone. “I know that I am no fit leader for them. I may try to deceive
them, but it will not be for long. There is no Château-Foix for me to
go to at Easter now.”
“Why not remove for ever the need to go away at Easter?” asked his
companion.
“You are suggesting, I suppose, that, for the sake of the peasants, I
should go to my Easter duties as though, for one in my position, such
a course would not be a sacrilege? I have been thinking over the
matter myself, and, if you consider it absolutely necessary, I am
willing to sacrifice my self-respect to their ideals. Will that do?”
“That was the last thing which I meant to suggest,” replied the priest
very gravely. “I meant what I said, that I want to know why you cannot
make a genuine submission, and be received back into communion.”
The Marquis leant back in his chair, a tiny mocking smile about his
lips. “Do you really want a list of my intellectual stumbling-blocks,
Father? I am afraid that they are too many to be demolished between
now and midnight—or even before Easter.”
Again the priest put by the gibe. “My son,” he said, “I have no wish
to belittle any man’s intellectual difficulties, but the time is
past for argument. You know, we both know, that in a world where we
cannot have intellectual certainty for many of the truths which we,
nevertheless, hold with unshakable conviction, such difficulties are
not the real barrier. . . . Gilbert, we shall soon be face to face
with the realities of life and death. We may both of us, for aught we
know, be dying men. By all that I hold sacred I conjure you to look
into your own soul, lest, too late, you find in yourself the obstacle
to faith.”
“What do you mean?” asked the young man curtly.
“I mean,” continued M. des Graves, and his voice was cold, “that I
believe your own hardness of heart to have been the cause of your
lukewarmness all these years. I mean that you cannot now make your
submission to the Church because submission is a mere name to you.
Only once in your life have you known what it is to surrender your
own wishes; you have never known what it is to take the second
place—except for your own convenience or when you had no choice.”
The Marquis settled himself again in his chair, an almost amused
expression playing about his mouth, but when he spoke his voice
sounded a long way off.
“You are fluent to-night, mon père,” he said. “Pray go on! Will
you not illustrate my hardness of heart, my—what am I to call it?—my
overbearing nature?”
“Yes,” returned the priest; “since you ask I will illustrate it. The
girl whom you intend to make your wife loves and is loved in turn by
another man. You——”
Gilbert started angrily from his chair. “Great Heavens!” he cried,
“you presume too much! How do you know this? It is false—I tell you
that it is a lie!”
M. des Graves had risen also. “My son,” he said, “sit down. It is not
false. You shall hear me to the end, and you shall not ask me how I
know what I know.”
A very definite majesty hung about the priest as he stood with one
hand raised in expostulation. No one could have guessed that the
tumult in his mind almost equalled that of Gilbert’s. They stood thus
for several seconds, measuring swords against each other, till at
last, when the tension began to get unbearable, the Marquis suddenly
sat down.
“Go on,” he said harshly; “I will hear you to the end.”
M. des Graves walked over to the fire, turned, and began to speak. “I
am in possession of certain facts, which you know to be true. I do not
speak idly. I am not accustomed to play with words, nor is my
information derived dishonourably. You know that Lucienne loves
Louis; you know also that long ago they agreed to see no more of each
other. You have taken no account of the suffering that went to that
resolution. You intend to marry that unhappy lady with the consent of
her will but not of her heart. You have been wronged in thought, I
grant you; you are within your rights, I grant you—but have you no
chivalry, have you no pity? Do you really mean to wreck two lives, and
your own also—for nothing but misery and disillusionment can come of
such a union?”
“You would suggest that I abdicate in favour of my cousin?” asked the
Marquis.
“That is my meaning,” answered M. des Graves.
There was another long silence, while Gilbert, his head between his
clenched hands, stared at his shoe buckles.
At last the priest left his place and came to him. His voice
was changed, his face very sad. “My son,” he said, “I ask your
forgiveness. It is because I love you that I have made myself speak
thus to you. . . . Oh, believe me, if you could put aside your will,
if you could only throw yourself upon the venture, it is not the
intellectual difficulties that would keep you from the Divine
embrace.”
And after a moment’s hesitation Château-Foix rose and took his hand.
“As for forgiveness,” he said, “it is yours without the asking. It is
all true. You may be right . . . I cannot tell . . . but the path you
bid me tread is too steep. You ask me to put from me the traditions of
a lifetime, and it is too late. I cannot.”
“‘Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his
cross and follow Me,’” said the priest. “. . . ‘For that shall bring a
man peace at the last,’” he added, almost to himself, as he turned and
went slowly out of the room.
CHAPTER XXXVII
“CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME”
“To the little red house by the river
I came when the short night fell.
I broke the web for ever,
I broke my heart as well.
Michael and the Saints deliver
My soul from the nethermost Hell!”
—M. E. COLERIDGE, _Wilderspin_.
The grey March afternoon was dwindling into dusk, a dusk of windless
cloud. A little sunset afterglow stained the west, behind the leafless
chestnuts, as Gilbert walked steadily along the rough and narrow lane,
one of that network of intersecting pathways which only a Vendean born
could comfortably traverse. He was making his way, by an unfrequented
route, to the solitary little hostelry which, just over a week ago, he
had appointed as a rendezvous for his cousin when the latter should
return from Nantes. Since then he had changed his mind about sending
him on a further errand; but the arrangement had not been cancelled,
and he must at any rate meet Louis at the Etoile de Vendée. And
perhaps the unfamiliar surroundings would help him in what he had to
do.
Gilbert de Chantemerle, unlike his father, had never found any real
consolation in philosophy. Over against the solace which it offered he
could always discern, set as in battle array, the challenge of the
Christian life—of the lives of Christians. He lived himself in close
contact with such a life, which—as his father had done—he admired and
loved, but it troubled him with its perpetual question. He could not,
like his father, walk placidly by Sébastien des Graves with his eyes
on a different goal. Even from the tenantry towards whom he was so
wise and so upright, to whose welfare he had sacrificed his own young
ambitions, he was separated by a gulf which he knew to be impassable.
It had not needed M. des Graves to tell him that he could not lead
them, when the time came, in the spirit with which they would follow.
If only he could! All the winter, since his return from Brittany, a
longing had been budding in his heart. But the fulfilment of that
longing demanded a miracle; in other words, it was impossible. How
could he ever change his point of view, how pass from doubt to the
certainty of faith? Mere desire, however vehement, will not transport
one’s body from one adjacent point to another; how should it change
the country of that immeasurably more tenacious thing, the soul?
Then had come the priest’s attack on him, and that interview which,
though only a week old, seemed to be separated from the present by a
century of struggle and anguish. . . . And he had been so consumed
with wrath at the preposterous suggestion then made to him just
because M. des Graves was not really the first to make it. His own
heart had once or twice faintly whispered the same thing to him. But
now, since one who dwelt within the gates of his desire had said that
this was the key to unlock them, what could he do but try it? He did
not believe in its efficacy, and yet—must not a sacrifice so bitter,
so crushingly repugnant, for it was the immolation of his own
intensely stubborn will—must not this offering call down some spark
from heaven? . . . To this had the depth of his desire brought him, to
the oblation, almost as an experiment, of his inmost personality, and
to this, the crisis of all his emotional and moral life, he walked
under the cloudy sky, repeating to himself the formula in which he
meant to accomplish it. Only in such a way, as an actor speaking a
part well conned, could he ever get through it.
The Etoile de Vendée, nominally an inn, was in reality half a
farmhouse, half a cottage, in front of which the solitary old man who
owned it had hung out a signboard, perhaps merely to satisfy a whim,
for the building stood by no high-road, and lay at least two miles
away from the nearest hamlet. It was all the better as a rendezvous.
When Gilbert turned at last into the wavering lane which crawled past
it, it suddenly occurred to him how more than likely it was that Louis
had not been able to get to the tryst at the time appointed. But the
unconfessed hope was vain, for there, tethered in front, was his
cousin’s bay horse, who turned his head enquiringly at the sound of
steps, and pricked his ears as he recognised the Marquis.
The door of the long, low parlour was exactly opposite the hearth, so
that the first thing which Château-Foix saw on entering was Louis,
sitting in a somewhat dejected attitude by the fire, with his head on
his hand. He looked round as the door opened, but did not move from
his chair, and the Marquis divested himself of his own hat and cloak
without saying anything, and came forward to the hearth.
Louis plunged his hand into the breast of his coat. “I met your man at
Nantes,” he said. “He gave me this letter for you. But it seems to me
that it matters little to us now how much of M. de la Rouërie’s plans
for Brittany are discovered. The whole of Northern Vendée is alight.”
His tone expressed no elation at the fact—nothing but weariness.
The Marquis took the letter. “Nevertheless, I am extremely glad to
have this, and I am very much obliged to you for going.”
“It was a pleasure,” said Louis curtly.
There was a sting in that simple and conventional reply. Gilbert took
no notice, and pulling forward a chair opened his letter and began to
run through it. But in half a minute he was looking instead at his
cousin, who, his elbows on his knees, was leaning forward staring into
the fire. Was it fancy that there was something in the set of his jaw
that had not been visible six months ago, a line about the mouth which
spelt . . . what?
The Marquis’ scrutiny of the profile presented to him was cut short,
however, by Louis suddenly becoming aware of it.
“What are you looking at me for?” he demanded. “Is not the paper all
right?”
“I don’t know,” said Château-Foix. “I was looking at you because—well,
I want to speak to you about something else.”
Whatever the Vicomte may have thought of this exordium he did
not betray. He kicked the smouldering log on the hearth with his
spurred heel and sank back in his chair. “Very well,” he replied
indifferently; “I am ready.”
Gilbert deliberately folded up the letter, put it in his pocket, and
rose. “I should like,” he said, in a steady voice of ice, “to take
back most of the things that I said to you the other day at the ford.
I was . . . mistaken. I believe now that you did your best, that you
had no intention of acting treacherously. The fault was mine for
putting you in such a position.” He paused for a second; Louis had not
stirred. “You have assured me that Lucienne does not return your
affection; I appreciate your motive in the assurance, but I know that
it is not true. And if we come out of this alive I do not, therefore,
intend to press my claim. . . . That is all I have to say.” He turned
and went to the table.
The stupor which had held Louis enmeshed during this short speech
relaxed its hold. He sprang up. “Gilbert . . . God in heaven! You
don’t mean it—I can’t——”
“Oh yes, you can,” replied the Marquis coolly, taking up his cloak.
“She is yours already in spirit; you know that.” And he went towards
the door.
But Louis, springing after him, caught him by the arm. “Gilbert . . .
for God’s sake, don’t go like that . . . You can’t mean it! You——”
Somehow, without actually shaking him off, Gilbert succeeded in
disengaging himself. “Surely,” he said bitingly, “you are not usually
so dull. I cannot stay here all evening to repeat the same thing.
Lucienne is yours—if she will have you. Is not that plain enough?”
Their eyes met. Then something more like horror than any other emotion
dawned in the Vicomte’s, and with a catch of the breath he recoiled a
little. The Marquis went quickly out and shut the door behind him.
* * * * * *
He set his face towards the miles of rough upland behind the inn. He
must walk—he must walk for ever to get away. A fine soaking rain was
beginning to fall; he did not feel it. Past the few bitten oaks that
fringed the garden he strode, and up the vacillating track that ceased
at last, disheartened, on the shaggy hillside. Where was the balm
which the priest had promised him? “Liar! liar!” he said between his
teeth. He had done it; he had wrenched his heart out, and where was
the difference? . . . He walked, equally oblivious of time and of
distance; of the rain and of the broken hilly ground, stumbling over
gorse bushes, catching his feet in rabbit holes. At last, almost at
the top of a hill, he came to a stop, not knowing or caring where he
had got to, and threw himself down on his face in the wet grass.
It was night indeed in his heart. All was gone; Lucienne’s love—though
that, he knew, he had lost long ago—and that fierce and steadfast
determination to keep her in spite of everything, which had sustained
him for months. When he had lost his hold on that he was indeed beaten
to his knees by that force stronger than himself, whatever it was,
which had conquered his own stubborn will and smitten to the earth his
pride. The sense of loss, of shock, was at once more and less than
pain; it was numbing, grinding, annihilating. . . . Of Lucienne, as
desirable, loved and beautiful, cast from him by his own act, he
hardly thought at all. The act itself had cost him too much.
He lay there long motionless, careless of the rain, of the deepening
darkness, of the passage of time. The smell and touch of the friendly
little blades of grass against his face and mouth began first to
recall him to external things. They were life, and he, too, had to
live—with nothing left to live for. . . . Yes, one thing! If only the
moment would come soon, soon!
He stirred and sat up. The rain was ceasing; one or two stars were
visible, hanging over a dark mass which stood out against the sky a
little above where he lay, and which must be the wood on the top of
the hill of La Chapelle-Michel. It was a surprise to find how far he
had come. Dully, mechanically, he thought that he must get back,
and that he was very cold and almost wet through. Then, suddenly
galvanised into life, he jumped to his feet and stood listening with
the most concentrated attention.
Through the silence drifted a faint jangling sound, which seemed to
come from the direction of Chantemerle. It was a bell ringing the
tocsin.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE SWORD IS DRAWN
“Prends ton fusil, Grégoire,
Prends ta gourde pour boire,
Prends ta Vierge d’ivoire . . .
Nos Messieurs sont partis
Pour chasser la perdrix.”
—_Monsieur d’Charette._
(Chant Vendéen).
Once again M. des Graves sat in the library, and he sat in silence—save
for a very cheerful and crackling fire. But he was not alone. By the
side of his chair, an elbow on the arm of it, Louis had assumed a
rather favourite position on the floor. It was over, the telling of
his incredible news, incoherently as it had been done, and now he had
no more to say, cast up by that flood of emotion and amazement on to
a shore of silence. But at last he shifted his position a little and
asked, for the second time: “You are sure that you do not disapprove,
Father? You are sure that I may take her?”
“Yes, Louis,” came the answer, grave and low; “you may take her.”
“I don’t deserve it,” said the young man to himself, and fell to
pulling at the bearskin rug on which he lay. Presently he broke the
silence again. “It was horrible for him—horrible. And I cannot try to
thank him; he would hate it.”
The priest’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. It was
difficult to articulate in the throes of a joy so piercing as to be
pain. Perhaps if he could betake himself for a little to the prayer
which surged up from his inmost soul it would ease the almost
intolerable emotion. And perhaps he could then show to Louis his
sympathy with his happiness. He said gently: “He will be able to take
your thanks some day,” and with that got out of his chair.
“Are you going?” asked the Vicomte, jumping to his feet.
“Yes; to the chapel for a little while.”
“You might say a prayer for me,” murmured Louis, looking away. Then he
seemed to get the better of his embarrassment, and seized both M. des
Graves’ hands. “I had no right to hope for such a thing as this—no
claim to deserve it now,” he said, with deep and real feeling in his
voice. “And Gilbert—— What was that?”
It was, apparently, some small hard object striking against glass. The
two men stood motionless for a second, then Louis abruptly loosed the
priest’s hands, and going to the nearest of the long windows tugged
aside the curtains and threw it open.
There was nothing to be seen, but out of the evening, grown now to the
semblance of night, came an ominous sound of voices and of many feet.
The noise, thrilling to the nerves and more than a little sinister in
suggestion, appeared to come from the front of the house.
“Keep back!” whispered Louis over his shoulder. “Who knows what it may
be?—perhaps they are come for you.” And slipping out on to the long
and narrow balcony he leant over and peered into the darkness. “Who is
there?” he shouted.
There was no direct answer, but feet shuffled on the gravel, and he
caught excited whispers. “It is not he!” “No, it is Monsieur le
Vicomte.” “Perhaps he is not here.”
“What is it, in God’s name?” cried Louis sharply. “And who is in the
avenue?”
A couple of rough voices raised themselves. “We want Monsieur le
Marquis.” “We saw a light here, so we came this way. . . .” The strong
local accent was enough for Louis, and turned his vague fear into a
vague hope.
“Oh, it is you, my friends, from the village? Wait a moment.” He
stepped back into the room and caught up a lamp. “No, don’t come out,
please, Father, for a moment.”
The ring of light showed, a few feet below, a knot of peasants, armed.
And in a flash the young man understood. His heart leapt. “It has
come,” he said to himself. Aloud he said: “You have come to ask
Monsieur le Marquis to lead you, perhaps?”
A shout of joyful asseveration was the response, and in the increasing
din from the front other figures, attracted by the light which he was
holding, began to pour round the corner of the château, vociferating
wildly, and evidently mistaking him for his cousin.
“Monsieur le Marquis is not here at present,” said Saint-Ermay in his
clear, carrying voice, “but he will soon be back. Go round, my
friends, to the front, and Monsieur le Curé and I will come to you at
the steps.”
“You are sure, Monsieur Louis, that Monsieur le Marquis will be back
soon?” enquired an anxious voice.
“We expect him every moment,” said Louis confidently, and went in with
his lamp.
M. des Graves had dropped to his knees before the crucifix on his
writing-table. His face was hidden in his hands. Louis looked at him
as he set down the lamp, hesitated, then hurried from the room. In the
hall were gathered the domestics, plainly terrified, and with some
cause, for the great door was resounding under repeated blows, not all
effected with the human hand.
“Open the door, Pierre!” commanded the Vicomte. “There is nothing to
be afraid of.” Yet even as he spoke there was audible, through the
hammering and the muffled shouts, the sharp crash of broken glass.
“Morbleu!” muttered the young man, frowning, “we can’t have that. Open
the door, imbeciles, unless you want it to be driven in!—I must open
it myself, then.” He was actually pulling at the bolts before he found
old Antoine and Jasmin beside him.
At the noise of the unbolting the hammering ceased, the door swung
open, and Louis stepped out into a clamour and a scene which reminded
him, instantly and none too pleasantly, of that day, three and a half
years ago, when the Paris mob had raved outside the railings of the
great courtyard at Versailles. Here was the same indescribable
atmosphere of emotion, the same medley of weapons, the same sea
of excited faces. Yet it was different, for as the light streamed
out behind him and he was recognised, a wave, not of that deadly
hostility, but of welcome surged towards him.
“It is Monsieur le Vicomte! A la bonne heure, Monsieur Louis! Vive
Monsieur Louis! Ohé, Monsieur le Vicomte, are you coming with us?”
Louis could not make himself heard, and when at last he was able to do
so for a moment, the cry for the Marquis began and drowned him. It
seemed to him a very desirable thing that Gilbert should indeed return
quickly, for he had never seen the villagers so out of hand. As they
shouted they brandished here a scythe-blade, here a pitchfork lit up
by the glare of a few torches and the broad fan of light from the
door. At last the Vicomte began to get annoyed. He shouted to a
domestic: “Go, for God’s sake, and ask Monsieur le Curé to come. . . .
Ah, here he is! Father, can you stop this racket?”
Apparently M. des Graves had that power. The noise had slackened the
instant that he appeared; now, as he held up his hand, it died down to
an undertone.
“My children!” he said a little reprovingly, and then to Louis: “Now
speak to them, my son, and tell them that Gilbert will soon be back.
No—it is your place to do it, not mine.”
And the young man, after glancing at him, went forward to the topmost
step. “My friends, be patient!” he urged. “Monsieur le Marquis will
soon be here.” And he added with a half-smile: “I can guess why you
want him, can’t I?”
A hundred voices asserted that he could. Finally, in answering queries
as to whether the Marquis would consent to lead them, and in shaking
the hands held up to grasp his own, Louis was more or less pulled down
the steps into a sea of passion in which a hostile swimmer would have
had little chance of his life.
“Monsieur le Vicomte, you will come, too?” shouted a group of young
men, rosaries round their necks and no more than stout sticks in their
hands. “Monsieur Louis has learnt soldiering,” explained a voice. “He
was in our King’s guard. That’s what we want, a soldier!”
It was all very hot and breathless and uncomfortable, and the Vicomte
soon contrived to disengage himself and to return to his vantage post
on the steps. Hence, being now more successful in making himself
heard, he invited any one who wished to enter the house, and ordered
such food and drink as it contained to be brought out to the invaders.
No one would come in, but when the latter arrangement was at last
carried through a measure of quiet fell upon the excited throng, as,
like the Israelites, they ate and drank standing and prepared for
departure.
It was now ten o’clock; the rain had ceased, and there was the promise
of a feeble moon. The sound of the tocsin, presage of the unusual,
came dinning to the ears of the young man and the old as they stood by
the door and looked at the scene, ready and waiting for the principal
actor. Why did he not come? The priest, who had been down in the
throng, was aware of the tiniest pang of fear. And Louis seemed to
know it.
“I can’t conceive where he can have gone to,” he said. “There is a man
here, who has only just come, who says that he saw Gilbert walking
very fast towards La Chapelle-Michel about three hours ago. He took it
for granted that he was going there to make a vow or pay his devotions
before—this.” He indicated the scene below. “But I think he must have
been mistaken. . . . What is it, Antoine? More wine?”
* * * * * *
Some half-hour later the Vicomte was down again among the crowd,
listening to the story of how the village had organised itself, when
suddenly the narrator’s hand tightened on his arm, and Louis’ heart
leapt like the rest as he recognised the figure that came quickly out
on to the steps. In the rapturous storm of applause which greeted the
advent of the Marquis he edged his way nearer, and, when the cheering
subsided, heard the latter ask simply: “What do you want of me, my
friends?”
Evidently out of respect, the peasants had accorded their _seigneur_ a
spokesman. A burly, middle-aged man, in whom Louis recognised the
miller, separated himself from the rest and advanced up a step or two.
“It is time, Monseigneur, is it not?” he said in his strong Vendean
accent. “We have borne it long enough. Our priests are gone, our
churches are empty. Now we ourselves must go out of the country to
fight for those who oppress us.” His hoarse voice shook with a
hardly-mastered passion. “We will never go, never! We will die first
here in Vendée. . . . Monsieur le Marquis, they have risen in the
Marais, in the Pays de Retz; Messieurs de Sapinaud took Les Herbiers
the day before yesterday, the men of Le Coudrais, peasants like
ourselves, have defeated the National Guard of Saint-Fulgent, Montaigu
is captured, and now we hear that the men of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil on
the Loire have taken Chemillé and are marching on Cholet. . . . We
must go, too! But we must have some one to lead us—we are ignorant of
war. We have come to ask you to be our leader.”
A dead silence, more impressive than clamour, followed his simple
words. The miller stood motionless on the steps, leaning on the old
fowling-piece which he carried, and looking up, like every one there,
at the young man on the steps.
And perhaps, of all the _seigneurs_ of Vendée, Gilbert de Château-Foix,
the cold and prudent, alone accepted on the instant the call to that
desperate and heroic conflict.
“If it is your wish,” he said steadily, looking down on them, “I am
ready to lead you to the best of my ability. But it is my duty to urge
you to remember against what forces you are pitting yourselves.”
“We know, Monsieur le Marquis—we have remembered!” came back to him,
mixed with wild cries of “Long live the Marquis!” “To Les Herbiers!”
Gilbert held up his hand. “Before I can settle anything I must talk
with some of you. Let Jean Guéchery, Laurent Robineau, and François
Batliau come up here. And where is M. de Saint-Ermay?”
“Here,” said Louis, and made his way through the crowd up the steps,
to a meeting so different from their parting of a few hours ago.
“That is right,” said Gilbert, hardly glancing at him. “I shall want
you to be my lieutenant. Now, tell me, Guéchery, what arms you have.”
They all passed into the library, discussing. Outside, the March night
grew gradually quiet of clamour and torches, as the waiting peasants
slowly made their way, for shelter rather than for sleep, to kitchen,
stable, or outhouse.
