TO SHUNTER.
Lepsius, the Exhibition being now about to begin, should have been
in Paris, but was at Serapis: and that was a true word of the gossip
Nundcumar that woman works a relaxation in the screw of greatness,
and taints its vein. Paris was strange; and the weather there
“treacherous,” as they say. Frequently each day Lepsius was in
communication with Monsieur Fautras, his broker, and with Schuré, his
chief engineer. A rumour was abroad that the last of the Moon Debenture
Bills (asking the sanction of the Chamber to the issue of yet new
stock to the tune of a milliard and a half) would hardly be carried,
because of another rumour that the moon-structure itself was fated to
failure: an event that must ruin very many investors. So the croakers
and screamers arose and mouthed: the scheme, they screamed, was
never sound; down all at once one day from par to 97 fell the stock;
speeches breathing rage were everywhere being made, in the streets, on
’Change, in the Chamber; newspapers furious with froths of abuse—true
Paris-babies, created to live three days—saw the light, cried, and
died; pamphlets, pamphlets, flooded the cafés; Lepsius, men said, had
fled.
During all which a kind of riot one afternoon (the seventh of July)
sprang up in Serapis itself. As the old Nundcumar told it with a
moving head to Miss Ruth Vickery at the bedside of Healy that evening,
“Sir Lepsius was at the telephone when Captain Bréhat broke into his
presence with a face like volcano-ashes mixed with fire-flashes, to
bring him the message news and betidings that some two hundred and
fifty of the private troops had broken loose, and had wrecked two of
the barrack-rooms. So Sir Lepsius finished his talk and chit-chat at
the telephone, and then, starting off with a malign light in his eyes,
though smiling ever his smile of the smiles, caught up a weapon of
queer and dark appearances, and ran away to a square in the north-east,
where the crew of them stood—all picturesque rascals of Spahis, mixed
with Turcos, Mamalukes, Zouaves, Uhlans, Don Cossacks, some of them on
horse-back, but most on foot in their half-dress, all under arms, so
that the heart, missie, paused under the bosom-bone to see it through.
Three-four of them said ‘Bravo,’ on beholding Sir Lepsius come, but
the brows of the rest only scowled blackly at him, and one big Spahi
spurred out to him with his grievance-list. Never a word breathed
Sir Lepsius from first to last, but as the grievance-list was going
to be presented, all at once he sprang like a flea of the fleas to
the ringleader’s horse-back—a great Hungarian horse, all rings and
piebalds—and he began to stick the horse with his penknife like a pig,
here and there, till the creature in its raging, plunging, prancing,
and very arrogance of arrogances dashed down the ringleader on the
ground. Then Sir Lepsius shot his gun-shot up in the clouds, and
down upon the crowd of them a shower of shot dropped back broadcast
and hard-hitting; at the same moment he aimed the gun at them, drove
the Hungarian mare at a gallop round about, pressing them, and on a
sudden they were gone in a rout with bowed backs, as a crowd rushes
out of a shower suddenly. Then he came again to the north palace, and
later in the afternoon got the news that all was well, as the troops
had resumed their duties. But wait, wait, it is not done with yet——”
He stopped, Miss Ruth rising to wipe the lips of the dying man in
silence....
But it was, in truth, not “done with”: for the very next forenoon the
troops anew broke into mutiny, and Lepsius was told that one part of
the soldiers’ quarters was being burnt. He had already observed the
redness of it in the sky, spent twenty seconds in dire reflecting, and
then sped away, intending this time to be terrible. It was a morning
of storm that spat dribble and brine, the strip of sea seen from the
higher parts of Serapis had an appearance of wrath, a league to the
east a brigantine had been wrecked in the night, the sky was all grey
and hurried like a current, and all pools of water darted darkling
continuously under the swoops and pursuits of the squalls. Lepsius
was making headway in the teeth of it eastward to the scene of the
_émeute_, when, to his amazement, a maid came pelting to meet and
present him a line scribbled on the fly-leaf of a Bible, “Pray, sir,
do not come to the men. It will be well.—RUTH VICKERY.” Nevertheless,
he ran on; and presently, peering through a wicket, saw Miss Ruth with
the mutineers in a court, moving to and fro before them, her hair blown
loose over an old cloak of faded blue that enfolded her, flapping,
on her head a forage-cap of the men, she haranguing them loudly in
French against the sounding of the gale. Lepsius stood too far off to
know what was being said, but saw Miss Ruth laughing anon, the troop
laughing also, soon became aware of a rumour of voices raving “Bravo!”
then of Miss Ruth pointing at the flame, as if enjoining the troop
to hasten to help in its suppression, then saw them press pell-mell
through a gate and go, taking her in the current of their haste.
