CHAPTER XIII
CLÉMENCE
The lantern failed, and the moonlight was often obscured, or completely blotted out by the passing sullen clouds.
Luc’s right arm was stiff about the heavy child and his left hand cold on the bridle; his very blood was chill. It seemed to him that the creeping bitterness of the night was more intense than all the hurricane snows of Bohemia. He seldom moved his head, and his body was cramped in one position with the weight of the little girl against it; but his mind had never been clearer, more alert, more active.
Picture after picture flashed before him with agonizing vividness—all that had gone to make his life since his return from Bohemia to his last parting, a few hours ago, with Clémence in her father’s house formed and faded with mechanical repetition, and against the background of their visionary memories raced his thoughts.
It came to this: a little while ago he had been happy with the ecstatic happiness of youth—of proud, ambitious youth; he had seen honourable labour behind, honourable labour ahead; he had felt love rest against his heart, and seen glory hovering very near. And now—he was riding through the dark, with disease, corruption, perhaps death, in his arms; riding away from the home to which he had lately pledged himself, away from Clémence and all she stood for—with a woman associated with humiliation and sadness for his companion—with great chances that he would never be able to turn back again to those things he had left behind.
Yet he was conscious all the time of the highest exaltation perhaps that he had ever known—an intermittent sensation, now weaker, now stronger, that, however, held his heart up steadily.
The night seemed endless. Only once did they meet anyone—some peasants in a cart, who stopped and seemed to wonder at them.
“We carry the plague!” cried Carola as they galloped past, and they heard the men’s cries of terror and supplications to God.
The child began to stir in Luc’s arms. He himself felt faint; the night wind brought on his cough, which had troubled him since his last campaign. He tried to comfort the little girl; she became still again, and, he thought, heavier.
He turned to Carola beside him; since they started she had not spoken to him.
“It must be near the dawn,” he said.
“I do not know,” she answered, and added, after a little, “Are we not off the road? I think we have lost the way.”
The moon was setting. Luc had been dwelling so in his thoughts that he had not noticed through what growing blackness they were riding. A wind was up, and they could hear it shaking some trees near with a deep rustling sound.
“Poplar trees,” came Carola’s voice; and he thought, as he knew she thought, of the poplar trees in the garden off the Rue Deauville.
They drew rein; he had no light whatever, and her lantern had gone out.
“We must wait for the dawn,” said Carola again. “I cannot find the way. The dawn must be soon now, I think.”
He heard her dismount and sigh.
“This is grass—a field,” she continued. “We have left the road. How is the child?”
He turned back the woollen cloak that was damp with dew and delicately touched the small face in the hollow of his arm.
“Very cold,” he answered. “Ah!”
“What is it?” asked Carola.
“Her eyes are wide open and her mouth, but she does not move.”
“Dead?” asked Carola.
“I think—dead.”
He moved his cramped arm from under his burden and laid her across his shoulder while he dismounted; out of the dark came Carola’s hand and touched his arm, then her other hand, and took the child from him.
“We must let the horses go,” he said. “It is raining. Perhaps we could find some shelter.”
Carola’s voice came faintly, as if it was a long way off.
“The child is dead. I cannot feel her heart at all. What soft hair she has!”
Luc heard the jingle of harness as the horses moved away. The rain fell with a cold sting on his bare hands, his blood was frozen, his limbs stiff; the darkness lay like a weight on his eyes.
“We must wait here for the light,” he said.
He heard Carola move.
“Yes, we will wait,” she answered. “Perhaps we had better have stayed in the tent—yet what chance had she there? Oh, my dear, my poor dear!” and he heard her kiss the little tight-rope dancer.
“Give me your hand,” he said; “we might find the trees.” He turned to where he thought she was, and presently felt her hand again, ungloved, in his. With his right hand flung before him, he discovered the long narrow trunks of the trees.
“Here!” he called to his companion. She withdrew her hand from his; he guessed that she was still carrying the child. There was a little pause, then he heard her cast herself on the ground.
“O God, believe that I am tired, tired!” she cried out.
Luc leant against the tree-trunk, gazing across the blackness. For the second time they were alone together in the cold and dark with a dead child between them; it seemed to him a symbol of what separated them and yet what brought them together: death and sorrow—but endeavour and exaltation. The enigma that had seemed to have poorly solved itself in the house of M. de Richelieu was now suddenly again unsolvable. Was she not brave and kind?—what she had appeared in Bohemia—had not all his estimates been utterly wrong? And what was the meaning of this constant crossing of their lives—connected always with death?
He put his hand wearily to his forehead; her voice came up from the ground, near his feet.
“These fields are not new to me, Monsieur de Vauvenargues. I have slept under these trees before. I used to watch the sheep here when I was a little ragged child. Sometimes I used to go to Aix with milk, and see you, Monsieur le Marquis, riding with your brother. Then I had another name—it was before I went to Paris.”
“So you are from Provence?” he murmured.
“Yes. Here I was born, homeless, nameless; and here I shall die, homeless, nameless also. I have done what I wished to, and I regret nothing.”
Luc could not speak; that their lives should have been so twisted together strangely troubled him.
She seemed to divine his silence.
“I could not help this. For Mademoiselle de Séguy’s sake, I would have done anything it had not happened.”
The rosy face of Clémence with her devoted eyes sprang out of the blackness to confront Luc; he shivered and put his hands over his forehead.
“Why do you not speak?” came the weak voice from his feet. “Are you thinking of the future?”
“Yes,” said Luc, with an effort.
He felt that she shuddered.
“Are you—afraid?” she asked, in a tone of horror.
“Yes,” said Luc simply.
The terror of that admission filled the darkness.
Luc set his back against the tree. He could feel the fine rain on his hands and dripping from his hat; he coughed and shivered.
“In Bohemia we were on the heights,” came Carola’s voice; “but this is the lowlands, and there is not one star.”
Luc was thinking again of Paris, and the river, and the beggar on the quay, and of Clémence as she had stood in her father’s hall to say good-bye to him with soft lamplight over her face that seemed to express something never to be put into words, and her gown, lace, perfume, and pale colours.
