BELEAGUERED
“What shall be said of this embattled day,
And armèd occupation of this night!”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _Parted Love_.
M. des Graves paused to shut the library door behind him ere he turned
to Gilbert with the light of a great thankfulness on his face.
“_Deo gratias_!” he said. “Gilbert, it is like a miracle to have you
here, for this afternoon I had a terrible conviction of disaster.”
The Marquis, who had passed him and gone straight to a chair by the
hearth, threw himself down in it as he replied, in a voice by no means
remarkable for grateful feeling: “Oh, I was never, that I know of, in
real danger. But I suppose one is lucky to be back.” He gave a short
laugh devoid of merriment, and leant his head against the back of the
chair as if he were weary.
“You are tired, my son,” said the priest, looking down for a moment
compassionately at his figure, with its air of something deeper than
fatigue. “Go to bed now, and we can talk to-morrow morning.”
“What! when I have not heard all about you!” exclaimed the Marquis,
looking up at him. “No—sit down, Father; I am not too tired to talk.”
At least, if he were, it was rest of a kind to be in here. Louis’
face! What had he said to him? . . . He had half forgotten already.
But with M. des Graves he would neither have the temptation to say
more than he meant to say, nor run the risk of being plied with
questions.
The Curé poked the recently-lit fire. “Then if you really are not too
tired let me hear all about it.”
“About what? You had the narration at supper.”
“Yes, but it was not altogether lucid on some points,” answered the
priest as he sat down. “I am really curious to know how you managed to
get Louis out of La Force. Am I right in concluding that the friend in
need was Madame d’Espaze?”
Gilbert nodded, and then, rousing himself, related his interview with
that lady, finding, to his surprise, that it stirred in him a certain
amount of interest and pleasure. M. des Graves appeared to find in it
the same qualities.
“Well, well,” he remarked at the end, “it will give our poor Louis a
kindly remembrance, after all, of the divinity about whom he wrote so
warmly. And so you brought him out of Paris as your valet? But tell me
about his hurt, for I fear by his looks, poor boy, that it is still
causing him a good deal of suffering.”
“That is quite probable,” remarked Château-Foix, and proceeded to a
more detailed narrative. His strong will carried him successfully
through this recital, but it could not infuse sympathy into his voice.
However, M. des Graves did not seem to notice anything, and, indeed,
Gilbert himself was hardly aware that there was anything to notice.
“Yes, we must look after him well now,” said the priest thoughtfully.
“No doubt rest is all he needs after the continuous travelling. . . .
And Lucienne! How the poor child must have suffered—first that
dreadful experience on the 20th of June, and then the separation! God
grant that it be not long, for both your sakes!”
As he uttered these words the Curé happened to glance across at
Gilbert, and what he saw in his face effectually deprived him for the
moment of further speech. Startled and shocked, he looked hastily
away, and, hardly knowing what he was doing, again took up the poker
at his feet and thrust it into the fire.
“You will put the fire out, mon père,” said Gilbert. “There is too
much wood on it, or else it is green. Let me take off the top log.
That is better. . . . Let me see: what were we talking of? Oh,
Lucienne’s journey. . . . The Princess and Madame Gaumont were most
kind; and I wrote, of course, to my uncle Ashley.”
“The child must be in Suffolk by now,” observed the priest, following
his lead.
“Long ago, I imagine.”
“You have not heard from her since, then?”
“Not unless there is a letter awaiting me here. But I know that there
is not. No doubt I shall have one in a day or two. . . . And now,
Father, it is getting late, and I must hear about you and events
here.”
The priest bent forward. “Gilbert, I must tell you first a very
serious piece of news which concerns you personally, but not
Chantemerle. I did not want to tell you immediately upon your
arrival—nor before the others. There was a rising last week in the
Lyonnais. Château-Foix, among other places, was attacked——”
“And is now no longer in existence,” finished the Marquis coolly.
“How did you know?” ejaculated his companion.
Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. “I did not know. I merely guessed. I
assume from your tone that I am correct?”
“The house was burnt to the ground. I am afraid that there is not a
doubt of it. There were no lives lost; that is one thing to be
thankful for.”
The Marquis continued to be unmoved. “No, I am not in the least
surprised. The whole district was in a ferment of revolutionary ardour
when I was there last spring. I thought that this would happen sooner
or later. As you know, I was never fond of the place, and the wreckers
have relieved me of a few thousand crowns of income and an uncongenial
responsibility. Let me be assured that no one has been burning
anything here!”