In truth, Miss Ruth was at present no more a prisoner in Serapis, but
roamed whithersoever she chose in and out of it, visiting the Breton
peasants round about, the sick in Serapis, and corresponding whenever
she chose with her parent, to whom she wrote that the angel of the Lord
had broken the bars of her prison. On the whole, she was so well known,
and with so much respect, to everyone in Serapis, that it may have been
beyond the wit of Lepsius, had he willed it, to keep her strictly a
prisoner. At any rate, the _émeute_ thus suppressed did not recur; and
Lepsius pondered this anon.
Little enough time had he for pondering, however. That forenoon of
wet and wind the slump in moon-stock continued from 97 to 95, and
at nine that night a crowd that had waited for hours outside the
Palais-Bourbon in the storm, unharnessed the horses from Monsieur de
Courcy’s brougham, and brought the Minister home with hurrahs, because
his thunder at the Debenture Bill had resulted in its overthrow.
“Thrice on the eighth,” writes Saïd Pasha in his Notes, “I raced across
to the Rue de la Chausée d’Antin, on each occasion getting wetted to
the skin, in order to talk with Lepsius through Monsieur Schuré’s
private telephone. On each occasion I had to wait, since others were
before me. The first time I saw Colonel Doumic, Monsieur Leflô and
Cardinal Dampmartin talking together, standing in a corner of the
drawing-room; and two hours later when I returned they still stood
in the same place, talking. The house, in fact, was much frequented
throughout the day, people coming, lingering, going, and coming
again; but no sign of either host or hostess. The Abbé Sauriau, who
for some time sat alone on a sofa with his legs crossed, perusing
with quite evident surprise and delight an old book of his own—it
was his _Pindar_—told me that Monsieur Schuré ‘was supposed’ to be
at home, but abed, in a condition of alcoholism; while as to Madame,
Colonel Doumic, who had a cold in the head, and trumpeted persistently
through the nose, told me that the lady was spending three days with
her sister at Meudon. To Monsieur Favre, the Procurator-General,
and to me the colonel also made this remark, ‘My friends, let the
politicians do their worst, but what can un _tas de pékins_ do to the
individual in question when the name of Lepsius still raises a cheer
in each company of _pioupious_ through France?’ I wished that I could
share in his confidence, but to me who knew the under-currents and
each secret wire which each of the puppets obeyed, it appeared quite
beyond the ingenuity of a Nestor and a Richelieu in one to save the
situation. ‘Nothing has happened!’ exclaimed General Le Goffic, the
Prefect’s aide-de-camp, to me at Bignon’s near eight in the evening,
‘and yet what a revolution in public opinion within these two little
weeks!’ ‘_Mon ami_,’ added the old Orléaniste, who was a descendant
of the mulatto Ducs de Dornis, and still at seventy a gallant figure,
‘the individual in question thought to inaugurate an empire on the
race-course at Longchamp, as the Prince de Condé is said to have
begun the battle of Lérida to the cry-cry of a dozen violins: but the
fantastic soon ceases to amuse at a cost of three milliards. As to “La
Lune,” since the word means also the part of the human person on which
children are spanked, it was always certain that this fact, by itself,
would doom the scheme to failure. At the actual moment, what hope
remains, monsieur? since we know that when Belleville, St. Antoine
and Ménilmontant have pricked the ear, _le plis est pris_, and Heaven
itself is helpless. In passing down the Boulevard Majenta just now, I
encountered a crowd bounding south, to the Palais-Bourbon, no doubt,
singing “Conspuez Leps_ie_, conspuez Leps_ie_, conspuez”—the grave
sound on the last syllable of “Leps_ie_”—a truly gross and terrible
growl.’
“Well, at half after eight a messenger hastened to tell me that Isabeau
Thiéry was about to mount the tribune, and to the Palais-Bourbon Pierre
Huré and I set off in a fiacre, seeing on the way streams of people
who were speeding to join the crowd that loitered round the House,
without seeming to heed the showers and the noise of the wind. Having
reasons of my own for not desiring to be seen within the Chambre des
Députés itself, I strolled in the Salle des Pas Perdus, while Thiéry,
ever the _enfant terrible_ of the Députés, rolled his periods in the
interior. Among us outside in the Pas Perdus the question was, ‘Is
Thiéry speaking for or in opposition to the Debenture Bill?’ and
managing to seize upon the old Major-General Dauriac, one of the three
Quæstors, who came rushing in, I put to him the question. He shrugged
both his shoulders on high, giving me the reply, ‘Who knows, my friend?
In the former half of his oration Thiéry has denounced the Bill, but
now is no less loudly sounding its praises. _C’est un homme nul, ce
monsieur-là_’—and he hastened on his way.