“Speak, Monsieur le Marquis, speak!” the woman’s voice implored. “I am here with a dead child.”
“She is dead, then?” asked Luc.
“I cannot warm her or make her move.” The answer was unsteady and wistful. “Yes, she is dead.”
Luc was thinking now of his home, of his family waiting for him, of their wonder at his absence. He recalled the work he had meant to do to-night and the letters he had intended to write. He was now as cut off from that as if he had been swept to another world.
A sob came shivering up to him; he started with a sense of his great selfishness.
“Rise up, Madame,” he said; “rise up. Take my hand, and stand beside me. It has happened that those brought as near contagion as you are have escaped.”
She did not answer.
“And it may not be the smallpox,” added Luc, against his own deep conviction.
This time she answered.
“I know it is. We are infected, perhaps doomed. As for me, it is no matter; but you—your future?”
Luc made no reply; darkness lay on his brain as well as before his eyes. He felt his strength, almost his life, being drawn from him by the chill and the damp; it seemed worse than the snows of Bohemia. He realized how weak he had been since his illness at Eger; how even the burden of a child and the cold of a night in one of his native fields was almost beyond his endurance.
He turned towards the spot where Carola must be still seated.
“You are cold, Madame? Take my cloak—I am warm enough.”
“No—no!” she said sharply. “I have my own, and I have often slept out in an old thin shawl—I should be used to it.”
“And I,” answered Luc sadly—“I who was a soldier.”
He was unclasping his cloak with numb fingers when he heard her rise to her feet; she touched his shoulder.
“I am warm,” she said.
Her hand trembled down his arm, found his hand and held it. He let her clasp it between hers, which were, as she said, warm. The touch of her soft palms caused a wave of mingled anguish and pleasure to rise to his heart. She came closer; he felt her heavy cloak sweep his foot; the faint Eastern perfume he always associated with her crept into his nostrils; his head sunk slightly on his chest, and he shivered.
She drew his cold hand to her bosom. He felt, with a quickening of all his senses, the stiff smoothness of her satin gown, the straining of her breast against the silk cords, and even the hasty beating of her heart. She raised his hand, and he felt her throat, her chin, and finally her lips.
A soft and timid kiss was lightly pressed on his fingers—the kiss of a suppliant, of one who asks for mercy.
Then she brought his slack hand down to her bosom again.
“You are very cold, Monsieur,” she said; her voice was infinitely sad.
Luc saw her as a humble peasant girl with black hair hanging about her shoulders and bare feet. The great lady had disappeared; he thought only of the girl she had described, keeping sheep in the fields and sleeping under the trees. His brain was numb, and fantasy dazed him. He put out his free hand and caught her shoulder; though he felt the rich velvet of her cloak, he still imagined her as the poor peasant orphan.
She came closer; he felt her breath, and knew her face was very near his. She loosened his hand, and he raised it to her other shoulder. He felt velvet, hard embroidery, and the rise and fall of her breath shaking her frame under his delicate grasp.
“I think the dawn is breaking,” he said. “You and I are strange company to watch the sun rise.”
And he laughed under his breath.
The brim of her hat touched his beaver as she sharply turned her head.
“My God, yes, the dawn!” she murmured. She drew away from him altogether. They were facing east, it seemed, for the sky before them was a watery grey, faint, faint and melancholy; a blue of misty silver, a mere promise of light. Slowly the shapes of things began to form out of the darkness; a pallid glow overspread the heavens; the rain ceased.
Luc never moved. He put his hand before his eyes; in his ears was the rustle of the poplar leaves, sounding very far away. A deeper chill seemed to seize his limbs, to penetrate to his very heart, which was beating faintly, reluctantly, and with a certain sense of pain.
He made an effort to free himself from the invading host of fancies that beset him, and lifted his eyes from the shelter of his palm.
The wet, colourless world was revealed about him; a long gleam of yellow silver divided earth from sky. He saw before him flat meadow land, a few bare trees, a distant wood.
He moved stiffly and looked round for Carola.
Under one of the poplars was the figure of the young woman standing in much the same attitude as that he had observed at the fête a few days ago, very still, her head slightly bent, her whole pose expressing containment, humility, and yet a certain pride. His fantasy of a peasant girl was dispelled now. Her clothes, though wet and mud-stained, showed of an incongruous grandeur: the dress that trailed over the damp fallen leaves was brocade and shot with gold threads, the white feathers on her drooping beaver were fastened with a jewelled clasp, and in her ears hung long red diamonds.
She seemed to feel his gaze on her, for she raised and turned her head. Her black hair had fallen under her hat and lay heavy in the folds of her violet velvet cloak.
“We can go on our way now,” she said evenly.
Luc looked at what lay between him and her: a bundle wrapped in the gaudy striped mummer’s cloak; at one end two small feet clad in bright green stockings showed, and at the other a fair damp curl had fallen between the folds of the wrap.
He glanced away, utterly sick; not all the dead that had lined the way from Prague to Eger had power to move him as this little corpse. He heard Carola coming over the leaves, but would not look round.
Now the sun was above the horizon, the whole landscape was brightening rapidly; a faint sparkle of gold began to appear on the wet leaves, on the wet grass. Luc saw the two horses waiting with drooping heads not far off. With a long shiver he moved towards them; when he returned with the bridles in his hand, he found Carola kneeling beside the little girl, who was now decently covered from head to foot in the velvet cloak, which folded her like a rich pall.
Carola was praying. She held between her bare ringless hands a silver and ivory rosary. Her head was bowed reverently, so that her face was hidden by the shade of her hat. The strengthening sun gleamed on the red and gold and brown of the riding-habit that revealed her slight, womanly figure.
Luc stood watching her.
“Do you find consolation in that, Madame?” he asked gently.
She looked up; then, seeing he was holding the horses, rose, slipping the rosary back into the bosom of her gown.
“If not there, where else?” she asked, very sadly. “God is the only kind person I know.”
She came towards her horse, and he helped her to mount. When she was in the saddle he gave her his cloak, and she took it now, without a word, and shivered into it. The dawn seemed colder than the night.