When, a couple of hours later, the three leading peasants went out
again to the rest, Louis, left alone with Château-Foix in the hall,
stood a moment looking irresolutely at his back as he stopped to
take down a pair of pistols from the wall. Then he went up to him.
“Gilbert——” he began almost timidly.
The Marquis, though he must have heard, took no notice, but finished
disentangling the pistols. Then he wheeled suddenly round. Seen in a
better light his face appeared very drawn. “Oh, is that you?” he
observed coldly. “Do you want to know anything?”
In a flash Louis had adopted another method of address. “Yes, several
things, if I am to be of any use as your lieutenant,” he replied, in a
matter-of-fact tone. “Where can I see you for a few moments?”
It was just evident that Gilbert welcomed his change of front. “Come
to me in the library in an hour’s time,” he said, slipping the pistols
into his pockets. “And I should advise you to put together a few
clothes as well as your arms.”
Louis nodded and swung on his heel. It would be many a long day before
Gilbert could bear a word on that subject. Well, he did not marvel at
it.
Meanwhile Gilbert went to his own room, changed his wet clothes, wrote
a brief note to Lucienne, and came down to the library, where a
servant had set food and wine. In a business-like manner he despatched
these, and then, pulling down a sheaf of maps from a shelf, selected
one and spread it out on the table. He was bending over it when the
door opened, and in came, not Louis but M. des Graves. The Marquis
instantly shifted the shade of the lamp, which he had tilted up in his
own direction.
“I am looking out the best route to Les Herbiers, Father,” he remarked.
“I believe it would really be shorter to go by Saint-Martin.”
The priest took no notice, but came round the table to his side.
“Because we may neither of us be alive at this time to-morrow,
Gilbert,” he said very solemnly, “it is my duty to say to you, however
much you shrink from the subject, that I am sure you have done right,
and that I believe God will bless your sacrifice. . . . And now I
shall not refer to the matter again until the day when you shall come
to me of your own will and tell me that all is well with you.”
Gilbert, who had not removed his gaze from the map over which he bent,
now stood up and looked at the priest. “I fear that day will never
come, Father,” he returned in polite and chilling tones. “But I
rejoice that you are convinced I have acted rightly. And it is done,
and there is an end of it, and, as you say, we will bury the subject.
Perhaps you would kindly give Louis a hint that I do not desire to be
thanked . . . as though I had given him a horse or paid his debts for
him,” he added to himself.
M. des Graves looked at the pale, resolute face, and his eyes were
full of compassion and understanding. “It shall be as you wish, my
son,” he said quietly. “You have acted; there is no need of further
words. . . . Ah, here is Louis. Louis, we are looking out the roads to
Les Herbiers.”
“And I have got the wrong map,” said the Marquis, rolling it up.
“Please bring me the bundle by the bookcase, Louis. Thank you. Now the
distance: from here to Saint-Martin-des-Noyers— supposing that we go
that way—six miles; from Saint-Martin to Les Quatre Chemins another
six——”
“And from Les Quatre Chemins to Les Herbiers about the same,” finished
Louis. “And after that?” He laughed gaily. “That lamp of yours is
going out, Gilbert. However, it is nearly dawn already.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE FOUR ROADS
“On the road that goes northward the red foemen ride;
On the road that goes west, hark, the sob of the tide!
To the east a false comrade—to the southward . . . who knows?
And high up in heaven the black night-wind blows. . . .
But I’m for the saddle; one cup and we part,
Though all roads of the world hold a sword for my heart!”
—_The Roads of the World._
But they never got to Les Herbiers.
On that strange daybreak march a better, if a more hazardous, idea had
occurred to Gilbert. Between him and Les Herbiers lay Les Quatre
Chemins, the cross-roads where the highway from Nantes to La Rochelle
cut that from Saumur to Les Sables. Though nothing but the tiniest
hamlet had grown up at their intersection, the spot was strategically
of immense importance, for a force holding it could prevent supplies
and help from coming southwards. Château-Foix knew that his little
troop could not hope to block the way against any large contingent,
but no such contingent could yet have been got together; and smaller
bodies, if they knew the route to be cut, would hesitate before
adventuring upon it. He consulted Louis; he took the opinion of the
leading peasants, and bivouacked that evening among the hedges of the
Bocage.
The risk which he had taken had been justified. Not only had the
setting up of the white standard attracted scores more peasants from
the district, but a concentration of the two other larger Royalist
contingents already on foot was imminent. Gilbert de Château-Foix had
the honour of first possession of what was afterwards to be the
headquarters of the army of the centre, but at this moment, the
morning after his arrival, he was sharing it with others. M. de
Sapinaud de la Verrie, fresh from his victories at Les Herbiers and
Tiffauges, had just marched in two thousand strong, and the two MM. de
Royrand were momentarily expected.
The newcomer, on his big grey horse, sat talking to Gilbert in the
road. He was a well-built, handsome man of five-and-fifty, with a face
at once gentle and energetic. A cloudless blue sky smiled over the
two and over the characteristically Vendean landscape. Among the
high-banked fields, each exactly like the other, an army could have
encamped without its presence being discovered. Nowhere was there a
landmark. And every bank was topped with trees, leafless now, or only
flushed with green, but soon to be capable of affording cover. The
Chevalier’s own men were scattered about, resting after their march,
but in a field on the other side of the nearest hedge Louis was
attempting to instil some elementary principles of warfare into the
heads of the most promising recruits from Chantemerle, while Sapinaud
told the Marquis how the men of Saint-Florent, under Cathelineau and
Stofflet, after capturing Chemillé, had, the day before, taken Cholet
itself.
As he finished Louis dismissed his recruits, and, clambering through
the hedge, jumped down into the road. Gilbert presented him, and Louis
saluted the old soldier.
“You were drilling your men, Monsieur le Vicomte?”
“A very hopeless task, sir,” responded Saint-Ermay, smiling ruefully.
“And if only we had arms! How does one do musketry drill with
pitchforks?”
“Our first brush with the Blues will provide us with muskets,” said
Gilbert. “That is how your men got theirs, is it not, Monsieur le
Chevalier?”
Sapinaud nodded. “When we entered Les Herbiers we had only scythes,
fowling-pieces, or clubs. But we got three of our guns there, and some
at Tiffauges.”
This was encouraging; but afterwards, as the three went towards the
little cottage which served as Gilbert’s headquarters, Sapinaud spoke
very gravely of the terrible difficulty of getting the peasants to
face artillery fire, and they discussed the alternatives of devoting a
few days to drilling them, or of risking an engagement in order to
give them confidence. They were about to enter, when there was seen
coming down the Saint-Fulgent road a fresh body of peasants headed by
two horsemen. The riders pressed on, and in a moment or two were
dismounting and shaking hands.
The elder M. de Royrand, a retired lieutenant-colonel of musketeers,
was a tall, vigorous old man; his brother, somewhat younger, bore, in
the empty sleeve pinned to his breast, a memento of the naval battle
at Ushant where he had lost the arm which once filled it. Both wore
the cross of Saint Louis.
Louis caught his cousin by the arm. “You will not need me,” he said.
“If you do, you can send for me. I had better keep an eye on these
three armies; perhaps they won’t get on together.”
And, going out, he found himself in converse with a peasant who had
accompanied the newcomers, and discovered that his name was Cougnon.
It was he who, having been elected by his comrades as their leader,
had conducted them to M. de Royrand.
“M. Charles de Royrand is full of valour and goodness,” said he in his
heavy patois. “We must always have a noble to lead us.”
“And what arms have you?” asked Louis.
“Clubs and pikes,” answered Cougnon, waving his hand at his troop,
nearly all young men. “They were enough to frighten the National Guard
at Saint Fulgent,” he added, seeing the Vicomte’s face fall a little.
Saint-Ermay left him and walked slowly down the road, whose banks were
lined with peasants. More solemn and determined than elated was their
gaze at him as he passed them, sitting or standing against the hedges,
some with their wide-brimmed hats of Sunday and holiday wear, some
with their everyday reddish woollen caps on their long hair, cut short
on the forehead but left long and unkempt behind. Some of them were
wearing coarse white or blue stockings, others long gaiters of
homespun, but hardly one possessed any other footgear than wooden
sabots. Under their short waistcoats of white flannel or of grey serge
the bulging shirt affected by the Vendean was sometimes covered by a
handkerchief wound round the waist. A few had these handkerchiefs
stuffed with cartridges. There was not a cartridge belt among them,
nor was Louis ever to see one worn, for when they got them from their
enemies they threw them away, preferring to keep their ammunition in
their pockets or in these sashes. Most of them were young, or at best
middle-aged, but Louis saw one old man whose years were marked less by
his lined face than by the old-fashioned little pieces of wood which
fastened his waistcoat in lieu of buttons.
Some of the insurgents were at their prayers, some polishing their
weapons, though few had weapons of any distinction to polish. There
were deadly scythe-blades lashed to poles, many pitchforks, clubs in
plenty, even pointed sticks—fowling-pieces of all descriptions, but
hardly a musket. Two young men were armed with old bayonets, still
rusty, fastened to what appeared to be broom handles; one or two had
brought hoes, and over the shoulder of a peasant who knelt with his
back to the observer hung a large sickle. But every man had his rosary
round his neck or dangling from a buttonhole, and on almost every
breast was pinned or sewn the symbol of the Sacred Heart.
The rustic levy did not look likely material, and the young officer of
the Maison du Roi with difficulty restrained himself from shrugging
his shoulders as he walked along to the actual cross-roads. Here,
round a rude Calvary, some fifty peasants were telling their beads. He
pulled off his hat and passed on. Down the Chantonnay road, along
which they had marched the day before, the breeze was lightly raising
little swirls of March dust. And away in the distance was a larger
cloud. Louis screwed up his eyes, shading them from the sun; then he
sprang up the nearest bank. Yes, it was a rider, and one who came on
so fast that the beat of his hoofs had been audible but a few moments
before he was upon the watcher. Louis jumped down and held up his
hand, and the man, seeing that he had to do with a gentleman, pulled
up.
“From L’Oie, to warn you. . . .” he panted out. “A strong body of
patriots from Fontenay and Niort are on the way. They must have
reached Chantonnay by now.”
Louis said only two words: “With artillery?”
“I believe so.”
“Lend me your horse,” said Saint-Ermay sharply. And in a moment he was
tearing up the road through the groups of startled peasants, to break
up the council of war with news that rendered its deliberations
useless. There was not a minute to lose. One thing only was
determined—not to wait to be attacked, but to march to meet the enemy,
a decision which was received outside with acclamations.
And so a few thousand undrilled peasants, miserably armed, marched off
to battle under the conduct of five gentlemen, two of whom had never
seen active service. Down the sunny road they went, full of fervour,
chanting litanies, until the roll of the Republican drums came upon
their ears. And on this they were split by their leaders into a main
body, in the road, and two wings, one on either side, pursuing a
parallel course in the embanked fields.
Thus it was that only a part of them—those in the road—fulfilled
Sapinaud’s prediction, and would not face the hostile artillery. For
while their comrades were racing for cover across the fields, the main
body, pent between the high banks, perceptibly wavered as the first
projectile burst from the blue-coated mass in front of them. It was
the critical moment, and seeing it the younger Royrand, Royrand
Bras-Coupé, trotted forward in front of the hesitating ranks. “Mes
enfants, follow me! There is nothing to be afraid of!” he cried,
turning in the saddle. The next instant he and his horse were hurled
bodily across the road, and flung in one mangled wreck under the
hedge.
The foremost ranks broke and turned. Gilbert, from the field on the
right, saw it and ground his teeth. It was in vain that Sapinaud and
the slain man’s brother urged, entreated; the tangible evidence of the
power of artillery lay before the peasants in that crumpled mass at
the side of the road. But even as they turned from it affrighted,
huddling back like sheep, something like a miracle happened. Another
cannon ball thudded into the bank; the spot was wet from a spring—mud
flew in all directions. Ere the confusion had died away a peasant
sprang from the breaking ranks. “Forward, les gars!” he cried in a
voice of thunder; they have no more ammunition, they are firing with
mud!” And carried away by his amazing idea the terrified men rallied,
re-formed, began to advance, gained pace, poured along the road, and
broke like a torrent on the Republican ranks.
* * * * * *
Meanwhile Louis, to his no small disgust, had found himself told off,
with a party of picked marksmen, to line a hedge on the left, two
fields away. He had obeyed sighing, to find, when he got to his post,
that it was no sinecure. Directly his presence was discovered the bank
became a target. But he soon saw that his men were adepts at taking
cover; and if his service in the bodyguard had not been a very serious
training for war, it had taught him how to make himself obeyed, and he
soon steadied down his recruits to their work. Their deference,
indeed, amused him, when he considered that it was the first time that
he, no less than they, had been under fire, while many of them, as
poachers, were better shots than himself, and he nearly told them so.
At last, irritated by their well-directed fire, the Republicans
trained one of their guns on the objectionable hedge. Louis, taking
this as a compliment, leaped down from his post of observation,
assuring his men that they were perfectly safe. It was not a fact, but
it was stated with such cheerful confidence that, crouching behind
the bank, the peasants waited undismayed for the report which never
came. It was while they were thus waiting that the idea occurred to
Saint-Ermay to creep along under shelter of the bank and to open fire
again from a slightly different angle. In the execution of this
manœuvre the sound of fierce cheering burst upon his ears. He
scrambled to the top of the bank.
“By God!” he exclaimed, “they have done it! No, wait a moment, men—we
may be of more use here.”
From the top of the bank he could see across the intervening fields
into the road, full of a mass of swarming, struggling men. The
peasants, using their scythes and pitchforks with deadly and
unexpected effect, were all over the Republican guns. Suddenly a whole
swarm of Republicans poured over the next hedge and came diagonally
across the field towards Saint-Ermay’s post. There was no need to
speculate whether they were merely fugitives flying from the strange
onslaught, or were seeking to take Royrand’s men in the rear. They had
more the appearance of the former.
“Now is your opportunity!” cried the Vicomte, and his marksmen poured
a devastating fire into the advancing cohort. About a dozen dropped;
they paused, taken by surprise, then came on again wildly, firing
their pistols at the bank.
“Steady, mes gars, steady!” said Louis quietly. “Give it them again
and they’ll turn.” As he spoke the peasant next him fell forward with
a groan, shot through the head, but the volley rang out with deadly
effect. It was enough: the disorganised mass broke and turned.
Louis’ sword flashed out in the sunlight. “Now for a little fun!” he
laughed as he leapt down from shelter, and without a second’s
hesitation his men rushed after him.
Driving the fugitives before them they reached the road, the scene of
an indescribable confusion—captured guns, slewed half round, the
artillerymen, where they had stood to them, lying dead with ghastly
scythe wounds, peasants snatching up the sorely-needed muskets and
cartridges, a Republican officer, with his back to the hedge,
defending himself against three assailants and falling, ere Louis
could get to him, with his brains blown out. Away on the right
Saint-Ermay distinguished a mounted figure that looked like Gilbert;
he seemed—if it were he—to be urging on his men towards a gentle
slope, where a handful of Republicans were re-forming. Many of the
fugitives, too, were making for this point, but a large proportion
were shot down as they ran, for every hedge now held some cunning
marksman, and Royrand’s men, turning against them the captured guns,
soon dislodged those who reached the point of vantage.
The pursuit raged down the high-road as far as the quiet little
village of Saint-Vincent-Sterlange with its legendary fountain, and
here, some two hours later, Château-Foix, riding to and fro in the
street trying to re-form his men, came on Louis engaged in the same
task. He said nothing, but as he passed held out his hand and caught
his cousin’s in a momentary fierce grip.
That night when, still further reinforced by Baudry d’Asson and the
three De Béjarry brothers, they took possession of Chantonnay, both
Sapinaud and Royrand thanked the Vicomte for the tenacity and judgment
with which he had held his post. But after Gilbert’s unspoken greeting
the veterans’ praise was oddly tasteless.
* * * * * *
And yet two days later, on Passion Sunday, a dispirited body of men
were straggling back in drenching rain along the high-road to Les
Quatre Chemins. It was the victors of March 15th, for whom the veteran
general De Marcé and the troops of the line had proved too strong. De
Marcé had found the Royalists drawn up to meet him a mile beyond
Chantonnay, and for six hours, in torrential rain, he had withstood
their attack. The peasants would not face his guns. In vain Sapinaud
and Royrand had led them against the artillery, in vain they had
showed them how to throw themselves on the ground and let the
projectiles pass over their heads, in vain the two Chantemerle had
recklessly exposed themselves. They could not achieve the impossible.
De Marcé was in Chantonnay, and they were marching back beaten to
their former camp.
Château-Foix with his contingent brought up the rear. By his side, at
the moment, walked Louis, holding to his stirrup leather; he had given
up his own horse to one of his followers, a young man named Toussaint
Lelièvre, whom, shot through the leg, he had contrived to bring into
safety under a considerable fire. The cousins were silent; they could
not discuss the conduct of their men in the midst of them, and there
was not much else to say. The rain streamed down Gilbert’s hair, for
he was bareheaded, making it of a polished blackness. At times he
raised a bandaged bridle hand and wiped away the drops falling into
his eyes. He was wet, hungry, dispirited, anxious . . . and yet not
unhappy. He looked down at the plodding figure by his side.
“Are you tired, Louis?” he asked in a low voice. “Take my horse for a
little.”
Louis raised a face not so wet but much dirtier; a bullet striking a
bank had bespattered him with mud, which the rain, partially washing
off, had transformed to an uniform grime.
“No, thanks,” he said with a sort of resigned cheerfulness. “Besides,
if I am, I can have my own back again; my protégé ought not really to
be riding, I suspect, but I thought it would spare the men’s carrying
him.” And they relapsed into silence.
Gilbert had arranged to bivouac at the hamlet of L’Oie, a little
nearer to Chantonnay, and consequently a more dangerous post. But
there was no alarm that night from the direction of Chantonnay, and
the wearied, disheartened peasants slept in peace. The Marquis, whose
injured hand kept him awake, lay long looking at his cousin, stretched
on a couple of chairs in the profound slumber of youth and fatigue.
The dawn saw them both afoot, somewhat in expectation of marching
orders from the Four Roads. But none came, and Gilbert, when he rode
over there, found the elder soldiers determined to give their men a
day’s rest and to attack De Marcé again on the morrow. Towards
evening, everything being quiet, the Marquis suggested to his cousin
the propriety of making a little reconnaissance from the slightly
rising ground to the north of their cantonments, a proposal to which
Louis readily assented.
They were mounting this slight eminence when, without warning,
Gilbert’s mare shied violently at a clump of bracken.
“What is it?” queried Louis, quieting Saladin.
Gilbert pulled up. “I will see,” he said, tossing his reins to his
cousin, and, dismounting, went back to the fern. “It is a woman—dead,
I fear,” he said over his shoulder. He went round to the other side of
the clump, stooped, and gave a violent exclamation.
Roused by his tone, Louis flung himself off Saladin, and, dragging the
two horses after him, came to the place.
He saw first the skirt of a green amazone, then the whole slim length
of the body of a woman, a young woman, lying on the slope, one arm
flung wide into the fern, the other crooked under her head. Only the
breast of the amazone was darkly stained. His eyes travelled to her
face. . . . “O my God!” he said softly, and the reins fell from his
fingers. Gilbert slowly raised himself, and took off his hat, his
eyes, too, riveted on the dead face of her who had been Célie
d’Espaze.
There was a faint smile on her discoloured lips. A tress of the bright
brown hair was caught in the dead bracken; a ruby glowed on the lace
at her throat; but for her look she seemed cast there to sleep. The
cold horror of the moment was broken by no words; it lasted like a
spell while Louis, baring his head, sank to his knees and buried his
face in his hands. Gilbert did not look at him. The gold and white
room, the white dress and the gold couch, and the voice saying,
“Reflect that in this changing world I may some day be needing help
from you. . . . Next time that you are in Paris, my friend . . .”
Instead of these he stood with Louis by the body of the “adventuress”
with whose society he had not long ago taunted him. If only he had not
said that. . . .
Louis raised his head at last, and taking the gauntleted hand that lay
near him in the bracken he kissed it reverently and laid it back
again. Then he turned a grey face on his cousin. “God knows how she
came by this,” he said hoarsely. “We cannot leave her here.”
“She must have died instantly,” said Gilbert, half to himself. “I will
go back and send a party. You will stay by her?”
Louis nodded without speaking, and Gilbert left him kneeling there.
They buried her that evening. In her grave-clothes she was more than
ever the nun of Gilbert’s first impression. Where Louis spent the
night Château-Foix did not enquire, but it was not in their room.
Months afterwards he learned the truth—and assumed that Louis knew it,
too. Madame d’Espaze had quarrelled some two months earlier with
Lecorrier, and had left him for a former admirer, the Marquis de
Beaulieu, a revolutionary noble who commanded the National Guard of
Montaigu. When the peasants took Montaigu De Beaulieu was killed, and,
since he was cordially detested, his château was sacked. His mistress
fled, alone; it was said in the direction of Châtillon. Further than
that nothing was known; neither how she came to have lost her horse,
nor whose the hand, Royalist or Republican, that shot her, nor what
she was doing so far away from Châtillon. There were moments when
Gilbert wondered whether she could possibly have been making for
Chantemerle—if indeed she had been aware of its proximity—but that he
should not know now. Her name was never mentioned again between Louis
and himself; but it was many days before he, at least, could pass a
clump of bracken without expecting to see its yellow fronds entangled
with a woman’s hair.
CHAPTER XL
THE FIGHT AT THE BRIDGE
“To carry our faith like a blossom that’s thrust
In a sword-hilt for token;
To close up our ranks, when a comrade bites dust,
And march on, unbroken.”
“Monsieur d’Charette a dit à ceux d’Monfort,
Monsieur d’Charette a dit à ceux d’Monfort
‘Frappez fort ;
Le drapeau blanc défend contre la mort !’”
—_Monsieur d’ Charette_.
At half an hour after noon next day Louis-Henri-François de Marcé,
with forty-eight years of service and two thousand five hundred men
behind him, marched out of Chantonnay in the direction of Saint
Fulgent, with the intention of completing his victory of the previous
Sunday. At three o’clock he passed the river Lay on the pont du
Gravereau, which had been cut by the peasants and subsequently
repaired by his orders, after which he proceeded to repair a second
bridge at the mill of La Rivière, a league further on.
While his troops were thus occupied there appeared over the high
and wooded ground in front of him a large body of armed men. The
Republican general would have taken them for insurgents, had not the
commissary of the Convention who accompanied him distinctly heard
borne towards him on the breeze the surge of the Marseillaise, that
sound dear to every good patriot, as he remarked to the veteran. It
stamped them, he asserted, as the National Guard from Nantes, and De
Marcé went on with his bridge-mending. On all sides, except to his
rear, the heights surrounded him: it was an ill position to defend,
but at the moment he was not thinking of defence.
Yet it was not the true Marseillaise which was being sung on the
heights; it was the Marseillaise Vendéenne, whose words, wedded indeed
to the same famous air, expressed far other sentiments. With their
rosaries round their necks the peasants were chanting lustily in their
patois.
“O sainte Vierge Marie
Condis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs :
Contre ine sequelle annemie
Combats avec tes zélateurs ! . . .”
And after they had sung they turned and were swallowed up in the woods
whence they had appeared. Masked by these woods, they were going to
turn De Marcé’s position down below.