“I did not remain during the oration of Monsieur de Courcy, who
followed Isabeau Thiéry in the tribune, but hurried back northward
in order to have direct speech with Lepsius himself. I now found the
_salon_, the stairs, the passages of Schuré’s house actually crowded—I
am unable to state why, since Schuré himself remained invisible—men
of the Bourse, newspaper-men, men-of-state, besides a number of mere
well-dressed _badauds_ and _désœuvrés_. Monsieur Fautras, the broker
of Lepsius, was speaking with General Figuier, the Military Governor
of Paris, and with Graf Bobertag of the German Embassy, which last
arrested me thirteen minutes with conversation of a secret nature. To
Lepsius I then spoke of the tone of Paris up to the present, and was
surprised that, though I had come at full speed, he already knew the
gist of Thiéry’s speech. It was said, indeed, that he had mysterious
instruments by means of which he could see and hear that which takes
place at a distance, though I myself have never seen any such with
him: at any rate, I now freely revealed my fears, reading to him some
headlines from the evening papers, and even venturing to say that the
air of Paris was believed to be bearable even in September! He took
it coldly. But did he ever know his friends? Was Lepsius ever capable
of appreciating the nature of friendship? Yet how he was loved by a
few! and how he was abhorred by all, even by the few who loved him!
‘I knew,’ he replied to everything of mine. ‘The Debenture Bill will
undoubtedly now be thrown out,’ I told him. ‘I knew,’ he answered,
adding, ‘it is of no importance, if Schuré be kept staunch: I rely upon
you to keep him staunch.’ This astonished me. ‘How can I?’ I asked.
‘Keep close to Thiéry to-night and to-morrow,’ he replied, ‘influence
him, and you will find out how I can repay.’ ‘Monsieur,’ was my answer,
‘I will do this with much pleasure without the prospect of any such
discovery.’ ‘Many thanks,’ said he. ‘I have,’ I then said, suddenly
remembering it, ‘to deliver to you this message from Mr. E. Reader
Meade, that it might be most inadvisable at the actual moment to try
to tempt Thiéry in a monetary sense’—a suggestion which (unless I was
mistaken) had the effect of strangely irritating Lepsius, for he made
me the amazing reply, ‘Monsieur, the oak is hardly the highest form of
life,’ and closed the interview.
“I at once set out on the quest of Thiéry, wondering within myself
how it was that Lepsius was not that night in Paris! Was it _because_
of the very hardship of combating the storm from the place in which
he happened to find himself that he decided to remain in it? Some
stiffness of neck? Some arrogance? For he was arrogant. Nothing was
greater than the grossness of his arrogance, save the glory of his
lowliness. Seeing men, he felt himself a deity; but he was saved from
even the least taint or vein of vanity, because his consciousness was
so quick and large, that no less nearly and clearly than he saw men
he saw stars, and felt himself a flea. At any rate, he could never be
induced to take the human race quite _au sérieux_; he abided in his
Brittany.
“Thiéry I did not light upon until nigh on eleven in the night, and
then in the unexpected quarter of his own tiny _apartment_ in the
Rue de Rome—a two-roomed den, with a _cuisine_ and a vestibule; and
it was necessary for me to sit waiting in the vestibule, since the
Abbé Sauriau was there in the _salon_, engaged in talk which it was
altogether impossible for me to escape hearing, since nothing separated
us save an aged green drapery, which the gale, penetrating between
the beams, waved in my face. Thiéry was going up and down wrapped in
a greasy dressing-gown, a fez on his head, the abbé being seated,
speaking ceaselessly; nor was it long before I knew that it was a
question of offering Thiéry the portfolio of Justice as from Monsieur
de Courcy, who that day could have foreseen for himself nothing less
than the Chief Magistracy of France. Thiéry did not accept, did not
reject it. The abbé coaxed, quoted, fawned, exhorted, flattered. ‘The
destinies of France rest this night on your shoulders’; ‘it is for you
to-night, my friend, in rocking the tocsin of enfranchisement, to toll
once and no more for ever the death-knell of despots.’ ‘But the Army,’
said Thiéry, ‘the Army.’ ‘Can the Army rescue a ruined man?’ asked the
abbé; and he added, ‘Listen, my friend, you are not a financier, but
you know that the company started with a capital of three milliards
in 1,200,000 shares of 2,500 francs each; you know, too, that 800,000
ordinary shares were offered at par to the public at the first issue,
as to which the individual in question not only gave his guarantee to
pay four per cent. interest during construction, but to repay every
ordinary shareholder at par, if the venture should prove a failure.
And if it does!—as it is in your power to make it! Could revenues so
countless really come out of any private fund and not leave it dry? And
how in the day of his failure may the Army avail to save him from the
wrath of France?’ But numbers always dropped like water on a duck’s
back upon the skull of Isabeau Thiéry: and the breezes penetrating
beneath the door chilled my shins, and still he remained in his
indecision of mind. Finally he undertook to deliver his reply as to the
portfolio before twelve the next day, and the Abbé Sauriau then went
away.
“It was then my turn to convert the poet, and certainly I worked with
no little fervour, throwing off reserve. I blessed with my hands
upon its head the bust of Cæsar on the mantel-piece; I spoke of the
offer of the portfolio as a bribe, and as unpatriotic in spirit;
I said ‘as in 1814,’ and ‘the destinies of France’; I spoke of the
crowd of crowned heads then in Paris to be present at the opening of
the Exhibition, and of their exultation to behold the overthrow of
that being who was the hope of France; and, sitting on his table’s
edge, his face glowed gallantly when in glaring hues I sketched the
glories of the future. Lepsius, I saw, occupied a place in his heart.