“Do you remember the story of Madame de Montespan and the pigs?” she asked, leaning a little towards Luc.
He stared at her.
“She was very beautiful and very great,” continued Carola, “and when King Louis loved her there were no flowers in France considered worthy to lie on her breast. Then when she fell into disgrace she left the Court and died—still beautiful. And they took her heart to bury it at a certain convent; and the peasant who carried it became weary of the journey, and cast the heart into a ditch, and turned back—and no one cared. And some pigs nosing in the ditch ate the heart of the beautiful Marquise, and lay down that night in their sty with the proudest blood in France staining their jaws—and no one cared except God!” Her eyes flashed. “I think He remembered it against King Louis.”
“Why do you tell me this?” asked Luc, with a shudder.
“Because I have been thrown to the ditch and the swine,” she answered; “and out of the dirt I ask God to remember that I have paid for some of my sins—here on earth.”
He did not understand her, but her speech held him. With his hand on his bridle, he looked up at her, his haggard, resolute, and beautiful face clear in the light of the rising sun.
“M. de Richelieu——” he began.
“Let M. de Richelieu be!” answered Carola. “It is you who have punished me most.”
“I?” he questioned.
“You—to-night—when I was lonely as the damned—and facing death and hell—and you would not kiss me.”
Luc looked at her steadily.
“You have cast my heart alive to the swine,” she said, in a trembling voice, “and God will remember it against you.”
He caught her meaning through a confusion of pain. He realized his own self-absorption; he saw, suddenly and very vividly, her point of view.
“You think I hold you in contempt?” he said hoarsely.
“Why not?” she answered. “Why not?”
Luc shook his head.
“I am not fine, and I am not true,” said Carola. “There is no paint on my face now, and you must see I am a very common creature, Monsieur le Marquis.”
Luc’s hand was so slack on the bridle that his horse began cropping the thin blades of grass that sprouted between the dead leaves.
“Give me the child,” said the Countess.
The day was quite bright now; fields of emerald, skies of pale azure, trees of faint gold were about them as he raised his burden to her saddle. The purple velvet trailed over the wet sides of her white horse; he flung across his own holster the coarse striped mantle, and mounted.
“These nuns,” she said, “are very good. They had, three years ago, when the plague was bad, a hundred people in their hospice.”
Luc offered to take the mummer’s child from her, but she refused. They rode from the fields on to the flat, muddy grey road. The horses were weary, and Carola, using only one hand, rode awkwardly. They went slowly across a country that was wet, glimmering, and silent.
Luc’s thoughts began to stir like waking birds, first shivering, then mounting into the circle of the sunlight. All disturbing pictures of the past vanished from his mind; he only saw the future, an ineffable blaze of glory. He spoke aloud, lifting his face to the fragrant early heavens.
“Whatever happens, I will overcome,” he said.
Carola looked at him, and seemed to shrink into herself. They neither of them spoke until they had crossed a river by a low bridge, and ridden up to the walls and outbuildings of an ancient abbey and convent.
Luc dismounted and helped Carola from her horse. Between them they laid the little girl on the long grass beneath the wall. Luc fastened the horses to a staple that was there for that purpose; his hands were very cold and his whole body shivering. When he came back to the narrow door, he found Carola standing beside the great iron bell. Above her head an ash drooped over the wall; the hard scarlet fruit hung against the grey stone and mortar. She had removed her hat; through the fine black ringlets showed the long red diamonds, flame in crystal, that glittered in her ears. Under Luc’s black cloak, her dress gleamed rich, and soft, and bright. Her face was pallid, hollow, and expressionless.
Luc stepped towards her. She thought he meant to ring, and moved aside; but he stopped before her, looking at her intently.
She glanced up at that: her eyes were bloodshot, and the lids swollen. He saw that she must have been crying, silently, in the dark. She seemed frightened and very humble. She held herself flat against the wall, and the beaver she held dropped from her loosening fingers.
Luc took off his hat. His face was serene and proud; his long locks of hazel-coloured hair, escaping from the black ribbon, blew over his forehead and shoulders; his cravat and the thick lace on his bosom stirred in this same breeze. The beautiful lines of his face showed fatigue but no sadness, and his eyes were clear and radiant.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Clémence,” she answered.
“Clémence!”
“It is true—that was my name in Provence,” she murmured. “I would never have told you—why did you ask?”
“Clémence,” he repeated. He stood with his hat in his hand as if he was in attendance on a great lady.
“Why do you not ring?” she asked hoarsely.
He made a gesture with his sword hand towards the convent.
“You know what we go into,” he said: “perhaps death—perhaps hideous corruption.”
She smiled bravely.
“There is no need that a nun should be—desirable.”
“You are not afraid?”
“No.”
“Ah—I saw a man once—who had been a soldier—disfigured.”
“I know. I have seen them. I hope it may be me, not you. Ring, Monsieur.”
“One moment. We are set apart from the world, you and I, Clémence. We have met many times, very strangely. I think this is going to be the last time.”
“The last time,” she echoed. “And you—are afraid?”
“Afraid that I may miss death, and live—useless. Afraid of—her—afterwards; afraid—of fear.” He smiled grandly as he spoke.
“I am the only person who will ever know that,” she said proudly.
He held out his right hand; she put hers into it, and then he cast his hat away, and suddenly clasped her.
“Take the last kiss I have to give in this gorgeous world!” she cried.
As he kissed her, she sobbed in her throat; and her quick tears wetted his cheek as their lips met the second time. He kissed the ends of her hair, her neck, her hands, the brocade that covered her bosom, then let her free of his embrace, and pulled the long iron chain.
As the strident clang of the bell echoed through the convent, he picked up her beaver and gave it her.
“You know?” she asked. Her lips were still throbbing, so that she could scarcely speak.
“Know?” he murmured unsteadily.
“The great—the useless—love I have always had—for you.”
The convent door opened.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE CONVENT
Luc sat in the front room of the gardener’s cottage, looking out on the whitewashed wall of the hospice.