Yet it was seven o’clock of the March evening before this fact burst
upon the Republicans. Then, with the first hidden and deadly fire from
the lower woods, a whole column of National Guards posted on their
left flank deserted their posts. De Marcé, taken by surprise, withdrew
the bulk of his forces to the farther bridge at Gravereau, leaving,
however, a strong detachment on the bridge nearer to the Royalists,
and throwing out a column on his other flank.
About twenty minutes after the first fusillade Gilbert found himself
with his little troop where the woods joined the water meadows, a
little to the left of the nearer bridge, still lined with grenadiers
and emitting a constant though ill-directed fire. He had discarded his
horse, preferring to be as his men were, and fancying that they
followed him better unmounted. But Louis, combining as he did the
function of aide-de-camp with that of second in command, could not be
deprived of his, and, a little way along the rank of kneeling men he
stood, bridle in hand, directing their fire. The woods, black behind
them in the fading light, prevented the Vendeans from being picked out
by the Blues on the bridge, who were, moreover, firing much too high.
Hardly a man had been hit. Yet it was slow and trying work, and the
Royalists were very short of muskets. If only they could carry the
bridge! But Gilbert could not attempt it on his own responsibility,
and Royrand was on the other side of the river, two meadows’ width
away. He would have to send some one across the danger zone, and Louis
was the only person to send—Louis who had in him as it was far too
much of the lust of danger, and whom he hesitated to send . . . for
other reasons.
Yet, after all, he had no right to indulge private considerations. He
summoned his cousin. “Ride as hard as you can,” he said, “to M. de
Royrand, and ask him whether we shall not try to carry the bridge from
here. Tell him that we are very short of ammunition and muskets but
have plenty of scythes and pikes, and that our position is good for
such an attempt. The Blues, as any one can see, are demoralised
already.”
“Excellent!” commented Louis, and he sprang with alacrity to the
saddle. “You may trust me to persuade him! And as I come back I will
wave my handkerchief if he consents.”
“Don’t go right across the open like that!” shouted Gilbert after him,
but it was too late, and with his teeth caught on his under lip the
Marquis watched the slight, reckless figure dash untouched through the
fusillade which immediately opened on him from the bridge, splash
through the shallow stream and disappear.
It seemed a long time before he saw his cousin, bare-headed now,
galloping wildly towards them over the meadow. The white signal flew
from his hand, and Gilbert could hear his laugh as he pulled Saladin
on to his haunches at a few yards distance and waited for them.
“Come on, men!” The excitement gained the ranks, and with the Marquis,
sword in hand, at their head, they burst out of shelter and ran across
the meadow.
“Dismount—you’ll be hit!” cried Gilbert, as he came abreast of the
Vicomte; but Saladin, fresh from his gallop, and maddened by the
racing feet behind him, was hard to hold, and Louis paid no heed. On
they went, and the Blues on the bridge, seeing this advancing wave
with its tip of steel, began to pull themselves together and to
concentrate their aim. A peasant or two fell, and Gilbert could not
but wonder whether, though his men were following well enough, there
might not be a catastrophe when they came face to face with the
levelled muskets. If so, then these were his last few minutes on
earth. Not that that mattered.
But at last they began to breast the rise to the bridge, and showed no
sign of slackening. The Marquis looked round, encouraging them as he
ran; Louis, holding in his horse with bridle hand alone, pointed them
on with his sword. Now they were nearly abreast of the idle mill
wheel. Gilbert glanced round for the last time; the front rank was on
his heels, shouting wildly. At that moment, too, he realised that
Louis, glad of the excuse perhaps, had let his fretting horse carry
him still further in advance. And then the catastrophe came—but not as
Gilbert had pictured it. For suddenly, without warning, as Louis
turned back in the saddle, Saladin went down beneath him like a stone,
pitching him, finished horseman as he was, clean into the road.
Neither horse nor man rose again, and in a moment, when the smoke of
the instantly succeeding volley had cleared, Château-Foix saw his
cousin lying on his face, motionless, between the ranks of friends and
foes. And the men behind were stopping.
A lightning pang tore at Gilbert’s heart. “Good God! come on!” he
shouted desperately. “Will you let him be killed before your eyes?”
A roar answered him, and in that moment he knew that he was followed
indeed. On they poured, over the dying horse, over his rider’s body—no
time to see if he were alive or dead—and hurled themselves on the
bayonets. . . . Five minutes of the hottest hand-to-hand fighting
ensued—a whirling vision of fierce, convulsed faces, of straining
bodies, of red steel, then of a sudden swaying movement as the
soldiers gave before the terrible scythe-blades and the scarcely less
terrible pitchforks, and fled along the road, mingled with their
exultant pursuers. The bridge was won.
At the further end the Marquis paused a moment, sword in hand and
panting, to look back. The light had not failed so utterly but that he
could distinguish, among the human wreckage on the bridge, the bulk of
the dead horse and a little group beside it. A second’s hesitation
and he ran back. Louis was lying senseless in the arms of Laurent
Robineau, while another man dashed on him the river water from his
hat.
“Only stunned, Monsieur le Marquis, praise the saints,” said the
latter, looking up; and Gilbert, drawing a long breath, waited for no
more but ran on after his men.
But the fight was practically over, for with every moment it turned
more and more to rout. Royrand and Sapinaud had driven in the right
flank; at the second bridge the double mass of fugitives swept back
the defenders with it. In vain De Marcé and Boulard tried to rally
them; panic had gripped them, and all night long they streamed through
the affrighted villages, till at daybreak even Saint Hermand, seven
leagues away, woke to the clatter of the flying cavalry.
But the end of the fight had no concern for Louis, though the
treatment to which he was subjected was not long in rousing him.
Indeed, as he put up an instinctive hand to ward off the fresh
avalanche which was impending, he muttered something about death by
drowning. After a little he was able to get with assistance to his
feet, and dizzily to survey the scene of slaughter at the farther end
of the bridge. Then his eyes fell on his own dead horse, and the
satisfaction died out of his face.
“My poor Saladin!” he said brokenly, and kneeling down kissed the star
on his forehead.
Soon afterwards, not knowing in the least how he had got there, he
found himself lying by the river, almost underneath the bridge, and
here he went to sleep for another indeterminate period. After this he
had a hazy sensation of being carried a long way, in the midst of a
great many people, on something rather uncomfortable. Oddly enough,
when he found himself laid upon the bed in his and Gilbert’s little
room at L’Oie, his brain became instantaneously and miraculously
clear, so that he immediately announced his intention of following
Gilbert and the other chiefs to the Four Roads. He was only induced to
abandon this idea by the threats of the surgeon whom the Marquis had
sent to him, and by the fact that during the altercation his head
began to ache consumedly.
He therefore yielded the point, submitted to having wet cloths wound
about his head, and even to being consigned to solitude and darkness.
But shortly after the surgeon had taken his departure he rose from his
couch, struck a light, and throwing open the casement established
himself on the window-seat in the cool night air.
He had sat there some time, the incidents of the fight running madly
through his throbbing head, when he heard a light and springing step
that he did not know coming up the stairs. With a little knock the
door opened, and into the light of the single candle came some one
tall and slim and very young, at whom Louis stared for a moment in
amazement.
“Good Heavens! what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, getting slowly
to his feet.
It was the youth whom he had pointed out to his cousin in the
Tuileries as Henri de la Rochejaquelein.
“Mon Dieu, that I had been earlier!” cried the newcomer, on fire, as
he grasped the Vicomte’s hand. “Ah, my dear Saint-Ermay, how I envy
you that!” He pointed to the wet bandage, and there was no doubt of
his sincerity.
“Indeed you need not!” retorted Louis, laughing. “It covers the most
confounded headache that you can imagine, gained by nothing more
heroic than falling off a horse on to a very stony bridge.”
“Oh, I know all about you,” said La Rochejaquelein. “At least sit down
again.”
“But tell me,” said Louis, obeying, “where you have come from, and
what on earth you are doing here?”
“I have come from Clisson, my cousin De Lescure’s château near
Bressuire, you know. There they all are not knowing what to do;
but I—— My God! I couldn’t keep away when I heard of your victory
on the 15th. So I came to ask M. de Sapinaud to take me as his
aide-de-camp—or as anything he pleased.”
“A la bonne heure!” observed Saint-Ermay warmly. “You can have my
place—my poor horse is dead.”
“Yes, but M. de Sapinaud won’t have me,” returned the young man with a
smile. “He says—it is very absurd—that I am more fit to command than
to be commanded. And I would rather a thousand times fight in the
ranks—just for the pleasure of it.”
“Yes, it is hard lines to be a general _malgré soi_,” said Louis
jestingly. “But old Sapinaud, I begin to think, knows what he is
doing. And what, by the way, are they all about now at the Cross
Roads?”
“M. de Sapinaud,” said La Rochejaquelein, leaning against the table,
“has prevailed on the rest to elect, not himself, but M. de Royrand
general-in-chief; he is general of division, while MM. de Vaugirard
and Baudry d’Asson have been chosen as commandants, and your cousin
as major-general—I forget the names of the others. And they have
resolved, I understand, to make this position their headquarters,
and to organise the surrounding district. But I am tiring you,
Saint-Ermay, and I must get back. I only rode over from the Four
Roads to see how you were. It is high time I started.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigné, to rouse my father’s tenantry at La
Durbellière, if I can.” He was silent for a moment, his eyes kindling.
“I shall say to them, I think, what one of my ancestors said to his
retainers in the time of the wars of the League: ‘If I go forward,
follow me; if I draw back, kill me; if I die, avenge me!’”
“If you look at them like that, Henri,” said Saint-Ermay, “there is
not much doubt about their following you. Well, good luck! May we meet
again!”
They clasped hands, and La Rochejaquelein was gone, taking out of
the room with him an extraordinary impression of youth and ardour.
But though he well remembered that evening afterwards, Louis could
not guess at the time that the newly-formed army of the centre,
self-effacing as it was always to be, had that night given back to
the future _grande armée_ its name of highest romance and its most
brilliant sword.
The Vicomte returned to the window-seat. The hamlet, usually so early
abed, was not much disturbed even to-night by victory. Snatches of
song came out of the darkness and a little laughter. And as he sat
there with his bandaged head leaning against the casement, Louis’
thoughts went over the seas. But four days of fighting seemed to have
set between him and Lucienne a gulf far wider than the Channel. When
he had ridden homeward from the Etoile de Vendée, and when his
stupefaction had a little cleared, one thought had possessed his mind,
that now he could go to Lucienne at once. . . . Almost before he had
had time to taste the full rapture of this idea the stone at the
window had chased the vision. And what of Lucienne’s kisses now? Again
honour held them apart; how could he turn his back on Gilbert now,
withdraw from the opening struggle? But honour no longer forbade him
to think of her, to write to her. He could not at times believe in the
reality of his happiness. At odd moments he contemplated Gilbert with
profound amazement, not unmixed with wistfulness. If only he would
drop a little of his frigid bearing! Even so he was aware that their
relations were not what they had been a day or two ago. Perhaps in
time. . . .
He had fallen into so deep a slumber that he never heard the door
open, and woke only to the sound of his own name. In front of him
stood the Marquis and M. des Graves, looking at him attentively.
“Ah, you are back, Gilbert,” he observed sleepily. “Father! you here!”
“I might say the same to you,” retorted the priest with mock
sternness. “Why are you not in your bed?”
Louis got up and took hold of his arm. Gilbert had turned away and was
lighting another candle. No one would have guessed that he had been
chafing the whole evening to return and see how his cousin fared.
“I will not be scolded,” said the Vicomte. “What are you doing here,
mon père?”
“He is going to be with us henceforward as our chaplain,” said
Gilbert. “Get into bed, Louis, at once.”
“I am going,” said M. des Graves, smiling at the pleasure in Louis’
eyes. “I have no influence with this disobedient boy.”
The individual in question went arm-in-arm with him to the door, and
out to the top of the stairs. Once outside the room the priest took
his hand. “Louis, I hope you have not forgotten to thank God for your
preservation. Good-night, my child.”
“I have not yet thanked Gilbert,” said Louis to himself. “I do not
care—I shall do it. I suppose he does not exactly regret his action.”
The Marquis, when he re-entered the room, was unfastening his sword.
“You must take the bed to-night, of course, Louis,” he said, without
looking up. “And for God’s sake be quick about it.”
Saint-Ermay looked at him as with bent head he fumbled at his side.
The fingers of his left hand were still swathed in bandages.
“Let me unfasten that for you,” he said. “You will do your hand an
injury.” And before his cousin could object he was kneeling beside
him. He had the sword detached in an instant, and, handing it up to
him, said softly: “I owe you my life.”
“On the contrary,” said the Marquis coolly, “I think that we owe you
the bridge, for if the men had not had to save you I doubt whether
they would have followed me over it.” He turned away and laid his
sword on the table.
“Well, of all the extraordinary and perverted logic——” began Louis,
laughing.
Château-Foix sat down and began to pull off his boots. “It is a fact,”
he said. “And then what of the man at Pézé?”
The Vicomte flushed scarlet. “Oh, were you only paying off a debt?” he
asked in a suddenly hardened voice.
Gilbert finished the struggle with his boots before he answered. “No,”
he said, “that debt is not yet paid. _I_ did not save you, Louis; it
was the men. We must have tried to carry the bridge anyhow. . . . But
you acknowledge then, at last, that I did incur a debt at Pézé?”
“I would rather not talk about what happened at Pézé,” returned Louis.
He was now very pale. “Good-night.”
How, after the poignant emotion of the bridge, could he torture Louis
now that he was given back to him? Gilbert suddenly held out his hand.
“You gave me a most horrible fright this evening. . . . Now get to
bed. I do not want another.”
CHAPTER XLI
SURRENDER
“And there the sunset skies unseal’d
Like lands he never knew,
Beyond tomorrow’s battle-field
Lay open out of view
To ride into.”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Staff and Scrip_.
Inside the little church it was beginning to grow dusk, and the May
twilight, as if in pity, shrouded the devastation which had recently
been wrought there. Chalbos’ soldiers had passed not long ago through
the village, and the traces of their passing were scored on the hacked
woodwork of the choir, in the rents and fresh splintered wounds of the
painted oak. The statue of Our Lady was headless; of the Child in her
arms she held only half the body, and the image of Saint Roch lay its
length on the pavement. Under one or two of the windows rested a
splash of shattered glass. The door of the tabernacle had been
wrenched off, and on the front of the bare stripped altar, whose stone
had resisted all efforts at destruction, a wanton hand had begun, with
a brushful of tar, to paint the words, “Liberté, Ega . . .” and had
got no further. To all these spoliations was added Nature’s too, for
half way up the pillars of the church ran the significant green stain
of persistent damp, beautiful in itself, and doubly so in contrast
with the faded blue of the roof, where there still glimmered a score
or so of tarnished stars.
In front of the violated altar, just inside the rails, sat a priest,
and before the rails knelt a Vendean. His musket lay on the steps
beside him. Further down the church knelt two or three others, with
their weapons and their rosaries. The priest was Sébastien des Graves,
and he was hearing confessions at the altar because the confessionals
had all been hacked to pieces.
That outrage, and the rest, would presently be avenged—so, at least,
hoped every man in the great host now gathering to march on Fontenay—a
host of which Gilbert de Château-Foix’ contingent, quartered in this
village, formed but a small part. For since the end of April the whole
country had been in arms; Cathelineau, Stofflet, Bonchamps, joined
latterly by Lescure and La Rochejaquelein, had swept along on a tide
of victory which had met its first check at Fontenay a week ago. To
wipe out that defeat some thirty-five thousand Vendeans were on foot,
and to these the little army of the centre had contributed four
thousand men under its ablest lieutenant. To-night they rested here
after their long march from the Four Roads; to-morrow they should
effect their junction with the other chiefs.
When the footsteps of his last penitent had died away down the church,
M. des Graves sat still, thinking of the morrow. He was going to say
Mass in the open very early. After waiting for a few minutes, he took
off his stole. As he did so, he heard the moan of the leathern door at
the end of the church, and he slipped it on again with a little sigh
for he was very tired. So dusk was it growing that he considered
whether he should light the altar candles; and as he looked towards
them his heart began suddenly to quicken. There was something familiar
in the footsteps coming up the church. . . . Unable to resist the
impulse, slowly, afraid, he turned his head to look.
Yes, it was Gilbert—Gilbert, tall, erect, booted and spurred, girt
under his sword-belt with the white scarf of leadership, the red patch
of the Sacred Heart on his breast. He walked straight up to the altar
steps and knelt down, and the clank of his sword on the stone told the
priest that it was no vision.
* * * * * *
And into Gilbert’s confession, before he had ended, was suddenly woven
a snatch of the _Vexilla regis_, that hymn which they would all chant
on the morrow as they marched, which some one passing the church was
singing in a low voice of singular sweetness. The words drifted in
through the shattered windows:—
“O crux, ave, spes unica;
Hoc passionis tempore,
Auge piis justitiam,
Reisque dona veniam”—
and died away as the singer passed on. But as M. des Graves raised in
absolution a hand that shook a little, he heard Gilbert murmur to
himself the last line, and then say, in a steady voice: “I should like
you to lay my sword on the altar, Father. It has never been offered.”
The priest stood up. He was obliged to support himself by the rails.
Gilbert unbuckled his sword, scabbard and all, and M. des Graves took
it from his hands, and, going to the dark and outraged shrine, laid it
thereon. Then he sank on his knees, his arms outstretched on the
stone, and his head bowed upon it.
* * * * * *
At the door of Gilbert’s quarters, when he got there, stood a sentry,
probably self-stationed, since for no duty had the Vendean peasant a
stronger distaste. It was Toussaint Lelièvre, the young man who, since
Louis had saved his life at Chantonnay, followed him about like a dog.
There was, therefore, no need to ask if the Vicomte were within.
Louis was ensconced in the deep window-seat, with his sword upon his
knees, polishing the weapon with energy. The golden afterglow behind
him, falling upon his bent head and pure profile, gave him something
the air of a Sir Galahad engaged in a similar task on the eve of
conflict. He looked up as the door opened. “I was just snatching a
moment for this job before going out to the pickets,” he said
cheerfully. “However, I think this is quite clean enough to do justice
to a Blue.” He got up, threw the rag in his hand on to the seat, and
held out his shining blade upright at arm’s length, looking more
like a Galahad than ever. Only the stainless knight never had so
mischievous a sparkle in his eyes, nor such a tone of relish in his
voice. “Yes, that will do,” he continued, running an appraising glance
up and down the steel. “They like to see it bright; it encourages them
to come on if they can see it about a mile in front of them.” In this
Louis was referring not to the enemy but to their own men. It was by
now well known that the Vendeans would not follow unless their leaders
were ready to expose themselves in the rashest of manners—a fact which
the Vicomte himself had found very useful to him when brought to book
for exploits of surpassing imprudence. “Shall I give yours a rub?
. . . Why, what have you done with it?”
“It is lying on the altar in the church,” said the Marquis quietly. He
had crossed the room, and stood a little in shadow, between the table
and the hearth. “Louis, I want to say something to you.”
It was the new expression on his face, as much as the extraordinary
change in his tone, which made the Vicomte stand instantly motionless,
while the sword in his hand gradually sank until its point touched the
floor.
“It can be said in a very few words,” pursued Gilbert, “and I dare say
that you can guess what it is. I want with all my heart to ask your
forgiveness for the past—for my lack of generosity to you, for——”
“Oh, stop!” cried Louis, in distress. The sword went clattering from
his hand. “Gilbert . . . You! ungenerous. . . .”
“Yes, I,” said the Marquis, coming a little nearer. And he went on
with the same gentle gravity: “Even when I made—when I resigned my
right to you . . . well, you must have known what hell was in my
heart. Let me make that surrender anew to you, Louis, fully and
freely, and let us be as we might always have been. . . . Do you
forgive me?” He held out his hand.
And it was thus that Gilbert, the proud and taciturn, had found
speech! What had happened? Louis had lost it. And the manner of
Gilbert’s avowal, easy, effortless, yet so transparently sincere,
seemed to inspire him with a kind of awe.
“I have not anything to forgive,” he stammered, drawing back from the
outstretched hand. “How could I, after——”
At that the Marquis came nearer and put both hands on his shoulders.
“Louis,” he said with still greater gentleness, “be as sincere as you
are generous. You know that you have a very great deal to forgive—and
most of all perhaps this, that—putting aside, if you will, all that
happened at Chantemerle—while we might have been fighting side by side
like brothers, while you were wanting to thank me, to hold out a hand
to me, I would not have it so, I shut you out. . . . Isn’t that true,
Louis?”
The younger man’s eyes fell. “Yes,” he said, very low, as if he were
confessing to a fault of his own.
“Well, then. . . . ?”
The Vicomte lifted his head, and met the strange serene light in
Gilbert’s eyes. His own keen gaze was misty. Without a word he flung
himself into his cousin’s arms. . . .
And when they knelt side by side at daybreak next morning there was,
in all the host who saw them, or who knelt with them at the rude altar
under the shadow of the forest of Mervent, but one man who knew to
what perfect reconciliation the Sacrament which he gave them was the
seal. But he was also the one man to whom the knowledge very greatly
mattered.
CHAPTER XLII
PEACE AT THE LAST
“It strikes me very forcibly,” observed Louis in a low voice, “that we
shall be occupied, all the time you are away taking Luçon, in tidying
up the horrible litter you have made here. Did you ever see such a
room?”
It was on the library at Chantemerle that the Vicomte passed these not
undeserved strictures. The table was strewed with maps; in the middle
stood two half-empty bottles of wine and some glasses, while at one
end a tray bore the remains of a hasty meal. An ink-pot had been
upset; the chairs were all awry, and one had fallen over.
Henri de la Rochejaquelein, who, booted, spurred, and fully armed,
stood with the Vicomte in front of the hearth, smiled as he drew on
his gloves. “My dear Saint-Ermay,” he replied, “if you and M. de
Château-Foix have no more to occupy you than to put his dwelling to
rights again you will be fortunate.” His tones, too, were low, for
there were others in the room.
“Unfortunate, you mean,” retorted Louis with vivacity. “You know
devilish well, M. l’Intrépide, that you would not be in my shoes for
all the gold of—Necker. . . . I mustn’t swear, or our respective and
respectable cousins will hear us.”
This was quite possible, for at the lower end of the long littered
table, sitting sideways as men who have but temporarily dropped into a
place there, were Gilbert and M. de Royrand. Three other leaders were
there also. He who sat with his hands outspread upon a map to keep it
in position was the “saint of Poitou,” the Marquis de Lescure,
whom, with his young kinsman, Louis had saluted that day in the
Tuileries. Over him bent the only roturier of the party, Stofflet, the
gamekeeper, who had raised the parishes round Maulevrier. Behind,
leaning upon his sword, and pulling impatiently with his teeth at a
glove, stood the Chevalier de Charette, hawk-faced and implacable,
newly come from the Marais to join the _grande armée_.
“Was ever a house so full of generals!” whispered Louis half
mockingly. “. . . Your pardon, Henri: I forgot you were all but one
yourself!”
And the château had been even fuller of these unusual guests. Last
night, the night of the council of war which had caused so much
disorder in the library, it had harboured not only those now present,
but the general-in-chief himself, the Marquis d’Elbée, and the Marquis
de Donnissan, both of whom were now gone forth to their men. Many
other chiefs had clattered in and out: Bernard de Marigny, the
hot-tempered, who commanded the artillery; Forestier, who led the
somewhat scanty cavalry; D’Autichamp and the Prince de Talmont, bearer
of a famous name, lieutenants of the wounded Marquis de Bonchamps,
the only leader of note who was absent; De Couëtus, Joly, Savin,
Charette’s subordinates. For on this 13th day of August (harvest being
over), seasoned by an almost unbroken career of victory that was
blotted only by their costly defeat at Nantes, masters at present of
all their territory, but threatened, from their very success, by the
Convention’s extremest measures of hostility, the Vendean hosts had
gathered to strike a united blow; and the little cathedral town of
Luçon, some fifteen miles to the southward, had been selected as the
object of attack.