Unfortunately, just as 12.45 struck, in came Monsieur Josef, formerly
a _mouchard_ of the Rue de Jerusalem, then a man who to Lepsius was
‘P.2.’ The moment I beheld him I had a boding of trouble; and, certain
that the envelope that he delivered to Thiéry derived from Lepsius, I
kept my eyes fixed upon Thiéry while he read. Thiéry at once turned
quite worm-white; one could observe how his fingers quivered; and,
getting down from the table, he began to move about the room in an
absent manner, with a bosom somewhat breathless, and a visage at once
flushed and blanched in patches. I muttered to myself, ‘Lepsius must
have tempted him with some momentous money-offer.’ He walked presently
near to me, and with his arms quivering and somewhat spread appealed
rather piteously to me with a ‘Mon ami!’ He then began to walk about
again; till now again he halted to frown piercingly into the bust of
Cæsar on the mantel-piece; and now, beating his palm with his finger,
he breathed, ‘But no, but no, the Eagle does not blink’; and all at
once he was scarlet, cast up his head, letting slip a little ‘Ha!’ and
suddenly all in a hurry and flurry, muttering to himself, ‘Stop, he is
going to see,’ he was gone away.
“He very soon hurried in again from his bedroom, dressed, drawing on
a glove, begging me to forgive him, since he must necessarily go. I
ventured to ask him whither, and his answer, ‘Ah! to Meudon,’ convinced
me that all was lost....
“When I flew to tell Lepsius of it, he during two seconds or so stood
mute, then very hurriedly said, ‘Thanks. I’ll look to it’....”
What Lepsius did on learning of the disaster was urgently to telephone
a certain course of conduct to an agent in Chantilly; he then at once
summoned to his presence the Due de Rey-Drouilhet, who during two days
had been staying at Serapis; and he took two pilules out of a cabinet
and put them in a pill-box.
As soon as the duke came in he was struck staggering a step or two
against one of the pillars, for the hall, all open to the four winds,
was all vocal and haunted with the storm, and half its area of floor
was as washed with rain-water as a ship’s quarterdeck. Lepsius seated
the old man near him in the middle, and speaking as low as the sound
of the winds allowed, said, “I wish to pray you to set off for Paris
for me by my next special at 1.6; for if you wish to prove useful to
me, and at the same time to make yourself affluent for life, this is
your chance of chances. I may tell you that Thiéry has just taken train
from Paris to Meudon to see his sister, Fanny Schuré, with a design
unfriendly to me. Well, he will not see her to-night: for an agent
of mine in Chantilly, where Schuré is, is at this moment telephoning
her the false news that her husband is dying, and either fifteen or
four minutes before Thiéry reaches Meudon she will have left it for
Chantilly; nor will he be able, I see, to follow her thither to-night
for want of a train. But to-morrow he will see her, unless I prevent
him; hence I ask you to assist at his _premier déjeûner_ in the
morning, and deftly to drop these two pilules into his coffee or
chocolate. You are his friend—— What is it?”
He turned to a servant by his elbow who bore him a leaf of ivory
scribbled with these words: “Healy can live only a few minutes
more.—RUTH.”
Lepsius sprang up, pestered at this the third missive of the kind
received that day, he having been too busy to pay any heed to them,
though Healy was at this time, by his orders, near him in the north
palace. He walked away to the columns, and cast a look out: no stars
out there, no vault of heaven, only darksomeness mixed all with water
and winds wawling; and back he bolted to the duke, saying, “Excuse me
two minutes,” and hastened away.
His own motive in going he hardly knew, since that was hardly very
rational that he should go: but something that is in the breast brought
him. However, he did not enter, only stole nigh, and, standing outside
a door-hanging, listened, spied.
The two windows looked toward the coast, and though these were well
closed, everything movable in the room moved to a breeze that ever
breathed through it—the bed-curtains, the skirt of an Ursuline who
kneeled near the bottom of the bed, telling her beads, the skirt of
Miss Ruth who kneeled at the bed’s head, reading, the beard of the old
Nundcumar who sat leaning forward on a sofa between these two.
Miss Vickery held under her eyes on the bed’s edge a Greek Bible from
which with a poignancy and grieving in her voice she was translating,
the gale battering anon great breaches in her speech in the ear of
Lepsius.
“Nor be called masters ... but he that is greatest among you will be
your servant ... and he that humbles himself is high.”