He felt utterly weary; the exaltation and the ecstatic visions of the morning had faded. In the next room the dead child lay waiting for her coffin; a sound of sawing wood came harshly from a shed near by.
Luc rested his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands; he had taken off his sword, and laid it across the wand-bottomed chair by the window. As he sat motionless, he noticed the pale November sunlight sparkling along the scabbard, the shell, and the quillons.
“A useless sword,” he found himself saying. He looked round the room, at the bare walls, the rough furniture, the image of St. Joseph in a corner niche. It seemed to him like a prison cell, though he had often lodged more rudely. The plaster image and the faint stale scent of incense filled him with disgust; he longed for Paris and the great muddy river, or for Aix and his own home. The door that gave on to the garden opened, and Luc rose stiffly to meet the person he expected, the nun the lay sister had promised to send.
The Countess had not given him the name of the convent, but he recalled that it was an order of Ursuline sisters. Since his childhood, he had seen them walking in twos through the streets of Aix.
The nun closed the door, and looked at him with steady courtesy. Her face, her hands, and her serge robe were all faded and worn; the line of white that enclosed her face was vivid in contrast to her parched and withered skin; her eyes were inscrutable, her whole expression worldly and slightly amused.
“You will remain our guest, Monsieur?” she said.
“I have no right,” answered Luc. “I should have left before but that I feared to carry the infection.”
“You did a reckless thing,” said the nun quietly. “The child died of the black smallpox. I have nursed many cases.”
“And never been stricken yourself, sister?” asked Luc gently.
“No.”
“I may be as fortunate.”
The alert grey eyes glanced slowly over his graceful person, his beautiful face. “You may, Monsieur de Vauvenargues. At least, you are in good hands here. The house of de Clapiers has always been generous to us. You do not remember the Great Plague? I worked with your father then in Aix.”
Luc coloured and his eyes narrowed.
“I do not like to stay, my sister.”
She smiled.
“You think we are afraid, perhaps? Madame la Comtesse knew better. And where would you go, Monsieur?”
He was indeed at a loss. He shook his head, and her smile deepened.
“If I stay, my sister, I must work. You have sick here?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“I can help you. I have learnt, in war, to do little services for the sick.”
“If you wish, Monsieur. They are all very miserable, humble people.”
Luc looked at her quickly, and the colour flushed deeper into his sensitive face.
“I must tell you one thing, my sister. I have no right to your hospitality, as I said. I do not believe.”
“Ah?” she said gravely.
“I am a follower of M. de Voltaire.”
“And we are followers of Christ,” answered the nun serenely, “and in His name we bid you welcome, whoever you are.”
Luc bent his head.
“May I remain here, in this cottage?”
“If you wish. But the Abbess would desire you to have the guest-house, Monsieur.”
“I would rather be here, my sister.”
The nun smiled again.
“The man is old, and has had the plague,” she answered; “that is your reason, I think. Very well; I will tell the Abbess. We have sent a messenger to Monsieur your father. And that is all I have to say, Monsieur.”
Luc thanked her reverently. He was glad when she again left him, for her calm, expressionless presence oppressed him. He set his lips and went to the window, where his sight was bounded by the white sunny walls of the hospice; he longed to see a wide sweep of country, a distant horizon.
The sawing ceased, and there was a sound of hammering in its place, as of nails being knocked in. Luc began pacing up and down the narrow room. He picked up his sword presently and strapped it on; as he drew the thong through the last buckle, Carola entered. He looked over his shoulder at her, moved his lips, but did not speak.
She had not changed her gown, but she wore no jewellery, and her hair was drawn away from her face and fastened on her neck.
“I came to see the child,” she said. “I want this buried with her.”
She held out a narrow white hand on which lay a diamond ring with sapphire points.
“M. de Richelieu told me its history,” she continued—“the bribe, the wages, that you refused and that I took. This is the last of it.”
“You have a strange fancy,” said Luc.
She passed him and went into the inner room.
He waited for her return with a blank mind, listening to the even blows of the coffin-maker.
After a few moments she came back and crossed to the wide hearth, where a meagre fire burned. An iron saucepan of soup stood on the tiles; she placed it on the fire, Luc the while looking at her. When she rose from her knees, she was once more face to face with him.
“You are staying here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Probably I shall not see you again,” she said. “I put on the habit of a novice to-morrow.”
“I wish,” answered Luc, “I found it so easy to leave the world, but while I breathe I cannot. Even this confinement irks me. If I live, I shall go back to my ambitions.”
“Something is wrong,” said Carola; “you or I—or God.”
“Why?” he answered, with a grave gentleness. “I thought you had found happiness.”
“I have found an opiate, Monsieur.”
They were both silent; then she turned towards the door.
Her splendid dress was as incongruous here as it had been in the wet fields; it jarred on Luc to see her in such surroundings.
He turned suddenly and followed her. “You beautiful, foolish woman,” he cried, “what are you doing in a convent? Go back to Versailles.”
“Is that your advice to me?” she asked slowly.
“Advice! I know not—but this is death.”
“Yes, death,” answered Carola.
She lifted the latch of the door.
“Will you pray for me?” smiled Luc.
“Yes.”
“Then put your prayers this way—that if I am stricken I may die.”
“Death for both of us, then, it seems,” she replied. “How suddenly it has come, Monsieur.”
Luc pressed his hands to his bosom.
“My God, my God!” he cried fiercely, “I want to live or die—do you not understand? I have seen them—half blind, crawling, hideous.”
“But your spirit would be always beautiful,” said Carola gently, “and always triumphant.”
They stood looking at each other, the width of the room between them. A bar of clear sunlight fell through the half-open door across her gown and across the floor. The sounds from the carpenter’s shed came distinctly, and then presently the cold call of the convent bell. Luc remained in an attitude of arrested movement, with his hands at his heart and his deep eyes on her. Unnatural beauty rested on his absorbed face, which was flushed and quivering.
“Monsieur,” said Carola, “when you have attained—but words are useless; and after all, I do not think that you will ever forget me.”
“No, Clémence,” he answered, with great sweetness.
