GILBERT IS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL
“Puis une révolte surgit en lui contre lui-même, contre cette
honteuse insinuation du moi défiant, du moi jaloux, du moi méchant
que nous portons tous. . . . On ne peut rien contre l'Idée. Elle est
imprenable, impossible à chasser, impossible à tuer.”
—GUY DE MAUPASSANT, _L'Epreuve_.
Château-Foix passed under the escutcheoned gateway into the street.
Madame Gaumont and Lucienne’s maid, appearing on his frantic ringing
of the bell, had turned him somewhat ignominiously out of the room,
until the former, reissuing, had allayed his anxiety with the news
that the dear child had recovered her senses, that there was nothing
to fear, but that it would obviously be wiser for him not to see her
again at present. The good lady gave him to understand how profound
was her sympathy with the emotional crisis which had produced so
moving a result.
So Gilbert left the Hôtel de la Séguinière. He was concerned and
anxious, and could not blame himself sufficiently for allowing
Lucienne to have heard the truth about Louis. He had better have lied.
And he had turned into the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux when suddenly he
stopped, and put his hand across his eyes. A vision had abruptly
presented itself of Lucienne, white and quivering with excitement,
uttering those words that rang with terror and passion, “Why ‘if you
can’? Why ‘if you can’? You are hiding something. . . .” He felt her
again in his arms, inanimate the one moment, the next—— And this—this
at the mention of Louis’ name, of Louis’ danger. . . . The hideous
suspicion was impossible, and yet—— He would know the truth at once,
he would go back and ask Lucienne herself. He swung on his heel, and
stopped, won by wiser counsels. Did he purpose to make a fool of
himself, to play the jealous lover, and at such a time, when the
balances of life and death were weighing? The poor child would
naturally be anxious; her passion was conjured up by his own
disordered imagination; she was tired; how could he have dreamed such
a thing! Once more he turned his face westward and walked rapidly on.
But alas! to drive away a thought is not to slay it. The terrible
idea, which had sprung full-panoplied into being, was immortal, and he
knew it. The sting had been dealt, and the poison was ineradicable.
The street seemed to lengthen and contract, to be gripping his heart.
It came back the second time like a harpy—“What guarantee have you
that Louis has not played you false, that Lucienne has not deceived
you?” He cast it away the second time, still walking on, though he was
unconscious of movement, for it seemed as if the world stood still.
But it was like fighting the sea. For the third time it surged back
upon him—“Suppose, suppose . . .” And then round a corner, in that
network of little streets, he came face to face with D’Aubeville.
“A moment!” said the latter in a low voice, gripping him by the arm
without an apology. He was rather pale, and his breath came short as
though he had been running. “Give me a moment!” He drew the Marquis up
an alley. “You know he has been arrested?”
“Louis?” asked the Marquis. “Yes. Do you know where he is?”
“If you can get him released,” said D’Aubeville rapidly, without
replying to the question, “I can get him out of Paris.”
“But where is he?” exclaimed Gilbert impatiently. “I can get him out
of Paris myself, if I can find him.”
“She must know, if no one else does,” returned D’Aubeville. “Go to
her—to Madame d’Espaze. She knows, and she could get Lecorrier to
release him.”
“Madame d’Espaze,” repeated the Marquis. “She knows, you say—but would
she do it?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “It is a chance—the only one.
At least, if she would do it for any one, she would do it for
Saint-Ermay.”
“Give me her address,” said Château-Foix. “I can but try. If we knew
where he is it would be something.”
D’Aubeville nodded, scribbling meanwhile in a pocket-book. “There is
her address. Get Saint-Ermay released before to-morrow evening—I can
do nothing myself, I should merely be taken too—and send him to the
address I have written beneath it. . . . No, you say you can manage
that part yourself. It is all over; I must go and see if any of us are
left—and you should not be seen talking to me. Good luck to you!”
“Tell me one thing,” interposed Gilbert hastily. “This woman—I know
nothing of Louis’ relations with her—can I bribe her?”