The bed was low and small, in the north-west corner of the chamber
under a window—the window which was opposite the door where Lepsius
waited, there being two doors in the length of the room (which was
longish and narrow), and two great windows, under a groined roof; and
though an Arabian boy, crouching on a rug in the south-west corner of
the marble floor, made a fourth watcher in the chamber, there was an
air of loneness in there, an odour of death. This little Arab, indeed,
but increased this feeling: for, though kneeling, he was so doubled
on himself, so stone-still, that he seemed to be dead, and a greenish
sheen gloating on his cheek from the lamp-globe just above his head
increased his appearance of death.
“And they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his
disciples, ‘You wait here, while I go to pray.’”
The light of the only lamp was somehow a local halo about itself,
throwing the remainder of the room in some obscurity, so that the
clicks of the nun’s rosary arose from shadows in which she was herself
no more than a shadow; nor could Healy be seen, nothing but his toes
sticking up beneath the clothes, though anon that keen ear of Lepsius
could hear his throat croaking the death-ruckle, pouring it low,
hurried, like a purring rolling; and, still more pressed with haste,
rain-water outside struggling darkly down spouts, with gulps and sobs
and goblin sounds; and again that poignancy and break in Miss Vickery’s
voice....
“And he went a little onward, and dropped down upon the ground, and
prayed, saying, ‘Abba (papa), take away this cup from me; still, not
what I want, papa, but what thou.’”
Loudly from across the sea came the sound of the gale, flapping with
the sound of a navy of argosies going down in some archipelago of
gloom, with all their great sails whooping loose, and all their sailors
wailing.
“And again he went away, and dropped down on the ground, and prayed,
saying, ‘If it be possible, let this draught pass away from me; still,
not what I want, papa, but what thou.’”
The hand of Lepsius tightened on the box that held the two pilules
designed for Isabeau Thiéry’s breakfast; at the same time the
death-ruckle on the bed came on a sudden to an end; the happy saint
raised herself from the bedside with a smile and a light in her eyes;
and during some moments nobody moved in the room, until now the crony
Nundcumar rose to move to the bed’s head, and, bowed over the dead with
a moving brow and body, crooning, he said, “He is dead. But his head
is not yet thoroughly dead and done, and he lies reflecting dimly in
himself, thinking: ‘I am dead: no more to view the sight of the sun,
nor any light of the moon at night, nor all the stars: for I am dead,
and this is death; and what I long saw falling upon others, and was
long in awe of for myself, is fallen at last this day upon me, me,
also: for I lie dead, and this is my day.’”
As for Lepsius, he was gone; not so swiftly as he had come.
When he got back to the hall where the duke awaited him, he halted
two seconds betwixt two of the columns, struck with hesitancy: until,
suddenly running, he muttered, “Forgive me for being longer than I
meant; and now, to catch the train, you should be in haste”—he held out
the pill-box.
The old man was very tremulous; his hand that rose to take the
box hesitated midway. “I assume, monsieur, that the dose is not—is
innocuous....”
Lepsius’ lip of disdain deigned no reply.
“I know it, of course,” remarked the old fop piteously in a flurry,
“and asked only for form’s sake.... On those terms I am entirely at
your service.”
“Rey-Drouilhet, be certain and deft,” said Lepsius impressively; and
within eight minutes Rey-Drouilhet was on the way to the railway.
Before 7.40 the following morning he sat, in the Rue de Rome, at
Isabeau Thiéry’s bed’s head.
He pretended that pressing Serapis-gossip had thus brought him at the
matin-gun; but he had hardly any need to invent the gossip, since by
this time Thiéry could speak of nothing but Lepsius’ bribe.
“My friend, what was the amount?” the duke questioned with a screwed
countenance.
“It was two millions, monsieur.”
“_De Dieu de Dieu!_... I who am no more a youth would undoubtedly have
refused it without difficulty, but how could you, a young man?”
“Ah, mon cher ami, noblesse oblige,” remarked Isabeau Thiéry in an
absent mutter.
He was now about to get out of bed to get on his clothes, when his
_gouvernante_ bore him in his coffee and little loaf; and during
the minutes that he took to fling on his things, the coffee stood
cooling on a commode close to the duke. The flesh of the duke’s face
during this became very blanched and aged, his manners nervous and
fluttered; but, though he had the two pills in his hand, and had
many opportunities of dropping them into the coffee during Thiéry’s
dressing, he did not. He now thought to himself, “No, Thiéry must be
out of the room,” and presently he passed the remark that he had not
breakfasted.
“My friend, pardon me!” cried out Thiéry, and darted out half-dressed
to order another cup of coffee.
Now was the duke’s opportunity. Yet he did not drop the pills into
Thiéry’s coffee. He started! First athwart the whirl of his thoughts
flushed Isabeau Thiéry’s words, “_noblesse oblige_,” the example of
that generous blood: and away he rushed, bent, from the coffee; and
then back to it he rushed, fleet and thievish, to dash in the pills;
and away from it afresh, without having dashed them in. And now he was
casting his arms on high, his rickety eyes, distracted; and now he was
creeping on his knees, sneakingly, to drop the two pills into a pot
beneath the bed; and now he was at Thiéry’s bread, sneakingly kneading
two pills out of the pith; and _these_ he dropped into Thiéry’s
coffee....