“You will remember me for my name’s sake.”
She opened the door a little wider; she was a thing of gorgeous colours and delicate shape against the whitewashed wall.
“Good-bye,” she said.
A great faintness came over Luc; he held himself erect with difficulty; he felt that something was going out of his life that would never come into it again, as he had felt last night that he was riding away from a world he would never enter more. Ambition, resolution, fear were all lost in a sudden anguish of regret.
“Good-bye,” repeated the woman.
“Good-bye,” answered Luc.
A sense of the inevitable held him passive. She went out quietly; the latch clicked into place. He turned his head towards the window and saw her pass the white wall of the hospice; she was looking down, and he noticed that the black coil of hair at the nape of her neck had become loosened and was slipping free in long ringlets. She passed and was gone.
He stood for a while gazing at the blank window, then walked to the inner door and leant against it heavily.
The wall seemed transparent; it was as if he could see the chamber within, the pallet bed, the little corpse with the ring hidden in her shroud.
The convent bell ceased.
The door through which Carola had gone opened, and the gardener and a boy entered, carrying between them a rough wood coffin, of a ghastly smallness.
“Eh, Monsieur, we are late for breakfast,” said the man.
The boy nodded towards the fire.
“But Monseigneur has put the soup on, and it is boiling over.”
PART III
THE QUEST TRIUMPHANT
“Quand je parle de vertu, je ne parle point de ces qualités imaginaires qui n’appartiennent pas à la nature humaine: je parle de cette force et de cette grandeur de l’âme, qui, comparée aux sentiments des esprits faibles, méritent les noms que je leur donne.”—Discours sur le caractère des différent siècles, Marquis de Vauvenargues.
“Insensés que nous sommes, nous craignons toujours d’être dupes ou de l’activité, ou de la gloire, ou de la vertu! Mais qui fait plus de dupes véritables que l’oubli de ces mêmes choses? qui fait des promesses plus trompeures que l’oisiveté?”—Discours sur la gloire.
CHAPTER I
THE FATHER
“My son is coming home to-morrow,” said the old Marquis.
Mademoiselle de Séguy drew the white fur of her hood closer together under her chin.
“Yes,” she answered; “it has seemed a long time.”
“Two months,” said M. de Vauvenargues, “two months. He saved Aix, you know.”
“Oh yes,” replied the girl vaguely. “Oh yes.”
They were walking up and down the hard gravel paths of the garden of Luc’s home in Aix; a faint film of frost lay over the water in the fountain basin, but the air was clear and bright, and through the damp rotting leaves on the flower-beds the first white and green of the snowdrops showed.
“Why has he been away so long?” asked Clémence again. “He was out of the plague in a few days.”
“He has been gaining strength,” returned the Marquis. “He was very, very ill. The doctor told me that it was one of God’s marvels that he has recovered at all. He has never been strong since the campaign in Bohemia.”
The girl glanced covertly at the noble, proud, and haggard face of her companion.
“There is something I want to ask you,” she said hurriedly.
“Yes, my child,” he answered gravely.
“Is he—will he be able to go to Madrid?”
A dark look clouded the old man’s eyes.
“Why do you want to know? Is it not enough that he is coming home to-morrow?” he replied.
“Yes; ah, yes. But I wondered—his career.”
The Marquis flashed round on her.
“Do you think of his career when his life has only been spared by a miracle?”
She shrank away from him.
“For his sake I think of it,” she answered piteously. “He was always so ardent for—glory.”
An expression so terrible, so swiftly distorting, passed over the fine features of the Marquis that Clémence stopped in her walk to stare at him.
“Come into the house,” he said, gripping her arm. “I wish to speak to you.”
She murmured some awed response, and came obediently.
They entered the dark, heavy dining-room by the window where Luc had stood the day of his return from the war, and watched his father, his brother, and the bright dogs in the summer garden.
The Marquis closed the window. There was a great fire on the hearth, and Clémence crouched close to it, mechanically loosening her furred cloak and pulling off her doeskin gloves.
M. de Vauvenargues seated himself on the other side of the long black polished table. His erect, massive figure; his old-fashioned, handsome clothes; his aristocratic, proud, yet simple and kindly face, were flooded with red light from the fire, which threw it up against the sombre background of the dark chamber that always, even on the most brilliant day, seemed filled with shadows.
He leant a little forward, and fixed his eyes on the rosy vision of the young girl in her white fur, white silk, and gold laces.
“You love Luc, do you not?” he asked, in a terrible voice.
Her eyes widened, holding his in a full stare of terror.
“Take care what you commit yourself to,” he continued. “Think before you answer. Do you love my son?”
“Yes,” answered Clémence. “How strange for you to ask me, Monseigneur!”
“You have never been to see him—not even when all fear of infection was over.”
She flushed painfully.
“He did not wish me to—you told me so yourself.”
“Well, you will see him to-morrow, Clémence.” The strong voice was touched with tenderness and sorrow. “And you love him? You know what that means?—Love?”
“Yes, yes,” shivered Clémence.
For a while—a very little while—the Marquis was silent; then he said—
“Luc will not be able to go to Madrid.”
“Ah!” she murmured.
“He wrote yesterday,” continued the Marquis, “to refuse the post. He will never be able to do any work again.”
Clémence clenched her hands on her lap.
“He is—not strong enough?”
“No.”
“He has—no career?”
“No.”
“I do not quite understand.” She frowned over her words. “He is recovered?”
“He will never completely recover.”
“Monseigneur, you frighten me. What has happened to Luc?”
“Whatever has happened it can make no difference to us who love him,” answered the Marquis. His eyes held Clémence with a power before which she blenched.
“No, of course not,” she said in a laboured way “But—I am sorry for Luc,” she ended feebly.
“Mademoiselle,” replied M. de Vauvenargues proudly, “this is not a thing one is sorry for. It is a great tragedy.”
“A—tragedy?”
“The word frightens you? But remember that it is in your power to soften it. Luc has lost everything—but you.”
“Oh!” she murmured again. “Yet if he is well——”
The Marquis lifted his head still higher, never taking his eyes from her changing face.