“That is hardly likely. There is not really much to tell you. It was
on June 30th, four days after you left, that the Directory decreed the
attendance of all non-jurors at Fontenay. We had warning of their
intention the day before, and Madame, on hearing of it, bade me take
up my residence here at once, in case of a search being made for me in
the village. But there has been no search, and I have not felt obliged
to debar myself from visiting my flock as usual, though I have not
returned to the _presbytère_.”
“I should think not, indeed!” commented the young man. “And, Father,
for God’s sake be careful how you show yourself in the village. Are
you saying Mass in the church?”
“No—here, for the present. Madame allows the villagers to attend—as
many, that is, as the chapel will accommodate.”
Gilbert stared into the fire. “And what will be the next move of these
scoundrels? If only we were not so helpless—if only we were organised
in some way!”
“Organised!” exclaimed M. des Graves in surprise. “Organised as what?”
Gilbert made no immediate reply, but continued to sit, with his elbows
on his knees, staring into the heart of the fire. “I met a remarkable
person on my travels,” he said, without removing his gaze, “a man whom
I never thought to see in the flesh, still less to like—the Marquis de
la Rouërie.”
“You met La Rouërie!”
“Yes, near Laval. He was in hiding. He offered to help me to organise
Vendée as he has organised Brittany.”
“And what did you say?” asked his companion, with the deepest
interest.
“That it could not be done. I am persuaded that it cannot. But I wish
it could.” He sighed. “And then, if it could, I am not sure that it
would be the right course to take.”
The priest, with compressed lips, contemplated Gilbert as though he
found in him a study of absorbing interest. But before he could make
any pronouncement the door opened, and the Marquise was visible on the
threshold, with a candle in her hand.
“I wish that one of you would come and look at Louis,” she said with a
troubled air. “I am afraid that he is in a good deal of pain, and his
shoulder is by no means in a satisfactory state. I am not at all easy
about him.”
“Is he light-headed?” asked Gilbert abruptly.
“Light-headed? No,” answered his mother. “Why should you think so? Oh,
I suppose he has been so?”
“Once,” said Château-Foix shortly; and then, partly for the sake of
torturing himself, partly because his answer seemed to require
expansion, he went on: “He was delirious for several hours the day
after he got his hurt, but then he was in a high fever. I asked
because I wondered if he had any fever to-night.”
“That is just what I cannot make out,” said the Marquise. “I do not
think he has, but he does not seem himself. I should like to send for
a surgeon.”
“You have an excellent one in the house, Madame,” put in the priest
half-jestingly, looking at Gilbert.
The Marquis winced almost perceptibly, and made hasty disclaimer.
“No,” he said, “I know nothing of surgery, and it seems I have done
little good. Will you go up to him, Father?” He turned away as though
the matter were settled, and, with a renewal of the impalpable sense
of discomfort, the priest followed the Marquise out of the room.
Madame de Château-Foix recited symptoms and apprehensions to him all
the way up the staircase, but she let him go in alone.
The shield of Chantemerle, woven in the faded tapestry of the great
bed, replaced above Louis’ head the elegances of his Parisian couch
with a sort of symbolism. He had exchanged the tutelage of his Cupids
and poppies for the guardianship of the nine red merlettes on a golden
ground, quartered with the saltine azure on a field of silver—the coat
of that honourable and very ancient Poitevin house of which, with
Gilbert, he was the last male representative. Since it was summer the
four gaunt posts stood up unclothed, and by the light of a couple of
candles burning on a console by the side of the bed, the priest, as he
entered, saw its occupant turn his head towards him. He looked faintly
surprised and pleased.
“I have come to see how you are,” said the Curé, smiling down upon
him. “Are you in pain, dear boy?”
Louis smiled back. “I do not see that there is any heroic purpose to
be served by denying it,” he replied with his usual light manner, but
in a voice that betrayed him. “Yes, I am.”
“May I look at your shoulder, Louis?”
“Certainly, Father,” responded the Vicomte politely; and as the Curé
came round to the other side of the bed he sat up, shaking back his
loosened hair, and unfastened his shirt.
“Madame has been dressing it, has she not? It is rather a pity to
disturb her work,” observed the priest as he gently unwound the
bandages. “But I should like to see the place. . . . My dear Louis,
it is only half healed!”
“I know it,” said the sufferer, smiling ruefully. “It keeps on
breaking out again, and that is why I am getting so tired of the
confounded thing.”