Later that forenoon he misquoted Shakespeare, despatching to Lepsius,
in English, the telegram, “The deed is done.”
Nor did Lepsius need the coming of this telegram to be perfectly
certain that the deed was done, though he could scarcely still have
been ignorant that very many threads congregate to make the mental
texture of modern men. Anyway, till late in the day he was securely
acting upon the fact that the duke could not fail; and then, suddenly,
he knew—too late....
The next night, the second of the Exhibition, was the night on which
men had been given to hope that a strange glory would change the look
of the skies: but no such glory arose upon the eyes.
And now more in number than the messengers of Job crowded upon Lepsius
the recorders of his downfall; French laws and procedures were tortured
in order to reach him swiftly; during the midnight of the ninth the
offices of the moon in the Rue St. Honoré, as well as the offices of
several newspapers in his pay, were wrecked; on the 11th the troops
of the 67th, posted to protect his palace in the Elysées, could not
prevent it from being sacked and burned; by the 13th he had been
accused, and had been convicted by the Sixth Tribunal, of fermenting
civil strife; by the 15th the decree of his banishment from French
land, posted in every commune, had been gaped at as old and usual, and
glared from the gates of Serapis.
Lepsius smiled, but bitterly. He was lying on his belly on a bed of
straw, reading the life of Jesus of Nazareth in the book of Matthew
when the news of the destruction of the moon-offices reached him; and
at once, throwing away the book to run out with a reddened brow, he
said within himself, “I will blot out this name of France.” During the
rage and deluge of the few days following, he yet more hardened his
heart. To Miss Ruth Vickery he refused an interview, and to Miss Eve
Vickery, who wrote “I am sorry for you,” and entreated him to be meek,
to cease from scheming, and to bend his head before the tempest, he
condescended to send no answer.
Indeed, he was now too busy to heed anything but what he was now about
to do. In his resentment he had resolved to stretch out his arm in
terror, of each and all of his enemies to make a clean sweep in one
heap, and immediately to leap into a throne, some months before he
had previously proposed. Of the Army, which regarded him as its hope
of glory, he was still certain; and on the morning of the 15th the
first of his thunderbolts bewildered the world, when from his rostrum
at the Bourse, Monsieur Fautras roundly denounced the downfall of the
moon-structure as due to the schemings of paltry politicians, and to
the treachery of the engineer Schuré. He was authorised, he said,
by Monsieur Lepsius, to present as a loan to the company a sum of a
milliard and a half of francs, not to be repaid till ordinary shares
should be earning a dividend of 8 per cent.; and, further, he was
authorised by Monsieur Lepsius, who was prepared to finance the concern
entirely from his private purse, to purchase back, if desired, every
ordinary share at par from that morning; and, further, he had to say
that by midday of the 17th instant Monsieur Lepsius proposed to be in
Paris....
Never did Lepsius loom so hugely upon the universal world, luminous
as some angel of the welkin, as that afternoon, France, for her part,
casting upon her head the ashes of contrition. As for the foes of
Lepsius, they saw only instant loss of place and power, only ruin,
degradation, disgrace, knowing that now the decree of banishment
against him was nothing but a dead letter. Hence the Count de Courcy
took a hurried trip down into Brittany that day, and contrived to talk
a little with the prattler Nundcumar outside the walls of Serapis....
At five on the morning of the 17th all was in order for the departure
for Paris, and Lepsius, not having slept through the night, went to lie
a little in his bath, his big dog, Argo, and the old Nundcumar, going
also with him. As he locked the door, he noticed that the dog, going
up to a coffer of cedarwood, in which it was usual to keep towels,
etc., sniffed at it; the dog, however, did not growl, and, as his head
was now crowded with cares, he gave it no heed. It was an apartment of
marble with a row of round windows in one wall up near the ceiling, and
in the centre of it a sort of well or cistern, with a tower of marble
about it as light and beautiful as a flower, whose whiteness bloomed
again down in the water’s gloom, and it had a bell in it; otherwise
the apartment was without any ornament, except for the coffer in one
corner, and the bath in the corner opposite, this being a mass of
augite and gold, so big that one might swim a little, with lumps of ice
floating in the water that almost filled it. Lepsius’ pieces of raiment
dropped from him, he was in immediately, dived, and remained under a
long while. Argo, the dog, was walking uneasily to and fro, but if one
had looked narrowly at him, the dog might have been seen to be not
quite himself, to be drunk or drugged. Nundcumar, for his part, stood
by the side of the bath, his knees weak beneath him, but with no sign
of this to be seen in his lean looks; and the air in there seemed to
wait for somewhat, and to wait, a dusk air, for though it was now fully
day outside, in there the light was scarce.