D’Aubeville turned. “I should doubt it. I cannot tell you how to
prevail upon her; I must leave that to you. She is a devil, but she
has a heart sometimes. And at any rate she knows where he is.” He
disappeared in the dusk.
The Marquis stood still, collecting his thoughts. A moment or two ago
Louis’ peril had sunk forgotten beneath his possible treachery. Now
the full realisation of his imminent danger swept like the incoming
tide over a shore of suspicion that would be bared again at ebb. The
flood carried Château-Foix along with it. He summoned a passing
vehicle, sprang in, and drove at once across the river to Madame
d’Espaze’s house in the Rue de Tournon.
The rush of feeling had borne him up to the very door of the
enchantress before he began to consider what he should say to her.
Should he plead or threaten, argue or bribe? Not knowing the lady he
concluded (perhaps not unwisely) that it was useless to arrange a
plan of campaign until he had seen her, and rang the bell on this
resolution.
Alas, Madame was not at home to any one. No, she had given positive
orders. And then only did Gilbert realise that it was something late
for a visit. Would she receive him to-morrow morning? Sped by a
handsome gratuity, the lackey went back with the Marquis’ card. He
returned to say that the Comtesse would gladly receive Monsieur at
ten. With this consolation Gilbert, baffled, went slowly down the
steps between the flowering shrubs and through the gay little
courtyard out again into the street.
And gradually the tide began to ebb. There was nothing to be done till
morning—nothing but think. Once back in his room at the hotel there
seemed indeed to be every likelihood of his doing that till daybreak,
the more so that a certain merciless clearness of vision was beginning
to bathe past and present in a dreadful illumination. Everything was
patent to him now. That he should not have known better! That he could
have had the incredible folly to trust Louis near Lucienne; to believe
that there was at least one woman in the world whom he would respect.
Fool! it had probably made the prize but the more desirable!
The horrible source of light in Gilbert’s brain brought back incident
after incident in the past, all pointing to the one goal. No sooner
had one swept before him than another rushed upon its heels. “And I!
and I!” they cried to him, ghosts of his unutterable folly, of Louis’
treachery, of Lucienne’s weakness. He had trusted so completely that a
revulsion so complete stripped instantly every rag of faith from him,
and left him naked to the storm. For a little while he was able to
regard the event from almost an impersonal standpoint; then the
kaleidoscope shifted, and his proud and writhing spirit beheld himself
as the victim, laughed at, perhaps, or worse, pitied; till at last,
passing by the image of Lucienne with averted face, his mind fixed on
the thought of Louis in a passion of hatred. As yet he would not,
could not examine her position; it was Louis who was guilty; it was
Louis who had entrapped her; it was Louis, curse him, curse him!—with
his beauty and his grace, his ready tongue, his gay smile, and just
that reputation for gallantry likely to render him more attractive
still.
And suddenly, as the bells of Notre Dame des Victoires behind the
hotel chimed the quarter past nine, a thought, scarifying in its
intensity, tore shuddering across the night of his mind. He had
revenge in his very hands. He could leave Louis where he was—leave him
to rot in the prison to which his philandering with another woman had
brought him—leave him to be hanged on a lamp-post like the Marquis de
Favras, to be torn in pieces like De Launay, to have his handsome,
insolent head paraded along the streets on a pike point, like
Foulon—like him, perhaps, with a wisp of grass between the lips which
had lied and kissed. . . .
It was not at once that Gilbert realised to what voice he was
listening. The shock of the image he had conjured up for himself told
him. O God! was he like that! His head fell forward on his arms. . . .
Ten o’clock had struck before he lifted it. The bitter shame and
conflict of that three-quarters of an hour had brought the pendulum
back with a swing. What shadow of proof had he? Lucienne had been
overwrought; how had he dared to think such a thing of her? It was a
nightmare out of which he would awaken with the dawn.
But when the dawn came he had not awakened; only, haggard and
doubt-ridden, he threw himself on his bed to gain a little respite ere
he set out to play his last desperate stake for the life of the
kinsman who had—or had not?—done him so foul an injury.