Yet Louis, though he bore his uniform of the bodyguard, which the
fancy occasionally seized him to put on, wore no sword, and Gilbert’s
sheathed blade was keeping down a refractory map upon the table. For
they were neither of them going with their comrades to take Luçon.
D’Elbée had been anxious to leave some post occupied in his rear, for
disaster had already overtaken him on the plains of Luçon, and Gilbert
had offered to stay behind and hold Chantemerle. The house was not
fortified, and could by no means stand a siege, but it could very
well prove a check to any detached body of troops with which the
Republicans in the neighbouring department of Deux-Sèvres might
have a fancy to harass D’Elbée’s rear-guard. That this idea would
occur to them was extremely unlikely, for all their available
troops were already in Luçon. As, therefore, there was no prospect
of the occupation being anything but a sinecure, Louis had been
proportionately disgusted when the decision was first communicated to
him, but he had refused to desert his cousin.
Even as he made his rather irreverent remark there was a stir in the
little group at the end of the table. Lescure stood up, saying: “Well,
gentlemen, I suppose we must get to horse;” and as he removed his
hands the map of Luçon rolled itself resolutely together. Stofflet
noticed it. “Is that a good or a bad omen?” he asked. He was of
Lorraine, and his accent showed it.
“The third time is always lucky,” answered Charette in his curiously
clear and biting voice.
“Are you ready, Henri?” asked Lescure of his cousin and adjutant.
“Good-bye, M. de Château-Foix: it is in vain to try to thank you for
your hospitality, or for your self-sacrifice in remaining behind.”
“You should thank me instead for my self-sacrifice in depriving myself
of him,” said old Royrand, as he shook hands with his best lieutenant.
And Charette said: “To-day to me, to-morrow to you. But before you are
hard pressed, Monsieur le Marquis, you shall see my Maraîchins cutting
their way through to you.”
“You are very kind, gentlemen,” answered Gilbert, smiling, as he
escorted them through the hall. “But I do not anticipate any necessity
of the sort.”
“Worse luck!” finished Louis behind him.
Outside, in the August sun, switching their tails to keep off the
flies, were the horses. The four younger chiefs trotted off together
down the avenue, but Gilbert walked by Royrand’s side for a little
while, and when they parted the old soldier bent from his saddle and
kissed him. Was it that salute, as of a comrade about to die, which
struck a sudden question into Gilbert’s mind, as he stood a moment
shading his eyes, even under the trees, to see the last of them? For
Sapinaud was gone, killed in July a few miles away, and the whole army
still mourned the irreparable loss of their first and greatest
general-in-chief, the peasant Cathelineau. . . . Could he have known,
La Rochejaquelein should build himself an imperishable name and never
see his twenty-second birthday; Lescure had but three months to live,
the old man who had embraced him but little longer. How long had he
and Louis, who had played together so often under these trees? The
question troubled him not at all, but it suddenly shed on the whole
château, as he turned, and it lay before him, a kind of vaporous
unreality. Even Louis, as he sat upon the steps of the perron waiting
for him, was not exempt from it.
“Poor Louis,” he said, looking down at him with amusement and
affection. “Have you forgiven me for staying here?”
“Parbleu!” returned his kinsman lazily, “the way to Luçon is long, and
that confounded plain will be as hot as hell. One is better off here,
after all. When we have barricaded a few windows—which I suppose we
must do for the look of the thing—let’s go and see if we cannot catch
a trout or two.”
They entered arm-in-arm, laughing, and turned, directly they were
inside, with alacrity to business. All day long the château rang with
the noise of hammers, and men tramped to and fro, dragging mattresses
from the beds with dirty and unhallowed hands. The dining-room became
a sort of guard-room, the Marquise’s boudoir was full of planks and
ammunition. Gilbert, Louis, and the priest supped in the library, the
only room left to them by the evening.
“It is hard to imagine that we are—supposedly—in a state of siege,
isn’t it, Father?” asked Louis, pulling his spaniel’s ears, as they
sat there afterwards.
The priest nodded, smiling.
“It is hard to realise that we are not back in the old days years
ago—before the troubles,” remarked Gilbert, who was lying back in an
arm-chair. His voice sounded unusually dreamy. “It might be in the
time when we were boys, and did our lessons here.”
“Except that we were never allowed to make the room so untidy,” added
Louis. “Why your generals could not hold a council without throwing
all the maps on the floor, Gilbert, I can’t conceive. It almost leads
one to suspect that they used them as missiles to enforce their
different views. If Marigny had been present I can well imagine him
hurling an atlas at some one.”
“Louis, will you never learn respect for your elders and betters?”
asked M. des Graves, laughing. “But seriously, Gilbert, without
adopting Louis’ interpretation, there was a difference of opinion, was
there not, about the method of attack?”
The Marquis nodded. “Lescure wanted an attack _en échelon_. The
others objected, because our men are not sufficiently trained. But
undoubtedly, having regard to the position of Luçon, his theory is
sound, and he got his way in the end.”
“Well, we shall know the result to-morrow,” said M. des Graves. And
there was a silence, broken only by Louis’ whispered endearments to
his dog.
The priest’s heart was very full. Most overwhelming of all at that
hour was the sensation of the falteringness of his own faith. There
had been little room for hope in his mind on that memorable night
when, driven by a force outside himself, and knowing more real fear
than ever in his life, he had broken his long silence, and had called
up, to encounter Gilbert, all the awful sanctions that sustain the
priestly office. And the tenuity of his hope was made yet more plain
to him when God had so amazingly and so speedily answered his
faithless prayers, when, himself humbled to the dust, he had fallen in
adoration before the spectacle of that most stupendous of conquests,
the victory of the Divine over the human will.
Then indeed he had been filled with hope—with violent hope—that the
rest would follow, not because Gilbert had done right in giving up
Lucienne, but because he had renounced with her something immeasurably
more significant. But the immediate effect of his renunciation seemed
to have been to make Gilbert harder than before. Then had come a
period so full of the whirling activities of war that his glimpses of
the Marquis had been necessarily fragmentary. Yet there was one sign
which, after he joined the army at the Four Roads, gradually impressed
itself upon M. des Graves. Gilbert’s men—most of them, too, his own
peasantry among whom he had always lived—were beginning to manifest
for him feelings of a much warmer sort than mere respect. The growth
of these indications M. des Graves observed; it was all that he could
do, for to him Gilbert vouchsafed not a word, not a clue. And so that
evening in the church, the hour of the supremest happiness that he had
ever known, had swept upon him unprepared. Yet, sudden as Gilbert’s
surrender seemed, it had brought with it its own justification, for
the priest had learnt then that the growth of his soul had been as
natural as that which precedes the birth of all living things. Only
the time had been short—as men count time. But the accompaniments of
life had been beyond the ordinary, and the stress of war, the daily
perils, the spectacle of the faith which inspired the humble to fight
and taught them how to die had ripened to an early unfolding the seed
which had never room to grow until, in that bitter conflict, Gilbert
had torn up for ever the upas-tree of his own overshadowing will. And
they had also made of him a leader. He had the devotion of his men,
the profound esteem of his chiefs; he had found his vocation. Ah, when
God gave He gave with both hands!
And the priest looked at Gilbert as the latter lay back in his chair
smiling at the violent love which Louis and his spaniel were making to
each other, and knew that he and his spiritual son were at last in
that relationship of perfect understanding which had always been his
ideal and which he had never thought would come to be. The ascetic in
M. des Graves let itself be swept outwards on that warm tide of
affection. He began to experience a very natural and human longing to
break down a little the inflexible barriers which he had built about
his own inner life. He felt that he would like to let Gilbert in; and
had not the day come at last when he could do so and receive not
wonder, but sympathy? Moreover, he had been reflecting of late whether
the time was not ripe for him to obey Cantagalli’s summons. In
that case he would be obliged to tell Gilbert the whole story. So
he thought to himself, and in the bottom of his heart knew this
consideration to be more of an excuse than a reason. . . .
“What is the time?” asked Louis suddenly. “Nearly ten? They will be
getting to Ste. Hermine. . . . Victor, get down, you lazy and very
heavy brute! You’d like me to set sentinels for the night, Gilbert?”
“The same as last night,” said his cousin. “The same relief. I will go
round myself at two.”
Louis pulled himself out of his chair. “I shall have to put Toussaint
Lelièvre on duty to-night,” he remarked, “merely to prevent him
from sleeping like a mediæval squire outside my door. He is making
me ridiculous, and I am beginning to repent me of my heroism at
Chantonnay. Au revoir.”
* * * * * *
But when the Vicomte looked in again a little later Gilbert and the
priest were so engrossed in converse that they never heard him, and he
shut the door softly and went away.
CHAPTER XLIII
_ULTIMA FORSAN_
“We brought the holy water for his brow
Who lies before the altar candles now.
. . . . . .
While overhead, with red wings interlaced,
Above the bier of cedar newly sawn
The towering angels bore the cup of dawn.
. . . . . .
But now before the altar lights he lies,
And I, set free beneath the star-strewn skies,
With breaking heart beside the water pace
And seek within its shadows Marya’s face. . . .”
—E.C., _The Young Monk_.
It was not till after noon next day that the sound of distant firing
broke on the expectant ears of the occupants of the château. It was no
guide to events. The afternoon wore on, and still there was nothing to
tell them how Fate was balancing her scales. The peasants prayed at
their idle posts, and sang the litanies of the Virgin—for it was the
vigil of the Assumption—the Marquis and Louis craned their necks out
of such portions of the south windows as were not barricaded, but they
could see nothing in the leafy country.
“News of some kind must have got to Chantonnay by now,” said Gilbert
about four o’clock. “I will send out a couple of men.”
Louis caught at his arm. “Listen . . . in the avenue! Don’t you hear?”
They ran down the stairs and emerged by a little door—the great door
was barricaded—into the avenue front. The sentinels there, as eager as
themselves, were staring at the two horsemen who were tearing towards
them under the trees. One of the riders was swaying in the saddle, and
when he got near enough they saw that blood was trickling from his
open and gasping mouth. His reins were in the grasp of his companion,
in whom, as he pulled up, the cousins recognised one of Forestier’s
officers.
“Routed!” he cried in a high voice, and the wounded man pitched
forward on to his horse’s neck.
“What!” cried Gilbert. “My God! it can’t be!”
“Utterly!” gasped the rider. “It was that accursed open plain . . .
the centre gave first, then the right. All the guns are captured but
two . . . we have lost thousands . . . thousands. . . .” He could say
no more, but getting off his horse and staggering to the perron, sank
down on it and sobbed aloud.
Beside him the sentries were laying his companion. Louis stooped over
him. “Dead,” he said briefly. “Well, Gilbert?”
The Marquis raised his head. “We must hold it _now_,” he said very
quietly, and their hands met for an instant.
But so thorough had been Gilbert’s dispositions from the first that
there was nothing more to do except to be on the alert. At sunset came
in another fugitive who reported that Charette, having covered La
Rochejaquelein’s retreat, was said to be falling back on Chantonnay.
Dusk was falling before a sudden little burst of musketry in the
direction of the village warned the defenders. A little later the
Marquis, guessing at the presence of sharpshooters on the avenue
side—the light was too bad to be sure—gave the order to fire from the
Marquise’s bedroom, in which, as the largest room on the first floor,
he had ensconced himself. A minute or two afterwards an answering
crash of glass along the front of the house showed his surmise to be
correct.
“What a glazier’s bill!” ejaculated Louis, laughing. “My poor aunt—if
she only knew!” He bit at a fresh cartridge, for, happening to be in
the room, he was firing with the rest.
But Gilbert laid a hand on his arm. “Go up and take command of the
second floor windows, as we arranged,” he said. “And don’t expose
yourself: there’s no need. We shall have to make fresh dispositions if
they start firing at the garden front, but I do not, somehow, think
they will. I will send for you if it is necessary.”
And the duel with an unseen enemy continued.
* * * * * *
When Louis reappeared, about an hour later, in the Marquise’s bedroom,
two of the shutters hung riddled from their hinges, half a dozen of
the defenders lay dead or dying on the floor, and the air was full of
smoke and the biting smell of gunpowder. Across the dismantled bed,
his fingers tearing convulsively at the blue silken coverlet which
still adorned it, lay, coughing, a peasant shot through the lungs. M.
des Graves was ministering to another on the floor.
“What is it?” asked the Marquis quickly, as he caught sight of the
begrimed figure in the doorway. “Nothing wrong?”
“Nothing,” returned Louis placidly, coming in. “Except that M. des
Graves might come up to a couple of my fellows. But I wanted to ask
whether you will spare me men for a sortie. I thought I would go out
by the garden front, through the pavilion, and take the foe in flank.
It would be very neat.”
The Marquis shook his head through the noise of the volley which
interrupted the speaker.
“But, Gilbert,” urged the Vicomte, coming closer and dropping his
voice, “have you not thought that if they are not soon dislodged they
may bring up artillery? Once or twice I have heard the unmistakable
report of a gun from the direction of Chantonnay. Of course it may
be Charette, one can’t tell; but if the guns were all lost but
two—— Anyhow, as things go now the château is useless for fugitives,
and,”—he dropped his voice still further, “the Blues are thinning us
down, while we don’t seem to be making much impression on them.”
As if to point his words there was a crash behind him, and a Venetian
mirror fell in fragments to the floor. A second later a marksman by
one of the windows threw out his arms, and twisting rapidly round,
staggered half across the room and fell at their feet.
While Gilbert and M. des Graves bent over him Louis very coolly went
to one of the unshuttered windows and peered out into the dusk.
“Come back, you madman!” shouted Gilbert; “I have lost two men at that
window already!”
“I was only reconnoitring,” urged Louis, as he was dragged away. “But
it is too dark to see anything. So much the better. . . . Now will you
give me twenty men?”
“No.”
“You think I should get knocked on the head?” queried the Vicomte,
laughing. “You should know my luck better than that, mon ami; I have a
charmed life, you know. Besides, better a few out there than all in
here. Am I not right, Father?”
“You may be right,” began the Marquis, “but——” He never finished the
sentence. Across it came a sound which made an end of it and of his
opposition for ever, a sound which caused every window in the house to
rattle—the deep, sullen boom of a heavy gun. It might have been a
couple of miles away.
“There!” exclaimed Louis almost exultantly.
Gilbert’s and the priest’s eyes met.
“Very well, I will let you go,” said the Marquis quietly. “Will you
pick your men yourself? I know they will follow you. I will spare you
twenty-five; take most—say eighteen—from the second floor.”
Louis saluted, smiling.
“And remember,” went on Château-Foix in an altered voice, “that there
are occasions on which it is a man’s duty to get himself killed. . . .
I do—I do not think that this is one of them.” He stopped suddenly
with a catch of the breath and made a gesture to M. des Graves. “Give
him your blessing,” he said.
Louis dropped to his knee, while the priest commended him to the care
of his Maker. When he rose he caught at the hand just uplifted in
benediction and kissed it. As he raised his eyes he saw Gilbert’s
face. The next instant he had his hands on his cousin’s shoulders.
“I promise you—I promise I won’t get killed,” he said between jest and
earnest, and Château-Foix took his head between his hands and kissed
him on the forehead.
Ten minutes later Louis with his score of men had dashed into the dusk
and the wind and the singing bullets.
* * * * * *
The minute hand had made more than half the circuit of the Sèvres
clock in the Marquise’s boudoir, the dusk had deepened to dark, the
sound of firing had drifted away, before the tramp of feet sounded
again outside the little pavilion door. Some one knocked vigorously
with the hilt of a sword, and the old man waiting anxiously in the
passage hastened to undo the bolts. His round of lantern light fell
on a white scarf and a smiling mouth.
“God be thanked! You are safe, Monsieur le Vicomte!” he exclaimed in a
grave voice, raising the lantern higher.
“As you see, Antoine. We flatter ourselves that we have had a great
success, and at but small cost. They have drawn off.”
Saint-Ermay mounted the step as he spoke, bare-headed and flushed,
with sparkling eyes. But for his disordered hair and his naked sword
he might have been dancing. “They have drawn off,” he repeated. “Come
in, men!”
But Antoine with the lantern moved between the young man and his
followers, blocking the narrow doorway. “Yes, they have drawn off, M.
Louis . . . too late. Monsieur le Marquis——”
“Hit?”
“Half an hour ago. It is good that you are come at last,
because—because——”
“God!” said Louis. And he threw down his sword.
* * * * * *
They had laid a mattress on the polished floor of the hall, just
underneath the turn of the great staircase, and on this Gilbert was
lying at full length with a cloak flung across him. On the other side,
facing Louis as he put aside the curtain that hung over the doorway,
knelt M. des Graves, with a stole over his soutane, and after a moment
Louis knew why everybody else in the hall was standing apart from the
kneeling and the prostrate figure. Gilbert was making his last
confession—had made it, for almost as the realisation of the scene
came to him, Saint-Ermay saw the priest lift his hand in absolution.
He looked on at what followed as at something happening miles away,
with the sense of not being there at all himself; and while peasant
and servant knelt, and M. des Graves administered Viaticum, Louis
alone stood on his feet where he was, motionless and frozen.
After a while he became aware that M. des Graves was making a sign to
him, and he went forward. Of the disarray of Gilbert’s clothing, of
bandages, or of blood, he was at the moment hardly conscious; he saw
only his face, of an unearthly pallor, accentuated to a startling
degree by his scattered black hair and by the dark cushion which
supported his head. As Louis knelt down by his side the Marquis looked
up quite collectedly, and smiled at him.
“You have come back, Louis . . . as you promised.”
“I wish to God that I had never gone!” exclaimed the Vicomte
passionately.
Gilbert slipped his right hand into his. “My dear boy, don’t you
know . . . that you saved us? Now you can hold the place . . . till
Charette comes up. . . .” His voice failed suddenly, and he shut his
eyes with a little sigh as though he were tired, and the last word
said.
But Louis was clutching the cold hand to his breast as he bent over
him. “O Gilbert—don’t go! For God’s sake, don’t go! . . . I want
you . . . I can’t let you go now. . . .”
A gust of wind swept into the hall, and the candle flames bent before
it. The priest, kneeling motionless on the other side, with a hand on
Château-Foix’ left wrist, began to take his crucifix from his sash.
Louis saw it, and stretched out a barring arm. “No—you shall not put
it there!” he said fiercely. “He is not dead—he is not going to die!”
His look at M. des Graves was defiance.
For all answer the priest put the little crucifix, not on Gilbert’s
breast, but into Louis’ own hand. “Lay it there yourself, my dear
child, when it is time,” he said, and in the inexorable tenderness of
his gaze the young man saw that the end was indeed come.
Suddenly Gilbert reopened his eyes, and looked slowly from one to the
other. Louis felt the hand between his own contract a little, and
heard a whisper of his name. He stooped and kissed the Marquis
on the mouth. The tears were running down his face like rain.
“Good-bye, Gilbert, good-bye!” he whispered brokenly. “Good-bye
. . . good-bye. . . .”
“Lift him up a little,” came the priest’s voice, quiet and unshaken,
and Louis raised his dying cousin in his arms till his head rested on
his own shoulder. Everybody in the hall was kneeling round, and many
were sobbing unrestrainedly. M. des Graves began the commendatory
prayer; and in the middle of it Gilbert moved his head a little on
Louis’ breast, looked at the priest, smiled very faintly, and died
without a struggle.
In the low murmur of prayers rising round them Louis knelt on, holding
Gilbert’s body in his arms. At last, kissing him again, he laid him
gently down. Still looking at him as he lay there, he groped with one
hand for the little crucifix which he had put on the floor beside him,
and, finding it, laid it on his cousin’s wounded breast and folded his
hands over it. Then he got rather suddenly to his feet, saying aloud
(though he did not know it): “Is that all?”
And then he saw, standing by the curtained doorway, grim and
blood-stained, his drawn sword in his hand, the Chevalier de Charette,
and behind him other faces.
“You have come too late,” he said.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE SECOND CHRISTMAS
“Mon fiancé dort sous la noire terre,
Dans la froide tombe il rêve de nous,
Laissez-moi pleurer, ma peine est amère,
Laissez-moi gémir et veiller, ma mère!
Les pleurs me sont doux.”
—LECONTE DE LISLE, _Christine_.
The two women in their black draperies came up the wide staircase
together in silence, but at the top the elder paused and put her hand
on the other’s arm.
“Dear child, I think you are too tired to read to me this evening.”
Lucienne shook her head. “No, indeed not, Madame. I love to do it;
please let me come at the usual time.”
And Madame de Château-Foix, after she had given her a kiss, watched
her for a moment as she went along the landing, before she too entered
her own room.
Only the firelight illumined it, for, though but five o’clock, it was
quite dark outside. The Marquise lit the candles on her escritoire,
unlocked a drawer and, taking out a little packet of papers tied with
a black ribbon, laid them in front of her on the rosewood and sat back
in her chair, her hands in her lap.
There are some letters which a woman knows by heart, and which she yet
reads every day. Of such was the letter in the bundle before Madame de
Château-Foix; she had read it daily for the last three and a half
months. But this evening she was slow to spread it out as heretofore,
and she knew whence proceeded this hesitation. That letter—Gilbert’s
last, written months before his death, found on him and sent to her by
M. des Graves—that letter bade her do a thing which she had not yet
been able to bring herself to do. And this disobeyed request, this
injunction ever speaking from the pages of the last memorial she had
of her dead son, was a living reproach to the poor woman, and gave a
sharper sting to her agonies of grief. Yet she had instinctively
fought against the command. She had told herself that Gilbert was
quixotic, like his father—and like M. des Graves. But she knew that
she would yield in the end, and now, having made up her mind that what
he asked should be done by Christmas Day, she had but a matter of
thirty-six hours or so left. And surely she had conquered her
repugnance at last.
She untied the bundle and spread out the first letter—not very long,
worn and crumpled, strongly creased at the folds and marked in the
middle with a long brown stain. The other two of the trinity,
treasured but less sacred, she knew by heart also—M. des Graves’ long
compassionate epistle, and Louis’ heart-broken scrawl. And she read
the first once more, with the tears gathering in her eyes. “O Gilbert,
Gilbert, I will do it! Oh, forgive me that I have been so long! But it
was hard!” The tears trickled through her ringless fingers, and one
fell quietly on the ink of the letter and blurred it.
But when Lucienne tapped at the door some twenty minutes later, it was
a gentle and composed voice without trace of tears which bade her
enter. The Marquise was not lying on the sofa as was her habit at this
hour; she was sitting in a great chair by the fire.
“Come and sit by me here, petite,” she said. “We will not read just
yet.”
And Lucienne, catching a cushion off the sofa, sat down on the floor
by her, laying her head at once on the elder woman’s knee.
The Marquise’s hand began to pass lightly over her hair. “Has Sir
William come back from Bury?” she asked.
“I do not know, Madame. I have been in my room. I hope so, for it is
snowing fast.”
“I suppose we must expect snow now,” observed Madame de Château-Foix.
“To-morrow is Christmas Eve.”