“You have seen people who have had the plague?”
She gave some miserable little exclamation under her breath. He waited for her to find words.
“He is changed?” she managed at last.
“Yes.”
She tried to smile.
“Well, I suppose—not much.”
“A great deal.”
Clémence rose, sat down, and rose again.
“Changed—very much?”
“So changed,” said the Marquis slowly, “that only those who love him would know him.”
“Monseigneur, you try to frighten me!”
“You have to see him to-morrow.”
Her breast heaved and her soft eyes were rebellious.
“He was—beautiful,” she murmured. “I think he had no right. He did not think of me.”
“He kept the plague from you—from Aix.”
She took no notice.
“For a vagabond’s child,” she continued—“for the sake of a thing of nought!”
“No,” interrupted the Marquis sternly, “for the sake of his honour.”
Clémence dropped again into the great black chair by the fire.
“You will be here to welcome him to-morrow?” he added. “He speaks of you so often.”
She did not reply.
“Why do you not answer?” he asked harshly.
“Oh, I shall be here,” she answered. “I was thinking of—how differently—I dreamed it.”
She rose again, picked up her swansdown-edged muff, her gloves, her cane, and fastened her cloak at the chin.
“Good-bye, Monseigneur,” she said timidly. “My father will bring me to-morrow. I will go now—I think—the horses will be tired—of waiting.”
She curtsied and was turning away when the Marquis rose suddenly and stood between her and the door.
“Mademoiselle,” he said hoarsely.
She stopped and looked at him. He was no longer erect, no longer haughty. He looked old and bitterly troubled. He stood in a deprecating attitude before her delicate young loveliness.
“Forgive me if I was harsh,” he said thickly. “I have no right perhaps to ask what I do.”
She shuddered violently.
“I entreat you not to forsake my son,” continued the old man passionately—“I implore you.”
She closed her eyes.
“I will not deceive you, Mademoiselle. He is—to a woman’s eyes—you may imagine.”
She shrank against the wall.
The Marquis continued, forcing the words out in almost incoherent agitation—
“You know what I wish to say, Mademoiselle. You must see him to-morrow. His strength has gone—and his comeliness. He could not use—a sword—or ride a horse—he—— Oh, my God!”
He brought his hands to his grey hair with a gesture of agony.
Clémence quivered into a little sob; she opened her eyes fearfully.
“This is a great scourge,” continued the Marquis, struggling for command over himself—“a great scourge. I want to tell you everything. He is—almost—blind.”
His head sank as if he had confessed a crime. But this humiliation of his fine nobility was lost on Clémence; his words alone impressed her.
“Why was I not told before?” she asked frantically.
“We had not the courage,” the old man confessed. “And if you love him——”
“Oh, if I love him!” she interrupted. “I loved the Luc de Clapiers that was!”
“He is still the same in spirit, still my son, still your lover. Why, this is a chance for you.” He spoke with piteous eagerness. “You used to say how you wished you could prove your love. Do you not remember? Luc told me once—he spoke like a man who holds the Eucharist in his hands when he told me that you had said you wished you could prove—— This is your chance.”
Her heaving bosom, her eyes, the rise and fall of colour in her cheeks bespoke desperation.
“And you have told me again—just now, that you love him.”
“Monseigneur, give me time—let me think. This is very terrible. I pity him—oh, how I pity him!”
“Pity him! You should be proud of him.”
“Yes, that too—but I am distracted—give me time.”
“There is no time. He is coming home to-morrow. There is your chance, Mademoiselle; you must meet him—as if—he were the same.”
She put her hands before her eyes.
“I do not think—I can,” she whispered.
The Marquis flashed into wild anger.
“Then you never loved him! You were toying with youth and gallantry, and his devotion was but like a brooch to your gown—and you vowed constancy because it sounded pretty, and you liked to be with him because he was a graceful cavalier—you did not love him for his noble soul as it walked before God!”
She cowered and trembled under his fierce rush of words.
“But you pretended you did, Mademoiselle, and now you shall pay the penalty of your pretence.”
She could not answer. He caught her wrist. Then his wrath died, and he was old, and broken, and pitiful again.
“Mademoiselle—my son used to kiss you?”
She stared forlornly.
“Think of him when he used to kiss you.”
Her face flushed.
“Ah, Monseigneur!”
“Forgive an old man, very humble before your beauty. I think no one else ever kissed you?”
“Never,” she said fiercely—“never—nor he often; I could not bear it, for I loved him—too much.”
She drew her hand away, and as if her own words had loosened memories of too sweet a rapture to be endured she began to weep hotly.
“You can never forsake him!” cried the Marquis. “No—no—and you will make life so pleasant to him that he will not regret even—glory.”
He took the hem of her cloak and kissed it.
“Thank God for women like you.”
She looked up with wet and terrified eyes.
“Do not praise me—I do not know myself—I must have been very young—a few months ago—I said things I did not understand. Let me go, Monseigneur.”
She made an effort to pass him, but he arrested her.
“You will not leave me like this, Mademoiselle. He is not so changed—I wanted to prepare you, that is all—his mother thought there was very little difference.”
“Ah, his mother,” murmured Clémence. “I was to be his wife.”
“You will be. I will do anything for you—anything. You shall live in Aix—we shall all worship you—and you will be happy.”
“But if I cannot make him happy?” she asked mournfully.
“You will, you will, you must! He loves you—there will be nothing else in the world for him.” The old man could not contain his anguish of apprehension. “Do not tell me that you could forsake him!”
She dried her eyes on a little handkerchief she took from her muff; after a few seconds of self-control she spoke gently—
“Monseigneur, I shall be here to-morrow. I am not going to break the promise I gave Luc. I am quite—content—only a little shocked. Please do not grieve so—he might have died, you know.” She smiled wistfully.
He kissed her hands, and she felt his hard wrung tears on them. When he raised his head she leant forward and kissed his poor wrinkled cheek, then left him swiftly with no backward look.
“Might have died,” she wailed to herself as she shivered down the hall; “he ought to have died for every one’s sake—feeble, disfigured, nearly—blind!”