“Does it pain you more when I touch it?” asked his visitor, making
the experiment.
“It makes no difference. Or perhaps I should be nearer the truth,”
added Louis in his most graceful manner, “if I said that it made it
easier.”
The priest smiled too, as his long skilful fingers replaced the
bandage. The two understood each other, as always, very well.
“Now lie down, my son. This needs looking after, and, please God, we
shall have you as sound as ever in a day or two. You have not had a
fair chance. I wish I could ease the pain.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Saint-Ermay, obeying. “Only it is wearing
to the temper. I have it every night now, but it was rather worse this
evening. By the way, you understood why—why I went out without your
blessing? Just then I was afraid of alarming my aunt.”
“I quite understood.”
“I thought you would forgive me. I believe I scarcely said good-night
to Gilbert either. . . . I really did not quite know what I was
doing. . . . Don’t go, Father!”
The priest returned to the other side of the bed, where there was a
chair drawn up, and sat down in it. “Louis,” he said with gentle
reproach, “it is not conversation but sleep that you require.”
“Well, I can’t sleep,” retorted the Vicomte. “And I don’t know that I
want to talk. I only want you to stay a little.” His tone was light,
but there was something of strain in the smile with which he slipped
his right hand over the bedclothes to his visitor.
M. des Graves took the hand between his own. “What am I to do with
you?” he asked, with a charming half-playful severity. “Do you want me
to tell you how glad I am to have you back—for I believe that I have
not done it yet?”
“It is strange to be back,” said Louis, half to himself. “There was a
time, you know, Father . . . in Paris . . . when I did not think that
I should ever come back.” He gave a toss in the bed. “One doesn’t ever
really come back, does one?”
“My dear Louis, what do you mean?” exclaimed the priest, rather
startled, as the bright eyes fixed themselves on his.
The Vicomte gave an odd little laugh, and looked away again. “I
meant . . . you never come back the same . . . anywhere . . . and
when——” He stopped and caught his breath. “Forgive me—I believe I am
talking nonsense.”
It was true that the pulse in his wrist was hammering hard beneath the
priest’s fingers, but somehow M. des Graves did not think of fever.
Never in his life had he seen Louis so bereft of his usual airy
composure, nor heard him make such a speech, which was the last kind
of utterance one would have expected from him. Was it all due to his
physical condition? The strange scene at the end of supper rose up
again before his mind. Like a wise man he said nothing, but kept the
hot hand firmly in his own cool grasp. And for perhaps two ticking
minutes by the clock Louis said nothing either, but lay staring at the
foot of the bed. Suddenly he flung himself over on to his side.
“Father. . . ”
It was to the priest as though, after many years of acquaintance with
a pleasant lighted window, hung over with a fine and impenetrable
curtain, some one had suddenly pulled aside the veil, and for the
first time a living countenance had looked out from the unsatisfying
glow. It was Louis’ decently buried self which came and looked out at
him in that moment, and it was not at all light and gay like the house
in which it lived, for in the eyes which held him so fast M. des
Graves knew the face of a soul in need. He was afraid to speak or
move.
“Father, I wonder if——”
What was it that the eyes asked so insistently of him? He was ready
to give anything to answer them. With Louis’ hand—clenched and
rigid—between both his own he bent nearer, and said in a voice full of
comprehension and gentleness: “You want me, Louis?”
Suddenly the eyes wavered, the hand in his own lay limp. Louis drew a
long breath between set teeth, then he turned away his head. “Perhaps
it would be better to go to sleep—if I can,” he said faintly.
To whatever disclosure it was the broken prelude, the moment was gone,
perhaps for ever. But even if it had been the priest’s way to attempt
to elicit unwilling confidences—and the Poles were not further apart
than he and that practice—he would have known better than to attempt
it with his present companion. His taciturn cousin would have been no
more difficult subject. The claim for help was withdrawn half uttered;
it was the bitterest disappointment to him, but all that he said was:
“Would you like me to read to you, Louis? Perhaps that might send you
to sleep.”
The Vicomte was regaining his usual self, deeply shaken though it had
been. “Thank you,” he said gratefully. “Yes, I should like it.”
“What shall I read to you, then?” enquired the Curé, not without a
thought of the interrupted conversation downstairs. But that could
wait.
“I will be ill for a long time if you are going to nurse me, mon
père,” observed Louis parenthetically. This time the look in his grey
eyes was very pleasant to see. “Surely you have . . . some book or
other in your pocket. Read me some of that; I don’t mind what it is.”