Lucienne moved a little. “Then it is a year ago to-day,” she said in a
low voice, “since I angered you about Mr Trenchard’s flowers. How long
ago it seems! . . . and how far away that self seems from this! I was
a child then.”
The fingers still caressed her hair, and the eyes above her looked
down at her very kindly.
“. . . But I have learnt much since then . . . and most of all from
you, Madame.”
The hand stopped. “From me, child!” said the Marquise. “You had better
go to another teacher.”
Lucienne raised herself. “Yes, indeed, Madame, from you,” she said,
and her eyes were full of tears. “These last three months . . . how
you have borne it . . . Oh, I cannot say what I would!” She clasped
the Marquise’s knees passionately, and laid her head there again.
“My child—that I was to call daughter,” said Madame de Château-Foix
sadly, “I have a confession to make to you; it will show you that,
passionately as I loved him, I have done Gilbert a wrong—and you,
too. Every day I have been putting off telling you, because it was
difficult for me. . . . Gilbert wished you—if he were killed—to
marry.”
Lucienne slowly drew away from her support and put her hands over her
face. Was she horrified?
“It was his thought for you, Lucienne,” went on the poor mother, as if
pleading an excuse. “He did not want your life to be spoiled. That is
easy for me to understand. But he went further: he named the man he
wished you to marry. Perhaps you could guess him?”
She was trying to spare the girl, not realising that she was but
prolonging her pain.
“He wished you, if you wished it too, to marry Louis.”
It was done! Why did Lucienne not speak? And she was shaking all over.
A wave of pity went over the Marquise, and she bent forward and put
her arms about her shoulders.
“There . . . there . . . we will not speak of it again. I should not
have told you yet, my dear. Of course it seems strange to you—poor,
poor child!”
But the quivering body drew away from her embrace. “Don’t touch me,
Madame!” cried Lucienne wildly, dropping her hands and almost pushing
the Marquise away. “I am not fit for you to touch—I should never have
been fit to be Gilbert’s wife. . . .”
But Madame de Château-Foix, seeing her profound agitation, did not
take these self-accusations very seriously. “Tell me, child,” she said
tenderly, “what is wrong. Tell me—Gilbert would have wished it.”
And Lucienne, too overwrought to soften the blow, gasped out: “I knew
Gilbert’s wish. He gave me up last March.”
The Marquise fell back in her chair as though she had been shot
through the heart. Her face changed till it was an old woman’s. Then
there issued from her lips, in an inhuman voice, the single word:
“Why?”
At the look on her face Lucienne’s rapidly mounting hysteria was
stayed for a moment, and, not for her own sake, but for this stricken
mother’s, she tried to put the thing less nakedly. But there was no
way.
“Because he knew that Louis loved me, and that I loved Louis,” she
said.
There was an awful silence, while the two women faced each other, with
a chasm like a grave sprung open between them. Then the Marquise said,
half choking: “That black dress . . . it is all part of a lie,
then. . . .”
But mercifully Lucienne either did not hear or did not understand.
Twisting her hands together she burst out: “Gilbert was all that
was generous and noble. Louis and I . . . we saw each other so
often . . . we could not help it . . . when he came to the Tuileries,
but we never, never meant to speak of it. Then one day . . . it was
not Louis’ fault . . . it all came out . . . but he left me, he left
me. . . . You do believe me, Madame! M. des Graves believed me. . . .
I did try never to think of him . . . you do believe it?” The last
note in her voice was ominous of the breaking point.
The Marquise had risen, and, withdrawn a little, stood looking
frozenly down at the girl crouched on the floor. “I do not know what
to believe,” she said at last. “Every one seems to have known of
this—this disgraceful affair but myself.”
“But Gilbert did that to spare you!” cried the girl, flinging out
imploring hands. “It was only to spare you—he told me so himself.
He found out about Louis and me, and he gave me up . . . Don’t
you see that it was to spare you—to spare us all, because he
understood. . . .”
But the Marquise gave no sign, and after a minute or two of deadly
silence Lucienne’s nerves gave way, and sinking to the floor she broke
into sobs full of fragmentary entreaties in which Gilbert’s name
was mingled, and out of which detached itself at last, in tortured
and direct appeal: “Gilbert, Gilbert, if you were here you would
explain. . . .”
Madame de Château-Foix’ hands clenched themselves. “Silence, girl!
What right have you now to call on that saint in Paradise? After
deceiving him, deceiving me, posing to Sir William and all the
household as his widowed betrothed, you have the audacity to talk
about explaining and understanding! Explain, indeed! It is a pity that
Louis is not here to explain! I always——”
The sobbing girl flared up with extraordinary ardour. “You shall not
say anything about Louis! You have always misjudged and belittled
him—and yet he did what one man in a million would not have done—and
did it for Gilbert’s sake. If any one was to blame it was I—not
he . . . no, a thousand thousand times not he! He was no less noble
hearted than Gilbert, no less self-sacrificing. . . . And if you knew,
you would not be so cruel to me, for it is all over now . . . since he
is dead.”
Between the fire of her beginning and the profound, hopeless
conviction of her tone at the end, the Marquise’s wrath was stayed
for a moment.
“What do you mean?” she ejaculated.
“Why, Louis was killed this morning. Did you not know?” asked Lucienne
simply.
Madame de Château-Foix stared at her. “The girl is out of her mind,”
she said slowly to herself.
“I dreamed of it all last night,” went on Lucienne with a horrible
calm, “and about midday I knew that it was true. I can see him
now . . . I think it did not hurt him much . . . he was very
tired . . . but he lies there quite cold now—and dead, dead. . . .”
And exclaiming, in accents of breathless horror and longing, “Louis,
Louis, my love, my love!” she knelt upright and gazed with clasped
hands and dilated eyes at a spot on the floor not far from either of
them.
And when the Marquise, having shudderingly turned her head in the
same direction, was conscious of a distinct feeling of relief at not
beholding the lifeless body of her nephew stretched on that tract of
carpet, half in firelight, half in shadow, between the hearth and the
sofa, she was thoroughly frightened, though she did not show it.
She went quickly to the girl and shook her.
“Lucienne, stop! I cannot have this! Wake up, child, and control
yourself. There is nothing there.”
But Lucienne still gazed at the same place, till the passion of love
and despair in her eyes was swamped by a rising tide of horror. “Yes,
there is blood there,” she said, “a pool of blood . . . and no one to
stop it. O Madame, what shall I do? He is dying there and I cannot
help him!” She caught the Marquise’s dress in a fierce and frightened
grip, and, cowering on the ground, hid her face against it. Madame de
Château-Foix, nothing but alarm in her mind, contrived to sit down and
to draw the girl with her, and Lucienne knelt there clutching her, and
shaken with paroxysms of almost tearless sobs, till those, too, were
exhausted, and she slipped down to her old position against the elder
woman’s knees.
There was then presented to Madame de Château-Foix one of the great
opportunities of life, which, when they come unannounced, go sometimes
unrecognised as such. But the Marquise did realise that something
great was being demanded of her, something so foreign to her outlook
that it was almost beyond her powers, but that for the very sake of
the dead son whose memory it seemed to outrage she must try to respond
to the call. Moreover, she knew that she must respond at once—not
to-morrow or the next day, when the bitterness and shock had a little
passed, but now, at this very moment. Yet in that half-hour of tension
and reflection, while she mechanically tried to soothe the girl, she
saw that she was about to do one of those—to her—fantastic actions,
one of those “things which we are not called upon to do,” as she would
have phrased it, such as she had sometimes carped at in her husband,
or Gilbert, or M. des Graves. She did not realise what the result
would be; that she would gain Lucienne for ever; perhaps, indeed,
she never realised that she had need to gain her. For Félicité de
Chantemerle had not the gift of clear thinking; and so, happily,
it did not occur to her to consider that Gilbert, with the best
intentions, had been guilty of a measure of duplicity towards her. To
her mind his course of action was right, because he had taken it, and
there was an end of the matter. Her love for her son had made it hard
to bear patiently the news that another man had been preferred before
him, but the same love would carry her over this crisis—her love and
her rather childlike belief that if she did not act as he would
have acted she would never attain to his company in those blessed
regions whither she never doubted he had gone—regions which, all
unconsciously, she now desired less for their own sake than because he
would be there.
The great effort which she made at last was scarcely perceptible in
her voice. “Lucienne, look at me . . . I am Gilbert’s mother, and if
he could forgive this I must learn to. I promised him once that I
would be a mother to you, and I have tried to keep my promise. I am
afraid that I have failed many times; I have failed most of all
to-night. . . . But I am an old woman, Lucienne, and have always been
jealous for my son—perhaps you cannot understand that, but you may
some day. It has always seemed to me that . . . others . . . have
taken everything, and that he was always ready to give, and never got
the appreciation he deserved. But _I_ knew; he was my boy, my very
own. . . . Sometimes I was afraid that I loved him too much, and that
God would take him from me. . . . And now He has taken him. . . . Some
day—not yet—I shall learn to thank Him for the death He has sent
him. . . .” She struggled for a moment, and went on: “Since I was
allowed to be his mother, I must be worthy of it. And so, my dear
child, we will put away . . . all this . . . and you shall be my
daughter really . . . if you can care for a mother who has loved her
son too much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now, my child, you
must be brave, and remember that because we have not heard from
Louis since November it probably only means that his letters have
miscarried. And he will soon be here—he will soon be here! You shall
have him, I promise you!” She stroked the head on her breast. “My poor
child, what you have suffered!”
“But Louis is dead,” repeated Lucienne. “Do not tell me that he will
come, for that hurts more . . . and in time, perhaps, I shall get used
to it . . . like all the other things. . . .”
“My child,” said the Marquise, fighting down her fears, “you are very
greatly overwrought. All these fancies come from what you have gone
through; when you are better you will forget them. Now kiss me, and go
and bathe your eyes. . . . That’s right.” She studied the girl’s
marred face for a moment. “An idea has just occurred to me, my dear;
yes, I believe it would be an excellent plan. Only this afternoon Lady
Milton was telling Amelia of the benefit which her daughter has
derived from the waters of Bath. I shall most certainly take you to
Bath after Christmas.”
* * * * * *
Downstairs in the hall Sir William, with a very grave face, was
reading to his son and daughter, out of the newspaper which he
had brought over from Bury, the belated and scanty news of the
irretrievable disaster which had overtaken the Vendean army at Le
Mans twelve days before.
“Practically cut to pieces,” he summed up, finishing. “Good God, how
shall we tell them!”
CHAPTER XLV
THERMOPYLÆ
“Ah, not in vain, although in vain.
. . . . . .
The hours ebb fast of this one day
When blood may yet be nobly shed.”
—A. H. CLOUGH, _Peschiera_.
It was not yet dawn. In the darkness of the Bois des Amourettes (the
name held a horrible irony), huddled together for warmth, wet to the
skin with the frozen rain, worn out with hunger and with the long
retreat from Normandy, all that the terrible catastrophe at Le Mans
had left of the Vendean host waited for the dawn and death. Eighty
thousand souls, men, women, and children, they had crossed the Loire
sixty-five days ago; a bare six thousand now remained to die in this
corner of Brittany, hemmed in between two rivers and the sea.
To-morrow, which they should never see, was Christmas Eve. Yesterday
morning, with the Republicans on their heels, they had marched into
the little town of Savenay; last night they had taken up their stand
on the rising ground above it, and all through the hours of darkness,
like birds of prey, the legions of the Republic had gathered, twenty
thousand strong, under great names, Marceau, Tilly, Westermann,
Kléber, to exterminate the forlorn remnant of a once victorious foe.
And they, too, waited for the dawn. . . .
In the extreme eastern corner of the wood, at the very end of the
Vendean lines, near a miserable fire, which the rain had half
extinguished, a young man was sitting against a tree with the head of
another on his knees. The prostrate man was wrapped in what appeared
to be part of the hangings of a bed, flowered brown and yellow; he who
was sitting up wore what had once been the brilliant uniform of a
_garde-du-corps_, tattered now and faded beyond all recognition. A
blood-stained and very dirty rag was tied round his forehead, and his
hair fell unkempt about his shoulders; he looked pinched with cold and
fatigue, but his eyes were steady. It was Louis de Saint-Ermay. Round
the two, clad, some of them, in the most fantastic garments, some
merely in their rags, lay all that remained of the three hundred and
fifty odd men who, nine months before, had called on the Marquis de
Château-Foix to lead them to victory. There were just thirteen.
As he sat there waiting in the fine cold rain, warm only where the
weight of the wounded man and a little of his covering lay across his
knees, there swept before the Vicomte all the issues of the past four
months. Since Gilbert had died in his arms, what a rosary of disasters
had been theirs to tell! It had been a chaplet of desperate fighting,
the ebb and flow of a bitter tide, a contest fought and refought over
every foot of Vendean soil; but the beads, as they slipped in memory
through the fingers, spoke only of the gradual quenching of the light
of victory, of the appearance of disunion, of their double defeat at
La Tremblay and at Cholet in mid-October, with Bonchamps and Lescure
mortally wounded, and, as its consequence, the thrice fatal decision
to leave their own province and to press on northwards of the Loire.
Then that never-to-be-forgotten crossing of the wide river, with the
smoke of their burning villages behind them, Bonchamps’ death on the
further bank, and Lescure’s, horribly protracted, on the march through
Maine. And the march itself, a slow serpent of a column miles in
length, hampered with old and wounded, with children and women, the
exodus of an entire people, with a young man of one-and-twenty for its
leader. Then, when Normandy was reached at last, the abortive attack
on the port of Granville, unsuccoured by the aid from England for
which they had hoped; and after that, the agonising retreat, marked
by combats at every halting-place, with forces dwindling day by day,
till the final overthrow at Le Mans, with its whirlwind of slaughter.
. . . And as if that were not enough, for those who survived it the
scenes on the bank of the Loire, when the remnant attempted to recross
the river to die in Vendée and found it impossible for want of boats,
when, by a cruel mistake, Stofflet and La Rochejaquelein traversed it
with a handful of followers, only to fall, probably, into the hands of
the enemy on the other side. Then, their general separated from them
for ever and their last hope of safety vanished, the influx of the
courage of despair which bade most of them turn to bay and die here,
sword in hand.
And from these red visions Louis’ thoughts went still further
backwards. Centuries ago he had led a pleasant and irresponsible life
in Paris, agreeably gilded by danger and intrigue, but not shot
through, like this existence, in every hour, every minute, at every
footstep with the need for endurance. Centuries ago he and Gilbert had
stood with an Englishman at the parting of the ways at Candé; how
well—though distantly—he had remembered it the other day, when they
marched through the place. And the peasant whom centuries ago he had
watched talking at midnight with Gilbert and La Rouërie he had seen
since, riding into Laval to join them, his Chouans behind him. These
memories, woven of threads which seemed to be torn from different
existences, were confusing, phantasmagoric. How far away seemed even
that amazing night when Gilbert had given up to him his claim, when he
had welcomed with joy the call to arms, before he had learnt what that
call was to mean.
But Gilbert’s weight in his hold, his head on his breast, his own
kisses, the look on his face when he lay dead, those things were
always near. It was partly for them, for all that made Gilbert’s
memory dear and sacred to him, that he had followed to this bitter end
the failing fortunes of the cause, instead of throwing down a sword
grown blunted, and turning, as he might have done at Granville, to
find safety—and something more—across the sea. He had never really
contemplated that alternative, but he had thought to himself once or
twice that, if there were such a thing as a meeting beyond the grave,
Gilbert would approve him. And in that case the moment of approbation
was very near now.
Louis was not disturbed at the prospect; he had faced it too often.
And amid the wreck of everything that makes a man’s life, of family
ties, of high and warlike hopes, of love itself, he had retained a
kind of serenity—a gift not always to be found in conjunction with a
brilliant and reckless courage such as his, and proportionately the
more valuable in the hour of disaster. Yet Gilbert was dead; M. des
Graves was gone—killed or taken at Le Mans, he knew not which—he
should never see Lucienne now. She would be making holly wreaths in
England to-day. . . .
He shivered suddenly, and gently removing the head of his wounded
follower from his knee, replaced the coverlet over him, and, getting
to his feet, began to pace up and down to keep warm. The doglike eyes
of Toussaint Lelièvre followed him from the ground as he went. Here
and there a head was raised to look at him. But not all were sleeping
or pretending to sleep. Many were on their knees; and under a tree two
young men, finishing a long conversation, gave each other the kiss of
farewell.
It grew a little lighter. Louis beat his arms about him and tried to
whistle an air, but his lips were too stiff. Like everybody else, he
was wet to the bone, for his uniform was more than threadbare, and he
had no cloak. But only two things mattered now: this nerve-trying
waiting for a death to which one was resigned—and Lucienne. . . . He
thrust a hand beneath his coat and felt her miniature on his breast.
Into whose possession would it fall . . . afterwards? “But I shan’t be
worth stripping,” he thought to himself, looking down at his rags. At
the last he would kiss it; that was the only farewell he could make.
Presently out of the cold gloom came riding a dim form. “Is that you,
M. de Saint-Ermay?”
Louis drew himself up and saluted. Bernard de Marigny leant his tall
figure from the saddle. “How many men have you left, Monsieur?”
“Fourteen,” replied the Vicomte; “and one wounded.”
Marigny made a gesture. “Not enough! We are going to attack directly
it is light. Since they are three to one it is better than waiting for
them. If you had had fifty men I would have given you the forlorn
hope. As it is you must stay here. I shall place a couple of guns in
this corner of the wood, with your men and those of M. des Nouhes. You
will not be able to hold it long, but remain as long as possible, and
then—save the guns if you can.”
“Very good, mon général,” replied Louis tranquilly, though he was
conscious of a surprisingly keen pang of disappointment. “Who will
lead the forlorn hope then?”
“La Roche-Saint-André, probably.”
“Lucky devil!” observed Louis. “He will have a chance to get warm.”
Marigny turned his horse. “We shall all be equally cold to-night,” he
said significantly. “Good-bye, Saint-Ermay.” He wrung Louis’ hand and
rode back.
And as the light filtered a little more rapidly through the leafless
tree, drawing on to the fatal dawn, the wood began to stir. Some even
made shift to relight the dead fires and to cook their last meal.
Louis’ outward preparation for death consisted in tearing a strip of
shabby silver lace from his sleeve and tying back his hair with it.
Marigny’s two cannons came up, and with them a score of Des Nouhes’
men from Les Aubiers, La Rochejaquelein’s country. Louis shook hands
with their commander, who wore a woman’s petticoat pinned about his
breast, and sabots. Then he went towards his own little contingent.
“My children,” he said, “we have come to our last fight. Let us show
the Angevins here that we are as much men as they, and die as Monsieur
le Marquis would have had us. For myself, I give you my word of honour
that I will stay by the guns as long as there is ammunition left.”
He went round to shake hands with the little group, but they all
demanded permission to embrace him, and Toussaint Lelièvre clung to
him passionately, whispering hoarse and broken words: “If only I could
die for you, M. Louis! . . .”
“Eh, mon ami,” said Saint-Ermay, disengaging himself, “we have all got
to die some time, and this, apparently, is the hour. The only thing
that matters is the manner of our dying.”
The young Vendean looked at him with his eyes full of tears. “If you
fall,” he said almost fiercely, “I will save you. . . .”
And from the hillside came through the dawn the first sudden rattle of
musketry.
* * * * * *
Louis wiped the sweat from his forehead with his frayed scarlet cuff,
and leant a moment breathless against the gun which he had been
helping to drag nearer to the edge of the copse. He had no cause to
complain of cold now. “How many more rounds?” he asked.
Panting, begrimed, blood-stained, the four men at the gun looked at
him. “Three,” said the eldest solemnly, and the voice of Toussaint
Lelièvre added sharply: “Monsieur le Vicomte, you are wounded!”
Louis shrugged his shoulders, and glanced down carelessly at the gash
above his knee, whence the blood was coursing unheeded into his high
boot. “Three? Carefully then, mes enfants. . . .”
In front, between them and Savenay, could be seen a blue and white
mass, advancing slowly but steadily, and firing as it came. A little
behind it, to the left, almost motionless, was visible a body of
horsemen—the hussars of Westermann, the man who knew no pity. The gun
roared. Louis looked a moment longer through the twigs, and then,
catching up a musket, knelt down again on the dead leaves and went on
firing.
The leaden sky, the cold rain, the position of the gun on the edge of
a wood, all seemed a replica of three hours ago. Yet all was changed.
The day was lost, and the wood was not the same. When first the
Vendeans attacked with the fury of despair, they had driven in the
outposts of the château of Touchelais, but afterwards they had been
slowly forced back on to the Bois des Amourettes, where Marigny’s
battery had checked for a time Marceau’s onset. In their corner of the
wood Louis’ men and Des Nouhes’ Angevins, ravaged by the grape-shot,
fell, re-formed, fell faster. At last it was impossible to hold the
wood any longer. Even then they saved the guns.
And then they were down in Savenay, and Savenay was a nightmare—a
repetition of the unspeakable carnage of Le Mans. By every inlet
flooded through the united columns of Marceau and Kléber, Tilly and
Canuel. And first Louis was in the square by the church, always with
the guns, holding a street full of hussars in check. Then, in some
inexplicable fashion, a torrent of fugitives tore both him and Des
Nouhes away from their men, and they were flung to the other side of
the square, right under the hoofs of a squadron of dragoons who came
like a whirlwind out of another street. Des Nouhes was sabred at
Saint-Ermay’s side, and in a doorway Louis saw a boy of fourteen,
Armand de Beaurepaire, cut to pieces with the Comte, his grandfather,
because he would not surrender. But death would none of him—only a
dragoon slashed at him as he struggled to rise. After that he had
tried to work his way back across the tossing square to the guns,
inwardly thanking God that, at least, the women and children were
gone—he could not bear to see that again. . . . He caught sight of a
fresh stream of fugitives. Half of them were women. From the sleeve of
one of them, quite young, and by her face of gentle birth, protruded a
dripping stump. . . . And a red fury banished his frozen calm. At the
tail of the press was Marigny, on horseback, in his hand the white
standard Madame de Lescure had once embroidered for him. Louis had
wrestled through to him, had caught at his bridle and cried in a
breaking voice that there were still women in the town, and Marigny,
death in his face, had replied that he was trying to get them out by
the Guérande road. . . . And not long after that, profiting by the
diversion caused by Fleuriot and Donnissan, who, disdaining to fly,
had opened a passage back into Savenay with the bayonet, they had
succeeded in getting the two guns out of the shambles, along the road.
More nightmare scenes. . . .
Then, with but one gun, he was here in the wood of Blanche-Couronne,
with Marigny, four times that day repulsed by the death he sought, and
old Donnissan, and Fleuriot, and a few score more, holding it in a
last desperate effort to protect the rout, to postpone, if only for
half an hour, the ultimate slaughter. But five minutes more would see
the end. . . .
Less, perhaps. There was a stir along the border of the wood to his
right, wild voices, men scrambling to the saddle, running. And Louis’
musket snapped uselessly—the cartridges were too wet. He threw it down
and drew his sword.
Marigny galloped past. “Save yourself, Saint-Ermay!” he cried. “Make
for the marshes!”
Louis shook his head. He would not leave his men, and the gun.
Besides, what was the use? He had no fancy for being slaughtered in a
ditch; he preferred to die standing, and in the open.
The gun by him spoke for the last time, and almost immediately
Toussaint Lelièvre pitched forward on his face.