Such a tumult of terror seized her as she fled from the house of the de Clapiers that she was aware of nothing but the tremendous beating of her heart that seemed to echo through her whole body.
CHAPTER II
RETURN TO LIFE!
Luc de Clapiers lay on the humble bed in the back room of the gardener’s cottage; in the outer chamber his servant was packing and gossiping with the convent porter.
Luc was fully dressed. His sword, hat, and cloak, sent yesterday from Aix (since all his infected clothing had been burned), lay across a chair beneath the window.
Outside the birds were singing, and their flying shadows crossed and recrossed the white corner of the hospice wall. Presently Luc raised himself on one elbow.
“Jean!” he called.
The man came instantly.
“What time is it, Jean?”
“About half-past two, Monseigneur.”
“Thank you. I am going into the chapel for a little while. I shall be back when Monsieur, my father, comes.”
He rose stiffly and feebly, and stood leaning against the end of the bed.
“What is that which continually goes past the window, Jean?”
“Birds, Monseigneur—only little birds.”
Luc smiled.
“Indeed, I cannot see them, Jean.”
The servant waited, not looking at his master. Presently Luc gave a little nod of dismissal, and Jean returned to the outer room.
Luc decided not to go to the chapel. He had thought that the dark, cool spaces, the nuns behind their grille, the subdued singing might bring him fortitude and peace; but now he rejected that idea as weakness.
He had also wished to inquire after Carola Koklinska before he left the convent. Yet to what purpose? She was lost to the world, and her name had not passed his lips once during the brief agony of his illness and the long agony of his convalescence.
He recalled his last interview with her and his words, “If I am stricken, pray that I may die.”
And now his worst horror had been realized, and he was cast back on life to die slowly from day to day—an object of disgust and pity. He knew, though no one else had been told, that he had not very long to live. The doctor gave him a few years—five, or six, or seven.
Three days ago he had first seen himself in a mirror. Two days ago he had written to M. Amelot saying that his health did not permit him to take up the appointment at Madrid.
And to-day he had to see Clémence de Séguy.
He had gently told Jean to leave the mirror, and it hung against the wall at the foot of his bed.
He turned to it now, took it down and brought it to the full light of the window, held it between his hands, and gazed into it.
He could only see very imperfectly. Objects had lost their sharp outlines, their true colours; things beyond the radius of his own outstretched hand were dim and obscure. He peered into the mirror with the stoop and concentration of gaze of an old man.
He saw, as behind a blur, his own face, chalk-white, scarred, and seamed with a faint bluish colour; his eyes frayed, and swollen, yet sunk; his mouth strained and distorted—a face without bloom, or youth, or softness—a terrible face, from which all beauty, all expression had been swept, for in the ruins of these pale features was not one trace of the fair, mobile, spiritual countenance that had once shown to the world the soul of Luc de Clapiers.
His fine hazel hair had gone. He wore a curled white peruke, which further altered his appearance. He was so feeble he could not hold himself erect; he stooped from the shoulders and was gauntly thin. Presently he put the mirror on the bed, and two difficult tears forced themselves out of his worn eyes and ran down his disfigured cheeks.
Outside the birds were flying to and fro, and the fragrant perfumes of early spring swelled and receded on the full breeze.
The scent of earth, of flowers, of young trees came to Luc’s nostrils. He shuddered like one struck on an open wound.
He went to the window, stood with his hands on the rough sill, looking on to the little patch of herb garden and the whitewashed corner of the building.
“Come, face it,” he said to himself. “You are young, full of energy, of ardour, of ambition, of desire for glory; you can appreciate all that is good and beautiful. Yet now, at the flower of your age, you are deprived of everything that makes life desirable; you have only a few more years to live, and they will be full of pain and suffering—then—an obscure death. And all your gifts, your ardours, your hopes, your ambitions will perish with you, leaving no glimmer behind. Face that, Luc de Clapiers—face that!”
There was nothing left—nothing but the pitying love of those who would smooth his way to death, and to a proud soldier’s soul such tenderness was unendurable.
He picked up the sword he could never use again and buckled it on slowly, then left the cottage and turned, after all, towards the chapel attached to the convent. The service was nearly over. Luc seated himself near the door in the shadows. The nuns were behind their grille; in the body of the chapel were a few lay sisters.
Presently Luc went on his knees and prayed from a bitterly humbled heart—prayed incoherently, passionately to the God of his forefathers—
“God! O God! what have I done? What offence armed your wrath against me? You have filled my life with bitterness. Pleasure, health, youth are robbed from me—glory that flattered so long the dream of an ambitious soul—all is gone!
“I let my glance fall on the enchanting gifts of the world, and suddenly they are all taken from me. Miseries, cares, regrets overwhelm my soul!”
The silent prayer beat in his brain. His heart swooned in his side. He felt roof and walls vanish from about him and a sensation as if he were surrounded by clear heavens and a multitude of swaying clouds. But the murmur of the service was in his ears only a human thing. The God he prayed to was foreign; he could not find help here.
“O my soul, show thyself strong in these great trials, be patient, trust in thyself; thy ills will end. Nothing is stable; the earth itself and the skies vanish as a dream. The dawn of eternity will light the bottom of the tomb, and death shall have no dark places left!”
The service was over; the nuns departed from behind the grille, the lay sisters moved away, but Luc remained on his knees.
Yet his thoughts had swept swiftly far from the God to whom this church was consecrated. Out of his own soul he had drawn strength and sweetness.
“How can there be a struggle with misfortune and evil when man is stronger than either?” he asked himself. And at one bound his heart leapt to life and energy.
He rose to his feet.
“I dedicated my life to virtue and glory. What prevents me from using the few years left to me in the service of the best things I know? I am stronger than Fate. There is nothing mightier in creation than the soul lodged in me. I and God are one. I need not fear anything, for I am the highest tribunal and the most powerful law, and I can satisfy myself.”
His hand touched the smooth, cold pillar beside him. The feel of the stone, the sting of the incense were repugnant to him. The heat and glow in his heart warmed his frail body. He drew his thin, stooping shoulders erect and left the chapel.