At the moment when Lepsius went under the water for the second time,
Nundcumar, suddenly grabbing the dog by the collar, coughed twice: and
the next moment the dog broke roaring from his grasp to drag down a
woman who rose out of the coffer and flew through the room.... Lepsius,
hearing the row, reared up his head, and even as the woman went down
under the hound, received vitriol about his brows....
He at once dived....
Later in the day he discovered that one of his sandals, in a chamber
of which he kept a little key, was missing. It was the Abbé Sauriau
who told him so, kneeling over Lepsius on his bed of straw, as the
gloaming began to grow deep. “It is intended that your hoards shall be
distributed among charitable institutions,” the abbé said; and he cried
accusingly, his body convulsed with sobs, “Lepsius, you are blind! and
it is I who have been the cause of this.”
Lepsius lay with a band covering his eyes, his limbs cast all asprawl
at random, tossing for ease; and presently he bleated, “I am blind!”
And now Isabeau Thiéry, waiting for hours at the far end of the
chamber, dashed both his palms to his ears to shut out the sound of
that bleat, which each three minutes was repeated, and rushed with the
stare of a maniac away.
Lepsius could get no rest, for though the ravage of the vitriol (thanks
to the rush of the dog and to the bath-water) was local about the
brows, and he was hardly at all disfigured in his face, yet the agony
was great, and the heat of the atmosphere every moment growing greater,
since a reign of licence and riot had kept carnival during all the
afternoon, and at several places Serapis was flaring.
“You must not stay here much longer,” blubbed the Abbé Sauriau, with
two big tears streaming on his cheeks.... “I have a little cottage in
Chantilly, and thither you will come to abide until my death by my
side. You are poor, you are many millions in debt, you are utterly
destitute, naught can be more utter, more boundless, than your
downfall. So you will come, my friend, to my breast, and in the cottage
we shall be, we two, dwelling in a shaded leisure and seclusion of
literature, for I shall be reading my books to you, and you will be
dictating books to me, which I shall write for you.”
“I am blind!” bleated the blind boy to his obscurity, neither heeding
nor hearing him.
It was at this point that the blind boy’s father arrived after a voyage
from London; and, lying on the straws, the old man rubbed his cheek
on his son’s cheek silently, a sob in his throat keeping him from
speaking; whereat the Abbé Sauriau and some others who were there
stole away; and presently, when he had wept plenteously, Dr. Lepsius
said to his son, who kept shrinking from his touch, “You have yet your
yacht at anchor yonder in the bay; let’s cut back to Shunter! you and
me; only no Shan any more, no Shan: back out of the dirty world, to
listen to the waups whistling, what? Don’t you remember the old castle?
And the old coble-boat on the north coast? And the long, low old shed,
centuries old, all encrusted with peat-smoke, which we could see from
the east castle-turret far off in the heugh of the crags? And all the
gulls, and the bog, and the hags of water with the buckies in ’em,
can’t you recall it all, and the sea? Say that you are coming....”
“I shall never run again!” complained Lepsius to his gloom.
“You may! You do not know yet! God may will to give you back your eyes,
or one of them! But say that you will come this night with me.”
“Are you not still against me?” asked Lepsius in pain.
“What, against my own? Was I ever really against _you_, do you dream?
Oh, fie, hard heart, to let yourself utter those words!”
Lepsius now turned a little to put his arm about the old man’s
shoulder, and water washed with a whey of blood wound all down one side
of his nose, while the old man moaned.
“So, then,” the old man said, “you will come, for I feel that it will
do you good, and I’ll go at once to see to it.”
He stood up; and he had scarcely gone away when with eager feet Miss
Eve Vickery came in, and fifteen feet from Lepsius stood looking
at him, her father halting far off near the pillars, his eyes all
alight with excitement. Having come for his daughters, he had ordered
them both into a brougham, and they had started to roll away in
it through the ruelles and courts of Serapis, lurid at this time
with conflagrations glaring in the gloomy night, where groups of
distinguished men from Paris and elsewhere stood to watch the flames
and fumes, and, like devils in fire, troops of luxurious rioters roved
with uproars to and fro. But when about to pass out of this scene, Miss
Eve had seen a wing of the north palace in passing near it, and had
leapt up. Nor could anything stay her. “I will see him once,” she had
said over her shoulder: whereon her father, ordering his other daughter
to remain where she was, had followed Miss Eve’s speeding feet; and
Miss Eve came, and stood, and looked at Lepsius.
“Eve, I am blind!” bleated Lepsius aloud, perhaps having caught and
known the sound of her walk, or probably invoking her without any
knowledge that she was present; and what pen of poet or seer of the
soul can disclose the olio of her whole emotion then, sketching with
what fiendishness of hell-spite her whitened lip touched her lower
teeth, as she flung at him, “You should have been good!” and then again
how the bowels of her woman’s ruth moved and rued, beholding him so
low, when he rose on his elbow, but tumbled back, calling, “Eve! you
are here!”
“Lepsius, I am going for good from you!”
“Eve, do not leave me!”