And suddenly Louis, who, all through the war, in his maddest exploits
had never been touched by a bullet, knew that he should not die by a
bullet now, and was glad. The grenadiers had ceased to advance. In
front of them, racing madly towards the slope, came on the cavalry
they had screened. Westermann’s hussars were coming to clear out the
wood; the pounding of their nearing hoofs on the wet grass was like
the beat of the last pulses of life. The three men at the guns were on
their knees, reciting their acts of contrition, calm, as if they had
been in church. Only a little sob broke from one, the youngest. Louis
turned towards them, brought his sword to the salute, and, walking
very coolly to a tree a few yards away, set his back against it and
waited.
There was just here a little hedge for a boundary to the copse. Would
their horses take it well . . . as Saladin would have done? . . . Yes;
in a moment they were over it gallantly, their red, fur-edged pelisses
flying. They seemed in an enormous hurry. A couple of them, striking
right and left, despatched in an instant the three men by the gun.
Then the line swept on. And Louis straightened himself as he saw death
riding at him—a big man on a roan horse, something restive. Under his
high red and black headgear his fair, stupid face glistened with
exertion; his doubled tresses of plaited hair hung to his shoulders.
As he passed Louis he cut savagely at him. Louis sprang a little to
one side, the roan swerved, and Saint-Ermay parried the stroke, though
not entirely, for the point of the sabre bit into his collarbone. The
force of the blow sent him back for a second against the tree-trunk,
and another hussar was on him, young, dark, smiling sardonically.
Leaning from the saddle, this man made as though to cut, then,
suddenly stooping, thrust instead.
“Take that, brigand!” he cried, his smile widening.
The long, heavy blade, with the momentum of the horse behind it, went
leaping treacherously under the Vicomte’s raised guard, and drove
through the tarnished silver facings full into his breast.
Louis was conscious of a spasm of rending pain, of a conviction that
he was pinned to the tree behind him (which was momentarily true), of
the horseman’s laugh as he wrenched out his sword and rode on . . .
then of a noisy, rushing red mist and a sensation of falling.
For all that he stood swaying for an instant by the tree, with his
mouth full of blood, and but one unreasoning thought in his mind—to
get back to the gun to die. And observing him to be still on his feet,
though visibly not long to remain there, another hussar, looking over
his shoulder, wheeled his horse with the intention of giving him the
coup de grâce. Louis did not see him. He could indeed see nothing now,
but with his head thrown back in agony, and both hands pressed to his
breast, whence the blood poured hot through his fingers, he took a
couple of blind paces forward in the direction where he imagined the
gun to be. Then he staggered, flung out his hands, and fell.
The hussar, whose arm was already raised to strike, glanced carelessly
down at him and did not trouble to dismount. “He has his affair
already, parbleu,” he muttered, and, swinging his sabre till it
whistled through the air, rode after his comrades.
Louis made one or two convulsive movements, and then, with a long
shuddering sigh, lay still, his arms spread wide and the rain falling
on his upturned face.
* * * * * *
A peasant began to crawl very slowly forward from the little heap by
the gun. A red foam hung on his lips, and as he dragged himself along
he left a dark track on the damp leaves. Twice in his difficult
progression he sank down, gasping, but in the end he reached the body
which he sought, and peered into its ashen face. As he bent over it
his own blood mingled with the stream which still soaked through
Louis’ ragged blue and scarlet, and which, joining with the trickle
creeping slowly from beneath him, was forming a little pool at his
side. With shaking hands the wounded man tried to unfasten the
Vicomte’s uniform; he got it open a little way at the throat, and then
the uselessness of his action seemed to overcome him, and, groaning,
he looked wildly round for something to staunch the steady red rivulet
within. His eyes fell on the white scarf which encircled his young
leader’s body; but it was worn under the sword-belt, and Toussaint
Lelièvre, with but a few seconds to live himself, knew that he could
not unfasten the clasp and unwind the scarf in time. . . . He carried
his hands to the sash round his own waist, and, coughing, crouched
on his heels, fumbled with the end. He got it unfastened . . . but
it was a long woollen strip wound round many times. . . . In a
supreme gesture of despair and farewell he tore his rosary from his
buttonhole, and, with heaven knows what vague idea of its efficacy,
tried to put it into Saint-Ermay’s slack, out-flung hand—the last and
only office in his power. Even that he could scarcely do. The chaplet
dropped waveringly into Louis’ palm, and Toussaint Lelièvre fell dead
across him.
CHAPTER XLVI
WRECKAGE
“Yea, I am passed away, I think, from this;
Nor helps me herb, nor any leechcraft here,
But lift me hither the sweet cross to kiss,
And witness ye, I go without a fear.”
—AUSTIN DOBSON, _The Dying of Tanneguy du Bois_.
The door opened a little way, heavy sabots clattered over the high
stone sill on to the floor of beaten earth within, and the door closed
again.
“Perrine,” said the old man who had entered, speaking Breton, “it is
arranged. I have left Marie-Pierre behind at Coatsaliou’s house to
fetch him.”
The woman who sat dozing in the ingle-nook gave a start. “Eh, ma Doué,
is it you, Mathurin? What did you say? I was half asleep.”
The aged Breton, thin, bent, his meagre white hair falling over his
bowed shoulders, began to shuffle towards her, then, as if remembering
something, stopped, and slipping his bare feet out of straw-stuffed
sabots, pattered on noiselessly without the latter. “Listen,” he said,
sitting down beside his wife. “When Coatsaliou brings the good priest
safe from Besné to his house he will find Marie-Pierre there—I left
him behind on purpose—and when the Révérend has refreshed himself,
Marie-Pierre will tell him how we have here a wounded Vendean, and how
we fear he is dying, and that he cannot have the sacraments because
Monsieur le Recteur is driven away. Then Marie-Pierre will bring the
abbé here, and he can confess the young man and give him the last
sacraments and go on his way.”
Madame Gloannec, many years younger than her husband—she was his
second wife—lifted her coiffed head and looked doubtful. “You say it
is arranged, Mathurin, but supposing the priest cannot come? After
all, he is himself escaping, is he not, from Nantes? Perhaps he will
think the risk too great.”
“Is it likely, Perrine, that he will not come when he hears that the
young man is dying without the sacraments, and he a priest of the
Vendeans!”
“You do not know who he is, the abbé?”
“No more than Noel Coatsaliou himself. But Noel says that he must be
somebody very important, because of the money that must have been
spent to get him out of Nantes, and the difficulty of making all these
arrangements for guiding him to the coast. Probably he is very holy;
it will be blessed for us to have him in this house.” He took snuff
vigorously, and with an air appreciative of future spiritual benefits.
“And for the young man,” added his wife. “Thank God that we have been
able to get him a priest at the last. . . . But to think,” she added
sadly, “that there was a time when we thought we should save the poor
boy.”
“Dame! I never thought so, with a wound like that!”
“Then why did you and Marie-Pierre bring him in, at such a risk?—No,
Mathurin, you know you thought so, too. . . . It is six weeks
yesterday since you found him.”
“Christmas Eve it was,” assented old Gloannec, putting away his
snuff-box and brushing himself. “Well, I for one am not sorry that the
good God has decided to take him to Himself, and, without disrespect,
I think He might have made up His mind earlier.”
“Because the poor young man has suffered so much, you mean?” said his
wife. “Yes, you are right there. But last night, when I was up with
him, he had not nearly so much pain as usual. Yet it is a bad sign
that he is so much weaker. He is worn out, I think.”
“If only we could have had a surgeon,” said Mathurin. “Well,
well. . . . Yet, thank the saints, if we have not been able to do much
for his body, we shall have done the best we could for his soul, and
may God have mercy on it.”
He had scarcely completed the sign of the cross with which he
accompanied this pious adjuration before the latch of the door
clicked. They had neither of them heard the approaching footsteps.
* * * * * *
As M. des Graves, following his tall young guide, and clad like him in
Breton dress, stepped out of the whipping February blast into the warm
kitchen, the place appeared to him to be much darker than it really
was. Then, as the apparent gloom lightened, he saw, in the greenish
light of the peat fire, the three Breton faces looking at him with a
reverent and wistful attention.
“First of all give us your blessing, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Mathurin,
hobbling forward. “It is long since we had a priest in this house.”
And with his wife and his son he fell on his knees to receive it.
As they rose M. des Graves glanced instinctively towards the _lit
clos_, which, with its carved panels, its chest, and its little
holy-water stoup, stood as usual in the corner by the hearth. Madame
Gloannec saw the look.
“No, Monsieur l’Abbé: he is above, in the granary. It is a poor place
for a sick man, but it was safer in case the Blues searched for
fugitives. Indeed, they did so once, and we had to cover the bed with
hay. Will your Reverence come to him now?”
“He is conscious, I suppose?” asked the priest. “How long has he been
in danger?”
“Ma foi, I scarcely know,” replied Madame Gloannec. “We are but
ignorant people, mon père, and could not have a surgeon. And he was
desperately hurt. At first, when Mathurin and Marie-Pierre brought him
in, six weeks ago, with a horrible wound right through his body, we
thought he was dying. We did what we could; then he got a little
better, then worse, then better again, and so it has gone on until the
last few days, when he has been much worse. Yesterday we were sure
that he was sinking. So, knowing that your Reverence was about to pass
through on the way to Ste. Reine, I asked him if he would like to see
a priest, and he said yes. He was quite conscious half an hour ago,
and I think he has little pain now, but he has suffered very much.”
The tears were in her eyes as she added that if the priest wished to
give him extreme unction the sacred oils were still in the little
church near by, and could be speedily fetched. The tabernacle was
empty. But, since the army had crossed the Loire, M. des Graves had
always carried the Blessed Sacrament with him, and he had but to
despatch Marie-Pierre to the church, which was done.
Mounting the narrow, ladder-like stairs after Madame Gloannec, the
priest found himself in the space under the roof, used, as always in
Brittany, for a loft and store-room. In one corner was a large pile of
fodder, into which, at their approach, a mouse ran squeaking. Strings
of onions hung from the sloping rafters; a brazier, now nearly
extinct, had been lit to dispel the cold, and it was evident that its
smoke escaped but ill by the hole which had been knocked in the roof
for that purpose. One small window let in a muffled daylight, and near
it, on a miserable pallet bed, under a dirty and faded coverlet, was
the outline of a human form, lying, slightly huddled up, on its right
side, with its face turned away from the door, and consequently
invisible.
Madame Gloannec placed a crazy chair at the head of the bed for the
priest, and going round to the other side of the pallet bent down.
“Mon enfant,” she said in a tone of extraordinary gentleness, and as
if she were indeed speaking to a child—even to her own child—“mon
enfant, here is the good priest come to you. You wish him to confess
you, do you not?”
Evidently she received an answer in the affirmative, though none was
audible to M. des Graves; and after a moment’s hesitation she slipped
her arms under the dying man, gently lifting him a little so that he
should lie on his back. And as his head sank back in profile on the
low pillow M. des Graves recognised him.
He was terribly altered; his face, with its shadows, its pinched
nostrils and hollow temples, waxlike in pallor and transparency. Round
the mouth and on the brow was scored the track of past pain, but what
every lineament bore most plainly was the stamp of an exhaustion so
profound that it seemed as if physical suffering must be over now
for ever—could have no more power over the body on which it had so
fully worked its will. Indeed, after the first lightning shock of
recognition the priest asked himself if they could really be Louis’
features, so completely had all trace of the lazy vitality which was
once their characteristic and their charm ebbed away from their
sharpened contours.
Madame Gloannec, occupied in arranging the pillow and the coverings,
did not hear the stifled exclamation which rose to M. des Graves’
lips. A momentary fierce conflict shook him between his instinctive
craving to bend at once over Louis, to call him by his name, to assure
himself if indeed he were dying, as they said, to tell him that he was
near him, to comfort him . . . and the conviction that nothing
personal must be suffered to distract the young man at this supreme
moment, and that the poor remnants of his strength had to be used for
something else than a greeting which would shake and try them. And the
priest was victorious over the friend. M. des Graves deliberately set
his chair where Louis could not see him without completely turning his
head, an action which was probably quite beyond his powers, and
pulling out a shabby stole, sat down. Madame Gloannec crept from the
room.
The roughly-shorn brown head—they had cut off his long hair—moved very
slightly on the pillow, and the half-shut, dark-lidded eyes opened.
“I am here, my son,” said M. des Graves instantly, praying that Louis
might not know his voice. “I will say your Confiteor for you, since
you are very ill, and afterwards, my child, accuse yourself of such
sins as you can remember.”
Louis did not know the familiar voice. He sighed, moved his hands a
little on the coverlet, and began. His own voice was as changed as the
rest of him. For a few minutes it went on, weak and trailing, halting
for breath, stumbling over words, and then began to show a significant
tendency to repeat the same phrases over and over again.
M. des Graves interposed at once. “That is enough, my son. You have
made a sufficient confession. ‘_For these and all my other sins_’——”
But Louis scarcely heeded him. His brain, spurred by its recent costly
effort at concentration, was beginning to hurry him towards the
regions of delirium, yet not so fast but that he seemed to know it,
and to make painful attempts to regain control of his thoughts. “_For
these and all my other sins,_” he repeated mechanically. “Gilbert, you
must believe me. My God! you don’t think that! . . . _which I cannot
now remember_ . . . _which I cannot_ . . . I cannot remember about
Gilbert . . . but he is dead, and it is my fault . . . because I hated
him . . . and now he is dead. . . . Marigny, Marigny, there are women
in the town . . . we have only three rounds left . . . no, I shall
stay by the gun. . . . O God! will the pain never cease! . . . I did
not think it was so difficult to die. . . . Gilbert was lucky; he died
quickly. . . . O Gilbert, if you would only listen! . . . mon père,
he keeps turning away his head . . . but I never betrayed him . . .
God knows I never betrayed him. . . .”
“Louis, Louis!” exclaimed M. des Graves, in great distress, careless
that he used the name, and horrified at witnessing the sands of life
slipping away in a fashion so useless and so heart-rending. His
remonstrance had no result except to wake in the wandering mind some
faint echo of the past.
“It is no use, Father . . . let me go! He says I have no honour . . .
he will not listen because he is dead . . . dead . . .” The broken
voice paused for an instant, and, losing something of its fever, began
to grow weaker. “How wide the river is . . . they will never all get
across . . . there are so many dead . . . Lescure was a long time
dying . . . and Royrand. . . . I cannot remember any more. . . . _For
all my sins, which I cannot now remember_. . . . If only M. des
Graves . . . were here . . . but he is . . . dead, too. . . .” And
suddenly he exclaimed, on a note of horror: “Gilbert, who gave you
that wound?”
But at the appeal to himself the priest could bear it no longer.
Better the risk of shock than this fatal expenditure of strength. He
got up from his place, and, kneeling down by the side of the bed where
the young man could see him, took one of the thin hands into his own.
“Louis, my dear child, I am here. You must not imagine these things;
they are not true. All was well between you and Gilbert; do you not
remember? You have made a good confession. Try now to recollect
yourself while I give you absolution.”
His revelation had all the effect he could have desired, and none of
those he feared. The faint voice died down into silence. But Louis was
too near death for anything to surprise him. He looked up at M. des
Graves quietly, accepting his presence naturally and without wonder.
His hand moved in the priest’s, the transient shadow of a smile
flickered for an instant round his drawn mouth, he gave a long sigh,
perhaps of contentment, perhaps of fatigue, and his eyelids fell.
M. des Graves stood up and gave him absolution. Then he knelt down
again, and after a long look at the young, worn face stooped and
kissed it.
The Vicomte reopened his lustreless eyes. The question in them was
unmistakable.
“I think so, my dear child,” said the priest solemnly.
And Louis received the fiat with the same dreamy composure as that
with which he had accepted M. des Graves’ presence. The priest had the
impression that, once his mind was quieted, the mere sensation of
respite from prolonged physical pain flooded it to the exclusion of
any other emotion. But even as he thought this Saint-Ermay slowly and
with difficulty raised his right hand and began to grope underneath
his coarse shirt. Finding nothing there but his bandages he turned
away his head, and M. des Graves, following his gaze, beheld, hanging
by a rusty nail to the rafters, its ribbon worn and very faded, the
miniature of Lucienne. Louis made a gesture towards it that was half a
gesture of farewell, and his hand fell on the coverlet.
The priest went round and took down the portrait. The brilliants of
its setting were clogged with something dried and brown. He put it
into Louis’ hand, and the fingers closed round it, but the hand
itself, inexpressibly wasted, seemed to be incapable of further
effort, and remained lying there inert. Louis sighed, and murmured
something inaudible; then, with a visible effort, he said slowly and
distinctly, “Thank you, Father. That is all. . . .” And, adding much
more faintly, “I am very tired,” he closed his eyes again.
“My child,” said M. des Graves, bending close above him, “it may yet
be God’s purpose that you should live. We do not know, and in our
ignorance we can do nothing. But you submit yourself to His Will, do
you not, Louis? . . . And now, my dear child, shall I give you the
last sacraments?”
The young man, without opening his eyes, made a little motion of the
head, and M. des Graves, going to the door, called for Marie-Pierre
and the sacred oils.
The beautiful and significant rite went forward, the young Breton
assisting. At its beginning Louis was still conscious, but when M. des
Graves came to anoint his palms, and tried very gently to disengage
the miniature from his right hand, he evidently did not know what was
happening, and seemed to wish to retain it. By the end he had sunk
quietly into insensibility.
“You cannot give him le bon Dieu, mon père,” said Marie-Pierre in a
whisper. “He is going.” Crossing himself, he dropped to his knees.
But M. des Graves, with his hand on the Vicomte’s wrist, said nothing
for a moment. The tiny thread of life, flickering under his fingers,
woke in him a hope disproportionate to its frail pulsations. He
listened to his heart, lifted an eyelid.
“I think he may at least last the night,” he said quietly, “and I
should like to stay with him. I have known him since he was a boy.”
* * * * * *
Fantastic shadows were cast about the loft by the wavering rush-light,
as, powerless to aid, M. des Graves watched there over the existence
which seemed likely to go out even before the short-lived candle. But,
listening to the shallow, fluttering breathing from the bed, the
priest thanked God that whether Louis was to live or die, he had
been able to come to him in his need. If the name of another
Chantemerle—the last—was to be added to the roll-call of the noble
army of martyrs, for that too he would thank Him; and, most of all,
that the breath of the furnace, passing over the nature that was too
hard and the nature that was too volatile, had proved them both of the
same metal. So, diverse as they were in all else, the same august
altar had claimed them at last, Gilbert in his hasty grave at
Chantemerle, and Louis, the gay and irresponsible, lying here
wrecked and dying from the very circumstances which had brought his
undiscovered fine qualities to the birth. For in the hardships and
disasters of the campaign beyond the Loire, Louis had displayed,
to M. des Graves’ eyes, a more brilliant courage than when, at La
Rochejaquelein’s side, he had dashed without a single follower on to
the bridge at Château-Gontier, and a heroism of endurance the more
wonderful because nothing in his character or breeding had seemed to
promise it.
Well, it was over now, that and the long weeks of illness, of pain and
of insufficient care. God was good; He knew best. Often He vouchsafed
the crown of martyrdom to the young and withheld it from the old. His
own had waited for him long at Nantes in the cold waters of the Loire,
in the fusillades at the quarries. But when he had thought to grasp
it, it was withdrawn from him.
Towards midnight Madame Gloannec stole up to the granary. M. des
Graves rose from the pallet, by which he was praying, and they stood
together looking down in silence at its burden. Louis had not stirred
since he had become unconscious; his hands were still lightly crossed
on his breast as the priest had laid them after extreme unction, and
in this posture, with his head thrown back on the low pillow, he had
the aspect of an effigy in pale ivory, touched with a kind of morbid
beauty and rendering with fidelity not only the calm, but the deadly
fatigue preceding dissolution. The woman after a little while of
gazing threw her apron over her head, and, turning away, was shaken
with silent sobs; then, without a word, she left the priest again to
his vigil.
And there came to the watcher very clearly the remembrance of standing
with Louis by Gilbert’s bier before the altar, in the sacramental
radiance of the tall candles, and looking at the great peace of his
face. . . . Louis’ own face, now, was not so different. . . .
CHAPTER XLVII
HOW A VOW WAS KEPT
When the dawn broke Louis was still alive. It was all that could be
said; yet when the cold daylight was fully come, and the priest could
get a clearer view of his face, drowned as it was in the waves of an
unfathomable sleep, he thought that it looked a little less deathlike.
And surely his breathing was more natural.
He stayed by him all that day, and when night came a mattress was
placed for him on the floor of the loft. The good Bretons were
impressed to tears by his determination to remain with the wounded man
instead of continuing his journey towards safety, and, set against the
privilege of having a priest in their dwelling, the danger of his
presence appeared negligible.
And next morning, early, ere the rush-light was extinguished, Louis
stirred a little and opened eyes that were indeed unseeing, but which
at least had the light of life in them. He did not know M. des Graves,
but, too weak even to turn his head on the pillow, accepted his good
offices like a child. Sometimes he seemed on the point of recognising
his nurse, at others he was perfectly indifferent to his presence.
Later in the day, with the assistance of Madame Gloannec, M. des
Graves set about examining and dressing his injuries. Even his lesser
hurts were not fully healed, and as for the sabre thrust which had
transfixed him, the priest was little short of horrified at the
methods which the peasants in their well-meaning ignorance and
their want of appliances had followed. But for Louis’ youth and
constitution, he must have succumbed already to such bungling
treatment; perhaps it was even now too late to save him.
The operation was over at last.
“One sees that you have studied, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Madame
Gloannec, collecting the scattered dressings and strips of linen.
“A little, in my youth,” answered the priest absently, looking down at
his semi-conscious patient, who lay between them moaning faintly. “I
am afraid that we have hurt him. My poor child. . . .” He laid his
hand on the Vicomte’s forehead, gently smoothing off it the tendrils
of brown hair, caught there by the sweat of fever and weakness.
“You love him, mon père,” said the Breton woman softly. “Ah well, so
do I—as if he were my own son. He was like a son to me—when he could
speak.”
“Was he ever able to tell you his name?” asked M. des Graves. “I
suppose not.”
“Mais si, Monsieur l’Abbé. Saint-Ermay. But you did not ask it when
you came, and we never thought——”
“Nor I. I never hoped or guessed. Yet I was led here. . . . Yes, I
have known and loved him always.” He was still passing his hand over
the hot, damp brow, and Louis had ceased to moan and was lying quiet.
“He loves you too, that is plain,” said Madame Gloannec, coming round
to the priest’s side. “See, although he does not know you, that eases
the pain—your hand there! And he has suffered enough already, God
knows. But I will stay with him now, mon père, if you will go down
and eat some soup with Mathurin and Marie-Pierre. . . . Let us see, my
child, if I cannot get you to sleep.”
She sat down by the bed, and as M. des Graves went down the rickety
stairs he heard her crooning gently the old Breton song of the miller
girl of Pontaro, with its strange monotonous refrain on two notes,
that was like the turning of the mill-wheel—
“Ha ma mel a drei
Diga-diga-di;
Ha ma mel a ia
Diga-diga-da.”
In the kitchen Marie-Pierre, having taken off an iron pot from its
tripod over the open fire, was pouring its steaming contents into a
large bowl. His demeanour was serious and responsible; his father,
sitting forward on the settle with his hands on his knees, watched him
with something of the expression of the two oxen whose placid and
magnificently-horned heads protruded into the apartment, their bodies
being without, but their manger, as usual, within the cottage. The
arrival of M. des Graves appeared a little to agitate father and son,
for he had not as yet taken any meal with them, but finally the three
sat down at the table to their _soupe à choux_.