The image of Carola came fiercely to his mind. He trembled to think that perhaps she had been one of those shrouded figures behind the grille. Across the black gulf of his illness he beheld her figure beneath the iron bell and the clusters of ash berries. He heard her words, and felt her sobbing lips under his kiss and her cold hands in his.
A sister was crossing the courtyard, carrying a basket filled with herbs. Luc turned on his heel and saluted her.
“I am leaving to-day, my sister. Before I go, may I ask you a question?”
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
“There was a lady came with me—Madame Koklinska.”
“Yes.”
“It was her intention to enter your order.”
“She became a novice, Monseigneur, and helped for a while in the hospice.”
“For a while?” The scent of the bruised and fainting herbs was borne on him overpoweringly.
“She took the smallpox, Monseigneur, within a few days of you. She died, I think, a month ago. We had only one other death from the plague.”
“Thank you, my sister,” answered Luc gravely.
The sister passed on, and Luc stood silent in the sunny courtyard.
Dead! In what faith, in what mood, in what repentance, remorse, or fear? Dead without consolation, or love, among strangers—young and beautiful, and, he knew, without fear.
For a moment he was shaken by a wild revulsion, a desperate revolt against his own renewed triumphant exaltation and proud freedom. In that moment he would have put on all the shackles of her creed in return for the certain hope of seeing her again; he would have embraced any faith that had promised him that they should meet once more—even for a few minutes. A little while before and he had been prepared to believe that he would never see her again—prepared even not to think of her. Now he would have paid any price just to see her tired face and listen to her low, precise voice. He went back to the gardener’s cottage, and his eyes sought the little cheap plaster image of St. Joseph in the corner. If one could believe. He shook off the temptation, the delusion—she was gone. When he had seen her pass the white wall of the hospice she had left him for ever—and he had known it even then.
“I—suppose—I—loved—her,” he said to himself; but he had no understanding of any emotion outside confusion and loneliness. He did not see the room or the sunshine, but a white, sparkling expanse of snow, a great silver fir, and a woman on a white horse who leant from the saddle and looked at him.
He found his father standing where she had stood when he had seen her for the last time.
“I have come for you, Luc.”
The old Marquis stood erect and proud, handsomely dressed, composed.
“Clémence is waiting for you,” he continued. “She would have accompanied me, but I thought you would rather meet her at home.”
The name hurt and startled Luc. He made an effort to think coherently. He forced his thoughts on to the coming moments.
“Monseigneur,” he asked, “Mademoiselle de Séguy—knows?”
“Knows what?” demanded the Marquis in a still voice.
Luc’s dim eyes filled with tenderness. He answered very gently—
“Knows that she is free, my father.”
The old man gallantly kept his pose, his calm.
“You must not speak like that, Luc. Mademoiselle de Séguy loves you—nothing makes any difference to her. She is eager——”
“Ah, hush!” said Luc sadly, yet serenely. “Look at me, Monseigneur—look at me—think of her—of any woman. I have known a long while that it could never be. Surely neither you nor she think I would ask this sacrifice?”
“This is not the language of love,” said the Marquis firmly. “Do you not recall how she wished to prove herself? how she wished to show what her affection meant?”
Luc did remember, with a swift, sharp sense of longing and regret, the brief days he had spent with his promised wife—her vows—her devotion.
“God bless her for her brave loyalty,” he said unsteadily; “but my life is too broken now ever to be joined to another. She is a sweet woman. I hope she will find great happiness.”
“With you, Luc, with you,” cried the Marquis vehemently. “She is waiting for you; she is constant to you. Do not cast away the best thing left to you.”
“My father,” cried Luc, “do not you tempt me! I have faced it all. I counted the cost that night I rode here. I knew then I had lost her. Do not speak of it.”
Something in his quivering tone quelled the old man.
“You will at least see her?” he asked humbly, in the wild hope that Clémence’s pity and generous tenderness might overcome his son’s resolution. “She looks upon you as her future husband.”
“I will see her,” answered Luc, and his scarred face flushed dully. “I fear I have given her some pain—and you, and my mother, Monseigneur. I must adjust it all as best I may.”
And while he spoke he was thinking, “She left no message. I wonder if she spoke of me, or thought of me at all?”
“Our home is at Aix,” said the old Marquis, “and you are my eldest son. I, as you know, was never eager for you to go to Paris—but you had then—ambitions—and I acceded to them. Now I shall be glad to have you at home, and after a little while you also, Luc, will be glad to be with your own people.”
Through Luc’s brain ran the weary question, “If I had known it was for the last time, would it have made any difference? Yet I did know.”
Aloud he said—
“Mademoiselle must be free, my father. It was never in my mind that she believed herself bound.”
“But you have promised me that you will see her.”
“Yes,” answered Luc sadly. “Poor child!”
The Marquis hesitated, looked on the ground, then raised his head suddenly.
“Luc,” he said, “this alliance is an honour to M. de Séguy and to his daughter.”
The bowed young man turned his disfigured eyes on his father with another kind of pride.
“My God, look at me!” he said.
M. de Vauvenargues shivered, but the haughty expression of his face did not relax.
“You are Luc de Clapiers, and my eldest son,” he answered.
“And for that reason I shall not marry Mademoiselle de Séguy,” said Luc gently, “because it would be so—unworthy.”
A dark flush came over the Marquis’s face. He turned abruptly and left the room. His heavy, proud tread echoed with a sound of authority through the confined, silent spaces of the convent.
Luc remained for a moment with his dim gaze resting on the door through which she had passed for the last time. He could recall every fold of her brocade gown, every line and shade in her face, every curl and twist in the long, loose knot of her dark hair.
He wondered where her grave was, and how she had looked in her shroud. His vivid fancy pictured her the thing of loathing into which the hideous disease she died of had turned her—and shuddered back from that image, and saw her again standing against the whitewashed walls saying, “Good-bye.”
“Clémence,” he said under his breath, and saw two women—one forgone and lost, one to forgo and lose.