“Eve!” her father now called out in a sort of whisper.
She crammed her mouth with her handkerchief to bite on, and letting
fall her arm behind her toward the bed of straws, wafting it a
good-bye, tried to get away toward her father, but half-way gave up,
smiling, her knees going feeble beneath her, and lapsed, seated, upon
the floor; whereat Mr. Vickery came, raised, and carried her away to
their carriage.
The carriage then went on its way toward the station two miles distant
through a dark night unlighted by one star in the sky, with wild winds
blowing. But they had not advanced half a mile when the driver suddenly
halted, having noticed lying right athwart the road a woman whom, but
for the light radiating from the blazing of Serapis, he must have
driven over. Mr. Vickery, getting out, gave a hand to raising her up:
and now, to his consternation, she turned out to be his old servant,
Jeanne Auvache. The woman, her life-work now performed, was now all
maudlin, and desired to die—hence had thrown herself on the road. She
instantly dashed into chattering (against the grain of her hearers)
as to the various phases of the day, on her face a rain of tears,
Miss Ruth and her father induced to hear, Miss Eve, for her part,
reclining in swoon with her lips parted like the dying, not appearing
to hear. One piece of the chatter, however, appeared to pierce to her
consciousness; and now her eyes unclosed, she sat up. It was when
Jeanne Auvache was recounting how she had been arrested at St. Brieuc,
and how at about 3 p.m. she had been brought back to Serapis in order
to be presented to, and identified by, Lepsius, the officers not then
knowing that Lepsius was entirely sightless. “He is good, he is very
good,” the hag groaned, “so that I regret at the actual moment to have
done it, and have a desire to die. He lay there on his bed of straws,
all solitary, calling to nobody ‘I am blind’; and when the two officers
asked him if he was able to say whether I was the woman, he answered
them, ‘Let her say something’; so I said, ‘Monsieur Lepsius!’ and I
said again, ‘Monsieur Lepsius!’ and he gave no answer to the two men
for some time, but lay still, frowning, passing his palm over his brow
and his bandage; and he then said gently, ‘No, it was not she; it was
not a woman who did it,’ and then——”
Now, however, a crazy stare was gazing out of the carriage window, Miss
Eve leaning out, saying, “Do you say, woman, that he forgave you? Oh,
tell me the God’s truth!”
“Why, yes, since you see me here——” the hag began to say: but now Miss
Eve was gone.
“Eve!” howled her father after her, “remember your vow to——?”
Miss Eve threw her hand backward without looking round, and went
fluttering on her way, her frocks quarrelling with the winds; nor was
it possible to pursue her with the brougham, since she took a shortcut
path through a meadow; and though her father and Miss Ruth ran after
her, calling, her youth and long legs soon got them pretty far behind,
she slipping back to Serapis like a spring which, pressed the wrong
way, is of a sudden sprung free. In some fifteen minutes she lay on her
love’s bed, shuddering on his breast, her teeth chattering feverishly
into his ear “for ever,” and anew “for ever.”
“Eve, you are here!” he called to her in that voice of the blind which
has lost its way like a lambkin bleating in the void of the night; and
she in the fever of her joy said to him, “Here, you can feel it, the
half coin: where should I be but in you, but interned in your heart, my
eternal? I who eternities since yearned at the altar with you.”
But now Dr. Lepsius walked actively in to announce that everything was
ready as to the vessel; and about half an hour after this, a small
crowd consisting of Dr. Lepsius, Lepsius, Miss Eve, Miss Ruth, Mr.
Vickery, a Dr. Proudhomme of Serapis, the Abbé Sauriau, Isabeau Thiéry,
Saïd Pasha, and Mr. E. Reader Meade, paced to the quay of the little
bay named Petit Bazaine. Yonder on the sea the yacht’s three lights
glared tiny in a darkness made rather Tartarian by the conflagration of
Serapis, the glows from which, glaring on the slopes of the billows’
blackness in dabblements, gave to the bay the goriness of Aceldama.
A boat lay at the end of the quay; but as the sea was very rough,
and trouble was looked for in embarking Lepsius, all the party went
forward to see the boat, leaving him seated alone on a block of stone.
The boatmen, who lay on their oars, called that they would wait for a
calmer moment; so it was some minutes ere Miss Eve ran back to bring
Lepsius, and then to her amazement, met him on his knees—the roar of
the breakers and of the gale in his ears, the sprays raining on his
face, or his engrossment, may be, in his prayer, preventing him from
hearing her approach. She with an uplifted hand, stood hushed a little,
listening, catching some words, the bursting of his sobs.... “Who
hearest, but dost not heed, the bleatings of brutes ... yet if just one
human wish for once may move thee ... let no speck of grit ever prick
her eyes to agonise her; oh, I was sick and she visited me pelt her; I
am reft, despoiled, and she makes choice of me ... chase, infest her
every hour with fresh showers and astonishments of joy——”
She touched him, saying, “Come.”