It was, perhaps, some instinct of etiquette or of consideration which
caused the two Bretons to allow M. des Graves to proceed some way
with his repast before the younger, jerking his thumb in an upward
direction, asked news of the sick man. The priest told them that he
was a trifle better; that there was a little hope.
“Then you must eat, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Mathurin, and he pushed
towards him an enormous mound of the good salt butter of Brittany.
“Dame! and drink, too,” added his son, seizing the jug of cider. “We
will drink with a good heart to the young man’s recovery.”
“I should like to know how you found him,” observed the priest. “Was
it by chance?”
“It was, and it was not,” answered Mathurin sententiously. “It was
because we started to go into Savenay the day after the battle—Oh, I
must tell you, Monsieur l’Abbé, that Marie-Pierre was all for joining
the Vendeans himself; he even had the musket down”—he pointed to the
usual musket hung over the hearth—“but there was not time. Well . . .
Where was I?—Marie-Pierre, you tell his Reverence.”
The young Breton took a long drink from the cider jug. “It was like
this,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “All the
day of the battle we kept close indoors; we heard firing in the
distance, and later hussars came riding through the village. Some
demanded drink, and their swords were dripping. But, as your Reverence
knows, we are about nine miles from Savenay, and off the main road,
and few fugitives got as far as this; they were cut down on the way.
We heard the hussars boasting how many they had killed in cold blood.
We were very sad, for it is true that I wanted, like many more of our
parts, to join the Vendeans. And we were very anxious, my father and
I, to go to Savenay to learn exactly what fate had befallen them,
though we knew well enough that they were beaten. But we were afraid
to go without a good reason, lest the Blues should take us for spies.
Then we had the idea of taking in some fodder for the patriots’
cavalry as a pretext. So we started early on the morning of Christmas
Eve; it was very cold and almost snowing, and when we began to get
near to Savenay the roads were thick with corpses, so that we had
often to go at a foot’s pace to avoid driving over them. In some
places they were stripped and piled up on top of each other by the
roadside; you could see that they had been shot down in batches. It
was so dreadful that at last we turned back; we had not the heart to
go on into Savenay, and from the sound they were still shooting the
prisoners there.
“And as, having turned back, we passed the wood of Blanche-Couronne,
where we heard that the Vendeans had made their last stand, my father
said to me: ‘Marie-Pierre, what if there were any Royalists still
alive in there?’ And I said: ‘No, mon père, it is not possible, first
because the Blues would have massacred them by this time, and secondly
because of the cold of last night.’ But my father, inspired no doubt
by Heaven, said: ‘Still, it would be a deed very acceptable to God and
His Mother, the consoler of the afflicted, if we went to see.’ And,
pardieu, Monsieur l’Abbé, I was nothing loth, but I knew not what we
should do if the Blues found us in there, for their patrols were
passing along the road every few minutes, and we had already had
difficulty with them. But the Blessed Virgin put it into our heads
that if we were questioned we should say that we were gone to strip
the dead brigands, for we felt sure that the Blues would not object to
that. So we drove the cart a little way up a track that went through
the wood, that it should not be seen from the road, and got out to see
if there were any living.
“There were not more than a couple of score Vendeans there, but they
were all dead, and the snow was beginning to fall on them. We walked
through, very sad at heart, to the edge of the wood that looks towards
Savenay, and there, under a tree, in what had been a pool of blood, I
saw a young man in uniform, with a peasant lying dead across him. It
was the uniform, though it was very old and faded, which caught my
eye, and I said to my father: ‘See, there is a Republican officer, the
only Blue here.’ And then I went a little nearer, out of curiosity,
and suddenly, praise to Sainte Anne, I saw the white scarf and the
Sacred Heart. And I was filled with pity that he should be lying there
dead, young and handsome, with a great wound in his breast. At any
rate, I thought, it will be a pious act to lift off the dead man, and
since this young seigneur was in his lifetime a good Christian (for
I saw that he had died with his rosary in his hand), to fold his
hands and put the crucifix of the chaplet between them. My father
agreed, and together we lifted the dead peasant off the young man’s
body. . . . But when I touched the officer it seemed to me that he was
still warm, and I cried to my father, but he said: ‘No, he is dead;
look at all the blood; and, besides, as you said yourself, the cold.’
Nevertheless I put my ear to the Vendean’s heart, and I thought that I
could hear it beating. So we lifted him carefully and quickly, and
carried him to the cart, and put him in and covered him with the
fodder, and drove home.”
Marie-Pierre terminated abruptly, and took another long drink of
cider. Putting down the jug, he added: “We said the rosary in turns
all the way, for if the Blues had discovered the Vendean in our cart,
we should never have seen Christmas Day.”
“May God reward you,” said the priest, very moved. “It is not in the
power of man.”
“Indeed,” commented Mathurin, who was evidently living through the
scene again, “it was no wonder that I disbelieved Marie-Pierre when he
said that the young man was not dead, for I do not know how he lived
through the cold of the night.”
“I think,” said his son, “that it was the cold which stopped the flow
of blood. And then, on the other hand, perhaps the body of the peasant
kept some warmth in him for a time.”
“I wonder who it was,” said M. des Graves, running over the names of
those who remained at the time of his capture.
“A young man,” replied Marie-Pierre. “He had been shot through the
breast.”
“God rest him,” said the priest, and “Amen” said the two Bretons,
crossing themselves.
So neither Toussaint Lelièvre’s rosary nor his own body had been given
in vain. And since, in a way he did not dream of, he had kept his word
to Louis, he would not probably have minded that no one ever knew.
* * * * * *
A little metal crucifix was hanging on a beam at the foot of the bed.
Surely it had not been there before! And though it was a perfectly
ordinary crucifix, and had evidently been much used—indeed, just
because it was so worn—Louis seemed somehow to recognise it, seemed
even to have seen it recently. It was rather puzzling.
A tiny noise suggestive of snipping made him remove his gaze from this
source of bewilderment to a greater. At a short distance a grey-haired
man was standing, with his back to him, by a small table on which was
a bowl and a heap of something white. It was from him, apparently,
that the snipping proceeded. But though he was clad in the short vest
and very full pleated breeches with which occasional glimpses of
Mathurin and Marie-Pierre had rendered Louis familiar, the back of his
head belonged to neither of the Gloannecs. It was too young for one,
and too old for the other. And yet he had seen it before. . . . His
pulses began to quicken. Why did it suggest amice and chasuble, and
candles under bending boughs at daybreak?. . . . He must be delirious
. . . and yet—that head had known the tonsure.
The Vicomte’s languid curiosity was all at once transmuted into an
emotion much more vivid, and his heart suddenly began to beat
suffocatingly. He tried vainly to move, whispering a name.
The scissors dropped from M. des Graves’ hand, and he was at the
bedside. “My child, my child, lie still! Yes, I am here. I was not
killed. No; no questions—you shall know everything in its proper time.
You have been very ill, but now, by God’s mercy, you are going to get
well. . . . No, I am not going to leave you. I have already been
here—some time. When you have drunk something and gone to sleep again,
perhaps we will talk a little.”
Surprise on surprise. Louis did go to sleep again, and for a very long
time, for when he woke again it was dusk, and a candle was burning.
His eyes searched instantly for M. des Graves, for surely his presence
was only a dream, difficult to disentangle from the others. But the
priest was seated there close to the bed, reading his breviary with
those unnecessary spectacles. A sense of enormous content invaded the
young man, so that he was satisfied to lie for some appreciable time,
merely looking at him, before he attempted to speak. Then he said,
with astonishing difficulty, something quite other than he had meant
to say. “What . . . have you . . . done . . . with your cassock?”
M. des Graves started. He put down his book, swept off his spectacles,
and leaning forward, said with a smile of amusement: “Have I shocked
you by this dress, my child?”
“No,” replied Louis, weighing the question quite seriously, his gaze
roaming over the intricate pale blue embroideries of the priest’s
vest. “No . . . I rather like it. But please tell me why . . . I don’t
understand . . . and I cannot——” He frowned, and, struggling visibly
to express himself, broke off like a child that has not words to say
what it means.
The smile died from about M. des Graves’ mouth as he saw a painful
flush beginning to creep over the horribly thin face. “I understand,
my dear boy,” he said gently. “It is difficult to talk, is it not, but
you would like to listen. Very well, then, I will tell you; but you
must not ask any questions.”
And he told him very simply, dwelling little on the unspeakable orgy
of horrors which had made of Nantes a name even more vilely stained
than that of Paris, how, after his capture, he had been imprisoned
there at Le Bouffay, how day after day those who survived its
pestilential conditions had been led out to die, yet his turn never
came; how one night the jailor had come to him, had led him,
uncomprehending, through many passages, and had thrust him with
scarcely a word outside the prison gate, where two men awaited him
in a boat; how he had voyaged along the Loire, where the river rolled
down the corpses of the drowned by hundreds to the burial that their
butchers denied them, and, passed on from village to village, had come
at last to the house where Marie-Pierre awaited him. . . . On the
necessary heavy bribery of the jailor at Nantes, in which he had had
no part, on the strangely complete arrangements outside he laid little
stress; had Louis been less weak and dazed he would certainly have
wanted to know whose hand had set this mysterious machinery in motion.
But he accepted the miracle, as he had been bidden, without comment,
and if M. des Graves knew or suspected what power had delivered him
from the jaws of death he did not communicate his knowledge. He only
told the young man that his deliverance was of none of his own
seeking, and ending authoritatively, “There, now you must go to sleep
again,” got up and settled the pillow and the bedclothes, and lifted
Louis—grown very light now—into a more suitable position for repose.
Thereafter, for Louis, this falling asleep and waking, this unfruitful
wish to converse and this contentment with silence, recurred for very
many days.
CHAPTER XLVIII
MANY WAYS—AND ALL STEEP
“_Clamavi in toto corde meo, exaudi me, Domine_,” read M. des Graves,
“_justificationes tuas requiram. Clamavi ad te, salvum me fac; ut
custodiam mandata tua_. . . .”
The stream of the Latin, widening and sonorous, bathed all the dusty,
comfortless loft with a suggestion of better and unchanging places, of
choir or cloister, and washed in waves of security and repose over the
mean bed and its occupant. A ray of March sunshine, too, had crept
through the tiny window, and fell across the little hillock made by
Louis’ feet under the coverlet; earlier in the afternoon, when it had
barred his body, M. des Graves had found him looking at it with a sort
of incredulity. Now, with shut eyes and head turned a little on the
pillow, he lay and listened to the psalms for None.
On his face, colourless as a cameo, and as sharply cut, a rather tired
patience had replaced the deadly look of drained vitality. The young
man was passing, in his prolonged and difficult convalescence, through
the stage of restless fatigue, really more trying to endurance than
earlier conditions. How weary he was of the uncomfortable mattress of
oat husks on which he had lain for so many weeks, how ardently he
longed for a change of position and surroundings, he could not but
indirectly betray, though he rarely gave vent to any verbal expression
of his desires. But usually, if he asked M. des Graves to read to him,
it meant that he was finding his state difficult to bear patiently;
and there had been a day when the priest, to keep him quiet, had read
to him every office from Prime to Compline. Since his breviary was the
only book available there was no choice of literature; and indeed
Louis seemed to find the sound of the Latin soothing. M. des Graves
never knew how much he attended to the actual words.
“_Quia in verba tua. . . . Vocem meam audi_. . . .” The reader
finished the psalm, glanced at the pallet, and went on to the next.
“_Principes persecuti sunt. . . . Laetabor ego super eloquia tua
sicut_——” The river suddenly ceased to flow.
“That is only the cattle hitting their horns against the manger down
there,” said Louis, without opening his eyes; “I used always to be
thinking it was the Blues. Please go on, Father.”
But M. des Graves did not comply with his request. Instead, he quietly
laid down his book, as three thundering blows resounded up from the
cottage door.
Peace was vanished in a heart-beat. The invalid, his eyes wide enough
now, strained his head from the pillow, but neither he nor the priest
uttered a word during the short, supreme tension which sickeningly
terminated with loud voices from below, an oath or two, the tramp of
feet, and the unmistakable clank of accoutrements.
“O my God, my God!” whispered Louis. “They have come for you! Father,
Father, why did I let you stay! . . .” Weak as he was, he contrived,
panting, to drag himself a little higher in the bed.
The priest stood a second listening, on his face an expression removed
from any earthly emotion. Then he threw himself on his knees by the
pallet and clasped the young man in his arms. “Hush, my child, hush!
If it has come, for either or for both of us, let us meet it without
shrinking. I shall go willingly. And you, Louis, since when have you
known fear?”
“You know it is not that,” choked Louis, clinging to him in all the
desperation of a last farewell. The priest stooped his head, and they
kissed each other. A moment after Louis loosed his passionate embrace
and fell back on the pillow, and M. des Graves, risen from his knees,
made the sign of the cross over him as once before, and went quietly
back to his chair.
Footsteps were coming up the stairs. They were accompanied by the
voice of Madame Gloannec, very loud.
“Very well, you can search, of course, for your fugitive, but all
you’ll find, as I told you, is my husband’s nephew, Yves Goulven, who
has been gored by one of our cattle, and a neighbour who is looking
after him. And no use to ask Yves anything, for he only speaks
Breton. . . . Mind the top step, Monsieur le sergent.”
And in another moment the soldier stood in the doorway, grizzled,
stiff, authoritative, in his blue, cut-away coat with its red
epaulettes and cuffs and white facings, his white breeches, gaiters,
and bandoliers. “Be quiet, old cackler!” he shouted over his shoulder.
“I have eyes and a tongue of my own, thank heaven. Come up, you two;
they are here right enough. Now, my men, let’s have some account of
you. . . .”
Neither Louis nor M. des Graves responded. Two more grenadiers
posted themselves in the doorway, and as their muskets grounded
simultaneously on the floor the invader came over to the bed.
“Come, young man. . . .”
Why had Madame Gloannec said that he could only speak Breton, when he
knew not a word of it? Sick at heart, Louis summoned his straying
wits, and there came haltingly to his tongue something which he had
often heard Madame Gloannec repeat in that language. He had not an
idea what it was, and hoped that the soldier was equally ignorant.
Afterwards he remembered how as the sergeant stood over him he had
fixed his eyes on the little transverse strips of gold braid above his
cuff, lest he should look at M. des Graves.
The grenadier shrugged his shoulders. “No use your telling me any of
that gibberish! However, there seems no humbug about your condition,
my friend; and I own I do not see how you could have escaped from
Nantes the day before yesterday. Besides, he was older,” he added,
looking at a paper in his hand.
On M. des Graves he scarcely bestowed a glance. Evidently his prey was
not of his type. He only muttered to himself as he turned on his heel:
“Sacré nom, how these old Bretons resemble priests!” Two minutes later
he and his men had left the house.
“O my child, my child, how the Blessed Virgin protected you!” said
Madame Gloannec a little later, clasping her hands over Louis. “Do you
know what you were saying . . . the Hail Mary!”
“I did not know it,” murmured the Vicomte, looking a good deal whiter
than his coarse sheets.
“No, but _she_ did. And . . . mon Dieu, was that there all the time,
Monsieur l’Abbé? She must also have hidden that from the eyes of the
Blues.” For the breviary was lying open at the foot of the bed.
* * * * * *
The shock of this narrow escape did not exercise a particularly
beneficial effect upon the convalescent, though a few days later he
tried, after his old fashion, to laugh at the episode. It seemed also
to have revived in his mind the memory of the past, to which he had as
yet made little reference. One morning, after the wound-dressing,
which was still an exhausting and sometimes a painful process, M. des
Graves, having drawn the coverlet up to his chin, and otherwise, as he
thought, disposed him to slumber, sat down to his office. The Vicomte
lay and looked at him, as he often did, without saying anything. When
M. des Graves had finished he was still so engaged, and suddenly said
in a meditative voice:
“Father, did I make my confession when I was ill?”
The priest closed his book. “Yes, my child; and I gave you extreme
unction.”
“It is odd,” commented Louis in a puzzled tone. “I don’t remember
anything about it.”
“You were too ill,” said the priest gently.
“You thought I was dying, then?” pursued the Vicomte.
M. des Graves nodded.
A little of Louis’ former self appeared for a moment in his expression.
“I am sorry to have been such a malingerer,” he observed. “The fact
is, that it is not as easy to die as one thinks. Just before that
brute of a hussar ran me through I thought, ‘Two or three minutes, and
it will be over.’ Ma foi, I was sure that it was, at the time! Imagine
my surprise, then, when I came to for a moment, hours afterwards, in
the dark and the rain, with a dead man across me. It must have been
night; there was a moon, I think. . . . And in my hand, mon père, so
they tell me, was a rosary; heaven knows how it got there. It was
not mine, and seems unlikely to have been the property of any of
Westermann’s parishioners. Well, then, I thought, this is certainly
the end, unless it is purgatory already, for it was horribly cold, and
I was not—not feeling my best. . . . Not a bit of it! I wake up again,
jolting most disagreeably in a cart—and then again in this place . . .
many times.” He broke off for a moment, and added: “I should have
caused vastly less discomfort, both to myself and to other people, if
I had finished, as my hussar intended, quietly under that tree.”
The priest looked at him intently for a moment. “Madame Gloannec tells
me,” he said at last, “that before I came you suffered so much pain
that she could not always bear to stay and see it. And I could have
guessed it for myself. . . . Were you conscious then?”
“Yes,” responded the Vicomte grimly, “I was very much conscious. It
was at those times that I regretted Marie-Pierre’s pious intervention.”
“I thought that you must have been conscious,” said the elder man
quietly. “Madame Gloannec believed that you were not, always.” He
paused, and his voice changed. “Have you ever thought, Louis, what the
martyr’s crown must have seemed to the onlookers—objectless, useless
suffering? But you know in what terms the Church speaks of it, when
she commemorates a martyr at her altars? ‘A crown of precious stones,’
that is what their blood and torments are to her—and were to them.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed the young man, startled.
“Only that something of their high honour has been yours, my child.”
* * * * * *
“Shall we have a bet,” suggested the invalid one day, “that I get off
this bed of roses in—in how many days, mon père?”
“Certainly not!” replied M. des Graves. “Louis, if you are going to
talk nonsense——”
“_Mea culpa!_ Then if I am to stop here for ever, would you be so good
as to move that string of onions, and give me something else to count
instead. I am no agriculturist like——” He stopped suddenly, and said,
between laughing and something else: “I believe that if Gilbert had
been in my place they would have been a comfort to him.” And he turned
his head away on the pillow.
Yet they often spoke of Gilbert, and of the others gone down like him
to the place of heroes.
“I wonder what has become of Henri,” said Louis, one afternoon towards
the end of March. “I suppose that he, too, is dead by now.”
“I sometimes think,” replied M. des Graves, “that in permitting him—I
had almost said in forcing him—to cross the Loire again in the way you
have described, Heaven had some great design for him, and that we
shall hear of him again.”
But La Rochejaquelein had been lying these two months under a hedge
with a bullet in his brain.
“Then there is Marigny,” went on Louis. “I would give a great deal for
news. I wonder, for instance, if the Princess Elisabeth is still
alive. Since she was not murdered with the Queen last October, perhaps
they meant to spare her.”
“Whenever she enters Paradise, there will be one saint there the
more,” remarked the priest.
“That,” said Louis, “is almost exactly what I overheard M. de Lescure
saying to Gilbert just before Luçon, when that false report of the
Queen’s death was circulated. I remember that I was struck at the
time with Gilbert’s lack of enthusiasm on the point. He flushed,
looked down, and said nothing, and seeing that he knew the Princess
personally, I wondered why he was so unresponsive.”
“He had strong likes and dislikes, as you know,” returned M. des
Graves, who knew to what very human resentment must be assigned this
coldness of which he now heard for the first time. But there was no
need that Louis should know it.
“Accursed window!” exclaimed the young man, coming suddenly out of the
brief reverie into which he had fallen. “It _was_ through the window
from which he pulled me back that the bullet came, was it not?”
The priest nodded.
“All my life I shall regret that I was not there!”
“Why?” asked M. des Graves gently. “You have nothing, my son, with
which to reproach yourself; you were doing your duty elsewhere.
Humanly speaking, you yourself were running a much greater risk than
Gilbert.”
“Yes, I know,” assented Louis, sighing. “That is why it is so hard. I
suppose one must always feel like that—as if one could have prevented
a disaster had one been there.”
“You must remember, Louis, that it was God’s will.”
The young man suddenly stirred—he was a good deal stronger now—and
flashed on the priest, out of eyes full of tears, a look of piercing
enquiry. “Is that enough for you, Father?”
And in the priest’s eyes, as he bowed his head without speaking, was
an echo of that look with which he had faced Louis over his dying
cousin.
“Well, it isn’t enough for me!” said the Vicomte, catching a sob
between his teeth. He began again after a moment. “Did he have much
pain—before I saw him?”
“No, very little, I think.”
“He . . . had it before, in another way?”
“Yes,” said M. des Graves, looking at him very tenderly. “Louis, my
dear child, I know what you are thinking of. There is no need to
distress yourself. What Gilbert gave up, for you or for right’s sake,
put it as you will, was only a symbol. It was only a part, perhaps a
small part, of the work that had to be done in him. And he was a
thousand-fold repaid even here. Perhaps you have forgotten what I once
said to you about your own renunciation, that sacrifice is only
exchange.”
“No, I have not forgotten.”
“It is true—and Gilbert learnt it before he died. That is enough for
us to know.”
Louis gazed at him long and wistfully. “Yes, he looked happy,” he said
to himself.
“To the selfless something of the Beatific Vision is perhaps given in
this world,” said the priest. “I think Gilbert had a measure of it
before he died.”
They were both silent.
“God knows,” said Louis suddenly, “what I shall say in England, if
ever I get there. . . . But you will be there to help me, Father.”
“Are you tired, Louis?” asked the priest suddenly.
“Not at all,” answered Louis, surprised at his tone. “Why?”
For a second M. des Graves hesitated. “I may as well tell you
now . . . I shall take you to England, Louis, when we get away, which,
if God wills, we shall do as soon as you are fit to travel to the
coast—it is all arranged. But I shall not be able to accompany you
to Suffolk.”
“Not come with me to Suffolk!” repeated the Vicomte, highly amazed.
“No,” answered M. des Graves quietly. “I must find at Portsmouth, or
London, a ship to take me to Hamburg, or some other German port, if
indeed I cannot find a vessel sailing direct to Italy. I am going to
Rome, Louis, and with as little delay as possible.”
“To Rome, Father! A pilgrimage?”
“No, not a pilgrimage. I may be there for the rest of my life. . . .
Louis, do you remember Monsignor Cantagalli?”
“Yes. He annoyed me very much.”
“I am sure you must have wondered why he came to Chantemerle. It was
to bring me a command from the Holy Father . . . an unexpected
command, touching a matter of which I never thought to hear an echo
again——”
But the Vicomte, raising himself in bed, broke in upon him in a sudden
violent excitement. “He called you Eminence! I did not believe my
ears. . . . Father, it can’t be!”