And with a mischievous twitch of the mouth he settled himself for
Saint François de Sales.
But M. des Graves, quite innocent, sat down and felt for _La Vie
Dévote_, only to find that it was not in the pocket of his cassock. “I
have not got it,” he said, acknowledging by the pronoun the identity
of the volume. “Is there nothing here?” He looked round, and seeing a
little pile of books by the candlesticks took one up.
“Oh, you won’t like any of those,” interposed Louis quickly. “They are
all Crébillon, and so forth. If you look in the bookcase——”
But he stopped, for the priest had with great deliberation put on his
spectacles (concerning which Louis had always held the theory that
they were unnecessary), and now opened one of the deprecated works.
“My dear Louis,” he said, looking at him over the top of his glasses,
“do you imagine that I meant to read sermons to you? I am an old man;
if you can read . . . Voltaire, I see this is . . . I suppose I may. I
shall begin from this marker. Now shut your eyes and try to fancy—if
you can—that you are in church and listening to a homily. That ought
to be efficacious.”
The Vicomte’s mouth twitched again, but he closed his eyes obediently,
and as a kind fortune had placed the marker in the opening pages of
_La Princesse de Babylone_, the reader’s feelings went unlacerated,
and his hearer’s attention wandered off into slumber about what time
the fair Formosante was beginning her lengthy conversation with the
phœnix.
But long after his regular breathing showed that Louis had fallen
asleep, the priest sat and looked at him. If only he could have helped
him! The deepest and tenderest pity filled him for that careless
nature, so wilful and so engaging. And what crisis had faced him now
that he should have attempted to speak of it? Could it have any
connection with Gilbert and his inexplicable constraint? They would
neither of them tell him, because they were neither of them dependent
on him, as he might have made them had he been himself less strong.
But there had been times when the consciousness of that abstention,
far from being sustaining, was beyond words bitter to him, and even
to-night it had power to pierce him with a tiny pang. Things might
have been so different. . . .
The candles flickered gently, and the little feetless, beakless birds
of the coat of arms caught a passing semblance of life other than
heraldic. To the priest those bearings were now more familiar than the
golden cinquefoils of the name which had once been his. . . . He might
almost be a Chantemerle himself by absorption. . . . And suddenly he
saw himself, an ageing man, effaced from the memory of his world, more
than a little tired with two-and-twenty years of monotonous labour
among a people religious indeed, but better served, perhaps, by a
priest of their own class, the schoolmaster of two boys who had
forgotten his teaching, the friend of two young men who would bring
him any troubles but those he most desired to hear, on the verge of
being taken away even from what work he had been able to accomplish
either for them or for his flock—an ageing man, with nothing done,
nothing to show. . . .
Yes, the Allwise had indeed taught him his own impotence, even in this
lower sphere into which He had thrown him. And yet he was content. He
sat there by the bedside, and thought with indescribable horror of
those long years when he could not say that. He thought of the times
without number when he went through his round of duties, visiting,
reading the offices, teaching the two boys, even saying Mass, longing
all the while to get away into some solitude where he could throw
himself into that conflict which was the outcome of rebellion against
his self-imposed sacrifice—a conflict which was all the fiercer
because the citadel of his will was never really shaken. Every time,
at the end, he made the sacrifice anew; every time he found relief,
though it was but the relief of physical exhaustion; every time he
was tempted to think that the offering was not accepted, because he
was left so long in what he now knew to have been the night of
dereliction. How deeply he had learnt during those years the truth of
what had been said to him when, clothed in all the first enthusiasm of
renunciation, he thought that he had already plumbed the deeps of
self-immolation: “You have but entered on the way of sacrifice; I
doubt if you will reach your Calvary for many years.”
All that strife was over now—had grown weaker and less frequent with
time. God had closed that lesson-book; the scholar had learnt content.
He was even resigned that the little which was left him, the
confidence of the two young men for whom he had come to care so much,
should fail him. And he thanked God for the grace to feel this
. . . and came out of his reverie.
Louis was undoubtedly fast asleep now. The priest got up, replaced the
_Princess of Babylon_ on the console, and blowing out one candle took
up the other. He stood for a moment by the bed, shading the light with
one hand, and looking down at the young man lying sunk among its many
pillows, but certainly thinking less at that moment of his physical
than of his spiritual needs. Then with a little sigh he roused
himself, and, making the sign of the cross over the sleeper’s head,
turned and went quietly out of the room.