Chantemerle

CHAPTER XXXII
THE CUP BRIMS OVER

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.

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

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

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

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