“No, indeed, my child, I do not wonder at your astonishment,” said the
priest, with a touching humility. “There could not be any one so
unworthy; I knew that long ago. Nevertheless——”
“Long ago!” exclaimed Louis, with a hand to his head as if he were
dizzy. “Good God! how long, then, have you——”
M. des Graves got up and came over to him. “If you will only lie down,
Louis, I will tell you the whole story. Let me move that pillow for
you first. . . . That’s better. . . . Well, then, there was once a
young man, well born and tolerably rich, who at an early age took
orders, because his family had influence in ecclesiastical quarters,
and because it was the tradition for the third son of his house. He
was gifted, and very ambitious. From the first he turned his attention
to diplomacy, and here, in an extraordinary way, everything prospered
to which he set his hand. Very soon he was swimming on a full tide of
success; he was known to be favoured by the Pope; wherever he went he
was courted and flattered. And thus circumstances fostered his
naturally great ambition till it became an overmastering passion, the
very mainspring of his life. Then there came to him a supreme chance
of distinguishing himself—a chance such as has seldom fallen to the
lot of so young a man. The Pope—it was Clement XIII.—entrusted him
with a very difficult and delicate mission to the late King—I mean
Louis XV.—and the priest’s conduct of this negotiation brought
him to a pinnacle of esteem whence nothing seemed too much for him
to grasp. Besides the Pope’s favour he now had the King’s, who
told him in no veiled terms that he regretted the days of the great
cardinal-ministers, of Fleury, of Richelieu. Yet the hour when the
King said that to him, in the park of Fontainebleau, was followed by
a stronger renewal of that sense of vague discomfort which, all the
while that he walked on this golden path, had followed him like a
shadow, trying to whisper to him something which he would not hear.”
“But why?” asked the young man rather impatiently. “What is there
wrong in success?”
“Nothing, my son, if it is in God’s purpose for us and if we use it
to His glory, being ourselves indifferent to it. But that was just
what the priest had never done. He wanted the success for its own
sake—though he told himself, indeed, that all he did was to be for
the advancement of the Church.”
“Well?” said Saint-Ermay.
“So he went on, shutting out the voices of warning. But God is
merciful. He has many weapons. And He struck at him twice . . . Louis,
I cannot tell you how . . . it was through a very dear friend, the one
man whom he esteemed and admired above all others. The first time
the priest would not heed; but the second time . . . he was not
disobedient. Then the bandage fell from his eyes; he saw what he had
been pursuing, and that all which had been the very breath of life to
him was thinner and more vanishing than smoke. And in the enthusiasm
of his conversion it became the dearest wish of his heart to give up
everything for the glory of God and to enter the religious life.
“He was already in the Benedictine monastery of Valfleury when the
news came that the Pope was about to make him a cardinal. That news
was nothing to him now; he had something very different to trouble
him, for, during the six months in which he tried his vocation, with
all the earnestness of which he was capable, he found no peace. And at
the end of that time the Abbot, an old man of the greatest sanctity
and experience, sent for him and told him the hardest thing of all,
that he was not called to be a son of Saint Benedict. He implored the
Abbot not to send him away, back to the success which would dog him,
which he was not strong enough to bear. But the Abbot was convinced
that God’s will for the priest was that he should go back to the
world, but only to serve Him from the lowest rank. The religious life
was not for him, the diplomatic too great a temptation; his place, the
safest, but not the easiest, lay between. He said one thing that
I have never forgotten: ‘With some a great sacrifice is made once;
with others it is made many times.’”
To the young man gazing in speechless attention from his pillow, it
was plain from the little pause that his companion had forgotten him,
and was withdrawn into some region of the memory. But it was only for
a moment.
“So I went back to the world, to the lowest rank. I had implored His
Holiness not to create me cardinal, and at last the Holy Father
yielded, but only on one condition. He reserved me a cardinal _in
petto_—you know what that is, Louis; it means a cardinal created, but
not announced, whose cardinalate, when it is announced, ranks from the
date of the original creation. Then I became the vicaire of a little
cure in the Angoumois, dropping my name of De Vergy, and using that of
Des Graves, which had long been in my family; and in a year or two
after the Pope died. One day there came to me a man who had been my
friend since childhood, though not a Catholic, saying, ‘If you are
resolved to persist in this folly, at least let me be assured that you
have enough to live upon. My benefice at home is vacant; come to it,
and you shall educate my boy as well.’ . . . No, wait till I have
finished! . . . I accepted. I went to my friend’s living; I was
there, as you know, many years . . . many years. Clement XIII. was
dead; Clement XIV. knew nothing of me; all the past was forgotten.
Suddenly—it was in the autumn of ’92—Pius VI. came on the records of
the negotiation which I had carried through twenty-five years before,
and the honour reserved for me by Clement XIII. He discovered my
whereabouts, and, thinking that he might need a representative in
Vendée—Monseigneur de Mercy being dispossessed—sent a special
messenger——”
“Monsignor Cantagalli, of course,” ejaculated his listener.
“Yes . . . Lie down, Louis! . . . Out of regard for my personal
safety he did not proclaim me cardinal at that dangerous juncture, but
he referred to Clement’s action, left me with discretionary powers,
and charged me to repair to Rome when I could no longer be of use in
Vendée. And since God has seen fit to bless the means employed by His
Holiness to get me out of Nantes, I suppose He has some work for an
old man to do, in Rome or elsewhere. . . . At any rate, it is my duty
to go there. That is why I cannot accompany you to Suffolk.”
There was a long silence, while Louis gazed at the priest, thunderstruck,
out of his great hollow eyes. Then he said, in an awed tone: “Did
Gilbert ever know all this?”
“I told him,” answered the Cardinal, “the night before he died.”
CHAPTER XLIX
VIOLETS ONCE MORE
“. . . Cy j’en mourrai;
Un baiser de ta bouche
Me guérirait.”
—_Là-haut sur la montagne._
One fine May morning Mr Philip Harbenden, on a prolonged visit
to London, was the recipient of the following missive from his
betrothed:—
“ASHLEY COURT, _May_ 10, 1794.
“My dearest Philip,—I am aware that I wrote fully to you yesterday,
and you are not to think that you will get so long a letter every day.
There is a reason for my increase of zeal, for since my epistle of
yesterday something has happened which—— No, though I am so excited
that I can scarce hold the pen, I shall give myself the pleasure of
telling you from the beginning.
“That is to say, I shall begin from dinner-time to-day, when Lucienne,
hearing that the hyacinths were almost out in the copse, said, with
that little bright air of hers which makes my heart ache, that she
must go and pick a posy for papa’s study. I am sure that I have
already told you how, since all hope was at last abandoned of poor
Louis being still alive, Lucienne has displayed the most amazing
fortitude and resignation. Certainly the waters of Bath have a
wonderful effect upon the physical health; and my aunt let fall, too,
that when there they met with an _émigré_ priest, and I fancy that
they both profited by his ministrations. These Papists, mistaken as we
must think them to be, seem at least to derive consolation from their
religion, and, as Dr Jenkinson so well says, we should always remember
that among the errors of the Romish Church lie hidden many grains of
truth.
“After dinner my aunt—who seems to have become much older lately—went
to her room to rest, and papa went to the library to read the
newspaper (which means much the same thing); and as George, having to
ride over to Bury, was not able to fall in with papa’s suggestion that
he should accompany Lucienne to get the hyacinths, and I had some
matters to supervise in the house, Lucienne departed alone to the
copse . . . fortunately, as it appeared. (You know, Philip, that,
_entre nous_, George has always been strangely indifferent to
Lucienne, which of late I have thought a pity, because papa—— However,
there’s an end to all that now!)
“So there they all were, out of the house or asleep, and I ran out
into the garden to read your letter again under the lime tree. I do
not know how long I was about it, but as I came back by the front of
the house I saw a chaise and pair turning in at the gates. We were not
expecting visitors, and, thinks I to myself, I will slip into the
house before they get here. Then I saw that the chaise was coming
along at a rate such as none but travellers would use, that the
postilion was flogging his horses, and that the horses themselves were
all of a lather. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought . . . but
half-way up the steps I stood and waited.
“Well, Phil, in a moment the chaise draws up, the door is flung open,
and out of it steps a gentleman in a green redingote, tall, young,
whom I did not know. I came a little to my senses, and beheld myself a
gaping girl staring at my guests instead of the dignified mistress of
the Court. I turned and went up a step or two, rather stately. Then
lo! I was hailed by a French voice, in the French tongue: ‘De grâce,
Mademoiselle, un instant!’
“I turned again. My gentleman was just helping another out of the
chaise. I did not know the second either, but since they were
presumably _émigrés_ and might have news, I went quickly down the
steps again. The two gentlemen took off their hats.
“‘Mademoiselle Amélie, my cousin—don’t you remember me?’ says the
second of the two in English.
“And, Philip, I didn’t! I only knew his voice. There was so little
else left of the engaging boy of eighteen who used to make love to me
(yes, Phil, he did, and I suspect to every other girl he met). And yet
they were the same eyes.
“‘Louis!’ I gasped. ‘M. de Saint-Ermay!’
“‘I prefer the first title, if you please, cousin!’ says Louis, and he
caught my hand and kissed it.
“I seized him by the arm. ‘But—but you are a ghost!’ I cried—and,
indeed, he looked like one. ‘My God, am I dreaming? We all believe
you dead!’
“‘But I wrote!’ exclaimed M. de Saint-Ermay, ‘as soon as I could—and
M. des Graves wrote before that. Ciel! do not say she never got any of
the letters?’
“And then I bethought me of the shock that Lucienne would have if she
came back at that moment from the wood—of my aunt. My first impulse
was to hide him somewhere.
“‘You must come in—I must prepare them,’ I said hastily. ‘This
gentleman——’
“‘A thousand pardons,’ said the Vicomte. ‘Forgive my rudeness.’ He
touched on the arm the other gentleman, who was discreetly gazing down
the avenue. ‘My friend the Chevalier d’Aubeville, who has had the
charity to accompany me here from Jersey.’
“‘Come in, both of you, at once,’ I cried, scarce waiting for M.
d’Aubeville’s bow. ‘I will put you in the library till I can prepare
them.’
“I ran up the steps again, but when I got to the top I had to wait,
for the Vicomte, on M. d’Aubeville’s arm, was only half-way up. It
gave me something of a shock. Louis—whom I remembered so lithe and
active! I observed, too, when he was in the hall, how stiffly he held
himself, and guessed, rightly as it appeared, that he was tightly
bandaged. But I did not say anything, for you men, Philip, are so
strange; when you have a finger-ache the whole house must give you
sympathy, but if you are really disabled you are so proud as to be
monstrously unpleasant sometimes if a well-meaning female takes note
of it. Yet I must have shown by my looks how sorry I was, for Louis
suddenly gave me the smile I remembered, and said in French: ‘Quite
the return of the veteran, is it not, Mademoiselle? I only need a
wooden leg and a patch over one eye to act the part to perfection.’
But I could not laugh.
“I had thought of putting them in the library, as a place not likely
to be invaded, quite forgetting for the moment about papa. But when I
looked in, there he was, with his handkerchief spread over his face,
asleep in his big chair. I might have withdrawn again unnoticed had
not Rover, scenting strangers, got up from papa’s feet and growled.
Papa woke instantly, and dashed the handkerchief from his face. It is
his theory that he does not go to sleep after dinner.
“Now I did not really want dear papa to be the first to hear the news,
because, with all due respect, you know, Philip, what he is like, and
I feared that in his pleasure and the goodness of his heart he would
dash out of the room and go shouting the tidings all over the house.
On the other hand, I could not leave my quarry in the hall, so, saying
to them briskly, ‘Come in, gentlemen, and shut the door at once, if
you please!’ I rushed to papa’s side before he could get out of his
chair, and put one hand over his mouth and the other over his eyes.
“‘Dearest, dearest papa!’ I said. ‘You must not say a word above a
whisper, though you will see something in a minute that will surprise
you very much. Now promise, or you shall not see it!’
“Poor papa, how could he promise when I was gagging him? But he gave a
muffled assent, and I glanced over my shoulder to see that the two
gentlemen were safely in the room and that the door was shut.
“‘Now you may look!’ I said, and took my hands away. By this time
Rover, as he always does when excited, was barking furiously, and,
for all my cautions and his promise, papa, too, made a good deal of
commotion.
“‘Good Gad!’ he exclaimed, bounding out of his chair, ‘it can’t
be—it’s impossible!’
“‘I believe, sir, that it is true, however,’ says Louis, coming
forward and holding out a thin hand.
“Papa took it and gazed at him as if he could not believe his eyes.
‘My poor lad! my poor lad!’ he says after a minute, feeling with his
other hand for his pocket-handkerchief, which had slipped to the
floor, though he did not know it. I knew by experience that he was
going to blow his nose very hard, so I picked up the handkerchief and
slipped it into his hand. And he did blow his nose. The noise made
Rover worse, but when I took off my slipper he went at once under the
table and was quite quiet.
“Papa, meanwhile, was ejaculating all sorts of things. ‘Sit down, sit
down, in God’s name! Amelia, some wine! Louis, my dear boy, what
happened to you?’
“‘I was left for dead at Savenay, and picked up next day by some
peasants,’ says the Vicomte simply, and much as he might have said,
I had a tooth out yesterday. And then he hastened to present the
Chevalier d’Aubeville, a quiet and somewhat sad-looking man whose
appearance pleased me. After that we got Louis into a chair, and I
fetched some wine—not that it had much effect upon his appearance. He
has a horrible air of delicacy. He looks as frail as a girl.
“It seems that at Savenay he was run through the body, and lay all the
rest of the day and the whole night long on the battlefield—imagine,
Philip, in December!—was found by some charitable peasants and nursed
by them for six weeks. Then, as he was supposed to be dying, they made
efforts to get a priest, and the priest, when he was procured, turned
out to be M. des Graves, of whom you have often heard us talking,
escaping from the prisons of Nantes. M. des Graves stayed with him for
a long time (nearly two months, I believe), and undoubtedly, Louis
says, saved his life. Then he brought him over to England, and gave
him over into the care of M. d’Aubeville (an old friend of Louis’ whom
they picked up at Jersey), and has himself gone to Rome to be a
Cardinal.
“I did not hear some of this till afterwards, for, as you may imagine,
I was concerned about the Marquise and Lucienne. If George had been at
home I could have sent him down to the copse to break the news. On the
whole, I thought that the risk of shock to the Marquise would be
greater than to a girl, so I left the two in the library with papa and
went upstairs.
“I really think, Philip, that I am more sorry for my aunt than for any
of the others. Gilbert is dead, and to my mind he died gloriously.
Lucienne, although, poor girl, she has suffered unspeakably, will have
what we know now to have been her heart’s desire, and, with her, Louis
will learn, one hopes, to forget all that he has been through.
“But the Marquise idolised her son. The only comfort is that she has
truly gained a daughter in Lucienne, for since last Christmas there
has been no trace of the little rubs which sometimes used to arise
between them, and I am sure that she will sincerely rejoice in
Lucienne’s happiness. As for Louis, it is long since I have heard her
make those disparaging remarks about him which I used at the time to
doubt if she really meant.
“I don’t know how I told her, but I contrived to do it somehow,
putting my arms round her, and beseeching her to be calm. She turned
very white, and I saw her look for a moment at the miniature of
Gilbert as a boy, which stands on her escritoire, and I guessed what
she was feeling.
“I ran down ahead of her to the library. Papa was coming out.
“‘I have put him next door in the dining-room, my dear,’ he said;
‘take your aunt in there.’ Then he saw the Marquise, who had just
reached the foot of the stairs, and going up to her he said rather
huskily, ‘Providence has sent you back another son, Felicity,’ and
retired very quickly to the library, where I heard him blowing his
nose again.
“My aunt went in to Louis, but of course I do not know what they said
to each other in there. . . .”
Of a truth they said but little, for when Madame de Château-Foix saw
the figure which rose slowly and with difficulty at her entrance,
which turned towards her a face so startlingly transparent yet so
ominously and brightly stained, she stopped and suddenly covered her
eyes.
Louis put a hand to the table. “God knows that I would willingly have
died,” he said in a wrung voice, “if he could have been here instead
of me. . . . I knew I could only bring you pain. . . .”
The Marquise uncovered her face and stretched out her hands. “O Louis,
my child . . . it is not that! Gilbert—Gilbert is with God. . . . It
is you . . . my poor boy . . . I never realised. . . .” and she went
swiftly to him and put her arms about him. “Kiss me, my son!”
Saint-Ermay stooped his head, and then, amazed, vanquished, slipped
through her arms to one knee, and put a fold of her black dress to his
lips. She bent quickly over him.
“Ah no, child! you must not kneel—or even stand! I know . . . Amelia
has told me. . . . See, here is a chair—you will be better there, will
you not . . . to please me?”
So, to please her, he sat down again in the chair from which he had
risen, and she knelt beside him with his hands in hers.
“My boy, how dreadfully thin you are! . . . I suppose they had to cut
your hair off . . . it seems such a pity. . . .” She put up her hand
for a moment and gently touched a lock. “But it is beginning to grow
again . . . of course you had fever for a long time, and not enough
nourishment since—and a long journey . . . no wonder you look so tired
and that your hands are so cold. But there . . . thank God that you
are here at all! To-morrow we will have Dr Hicks in; he is very
clever, but not as clever as the doctor at Bath . . . perhaps later on
you could go there to recover. . . .” But to herself she was saying,
“My God! suppose Lucienne were not to keep him, after all!”
Louis had thought so little about his own personal reception by her,
and so much of what he supposed that the sight of him, unaccompanied,
must cost her, that not so much her composure, but this preoccupation
with himself appeared unnatural.
He kissed her again. “I am here, safe and well again, through a
miracle and M. des Graves. And you will want me to tell you——”
“Not now,” she said, rising from her knees. “Afterwards you shall tell
me everything about him. But now—now you must go to Lucienne, to my
daughter. . . . I know it all, and she is yours, Louis, and I give her
to you as freely as Gilbert gave her. She is down in the copse—you
remember it?—if you can go so far. . . .”
Louis got to his feet. “That far and further; but I shall frighten
her.”
“Joy does not kill,” said the Marquise. There was a little sadness in
her tone, but no tears in her eyes.
Louis looked at her a moment, and then, putting a hand into his
breast, drew out something wrapped in a piece of discoloured white
silk. “I will give you this first,” he said gravely. “It has always
been with me . . . and since I am come back again you have the better
right to it. The silk was his too, from his scarf. It is scorched a
little, because when the peasants cut my uniform off me and burnt it,
for safety’s sake, it fell into the fire for a second . . . so they
told me. But it was not hurt . . . and it is yours now. . . . Ma mère,
he had a soldier’s death, and a hero’s.” He laid the little packet
gently in her hand, and the singed wrapping, slipping open, showed a
lock of thick black hair.
* * * * * *
Afterwards he passed through the open window into the garden—into May
and the sun of May, and all the green things of May which he had never
thought to see again. And he went rather uncertainly between the high
box hedges, past the bowling-green and the stone nymph, the beehives,
the apple trees in blossom, out of the garden and across the lane. At
the gate of the copse he stopped, breathless and a little dizzy, but
not from bodily weakness alone.
The thicket was green, enchantingly green, feathery green, golden
green, and the path was strewn with the tassels of the birch. Had
the trees been like this last May, when the grass was red? . . . Last
May! And on the very threshold of his happiness he paused to
breathe a prayer for his cousin’s soul. “Rest eternal . . . light
everlasting. . . .” Then he opened the gate and went through.
And a little way off, white against the glory of green, she was
standing like one in a vision who sees a vision. A misty pool of
hyacinths lay at her feet, but her hands were full of violets.
EPILOGUE
_Monsignor Giuseppe Cantagalli, Domestic Prelate to His Holiness Pius
VI., to the Duca di San Rocco, at Tivoli._
“ROME, _December_ 9, 1794.
“My dear Enrico,—I have very little time in which to write to you, but
since you ask so urgently for news I will send you a hasty scrawl, of
which you must pardon the imperfections.
“Even so I cannot give you the positive information you desire touching
the Holy Father’s next move against the abominable encroachments of
the French on Italian soil. Since Cardinal de Bernis’ death last month
His Holiness has leant more and more on Cardinal de Vergy, who is
continually to be seen driving from his palace to the Vatican. His
Eminence’s influence, though we cannot yet quite estimate it, is not
likely to issue in any vacillating policy. He is believed to urge a
closer union of Italian states against the invader than has heretofore
been found possible. To-morrow a special audience will be given by
His Holiness to an extraordinary envoy from Venice, whose mission
the Cardinal is believed to have evoked. It is said that only His
Eminence, Cardinal Zelada, and the Spanish ambassador will be present.
We await the result with anxiety.
“It is strange to think that a little more than two years ago I was
writing to you, my dear friend, to complain of the fantastic and very
troublesome mission to Vendée imposed upon me by His Holiness. Yet
never was an uncomfortable and dangerous journey better justified, nor
was money ever more profitably spent than that which was poured out
last winter to rescue Cardinal de Vergy from Carrier’s clutches in
Nantes. Knowing Roman society as you do, you may well imagine the
romantic glamour with which it has invested his figure, and how all
our great ladies are exclaiming at the distinction of his appearance
and manner, so extraordinary in a priest who has been buried for a
quarter of a century in a village cure. But, by the way, this manner
appears to be no part of His Eminence’s equipment as a director, for I
hear of a marked decrease in the ranks of the fair and fashionable
penitents who for a space thronged to Sta. Pudenziana, and whose
numbers threatened at one time to make it impossible for the poor of
the parish to get near him. For the Cardinal spends more time in the
confessional than one would have thought compatible with his political
and social activities and his private devotions, which are rumoured to
be of unusual length. These facts, added to the known austerity of his
life, have led many of us to the conclusion that the Sacred College
now possesses an undoubted saint among its members. _Laus Deo!_
“At the same time His Eminence is evidently very human. I was with him
one day last week when the courier arrived, and witnessed the extreme
pleasure with which he received a letter from England. Its contents I
did not hear, but from something which the Cardinal let fall I
gathered that it was from the very flippant young man whom I met when
I went to seek him in Vendée in ’92, and for whom he seems to cherish
a somewhat surprising affection. But I believe, indeed, that the
Cardinal was very much attached to his family, and in particular to
another member of it, who lost his life in the war, and for whom it is
reported that he himself says a Mass every week.
“How I have run on, after all! Of other news, Prince Orazio Santacroce
has gone to Spain to enter a military college. Among the baptized last
week at Sta. Maria sopra Minerva were two beautiful Jewesses, whose
husbands were sobbing without while Holy Church received their spouses
into her fold. I was at the Princess Giustiniani’s yesterday and heard
some fresh scandal—probably quite untrue—about the lady whom the
English Prince, the Duke of Sussex, so much admired when he was here
in the summer. During my visit the Princess was good enough to accept
from me a fan of mother-of-pearl mounted in gold, which I had chosen
myself with the greatest care. That reminds me that I have recently
acquired an exquisite rock-crystal vase engraved with the nuptials of
Neptune and Amphitrite. The engraving is said to be the work of
Valerio Vicentino, but the gold and enamel handles, in the form of
snakes, are assigned to Cellini himself. Whether this be so or no the
vase looks distracting against the rose-red curtains of silk damask in
my study, over which the Duchessa was so good as to give me her
inestimable advice.
“Addío. Do not let my god-daughter forget me. I am procuring a
monstrous fine doll against her birthday.”
THE END
PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Changes made to correct apparent printing errors as follows:
p. 58: _Qu’ importe?_ changed to _Qu’importe?_.
p. 215: Inverted commas added after _“How many miles, may I ask?_.
p. 237: Inverted commas added before _You shall have your cousin,
then!”_.
p. 275: Dash added to _did not know—that Gilbert's name_.
p. 301: Missing possessive apostrophe and S added to _the Curé’s piece
of information_.
p. 340: Double inverted commas added after _‘a merchant of Bordeaux’_.
p. 469: _paroxyms_ changed to _paroxysms_.
Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chantemerle : A romance of the Vendean War" ***
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