“LES VEILLÉES DU CHÂTEAU”
“Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
One day when all days are one day to me!
Thinking, ‘I stirred not and yet had the power!’
Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way . . .
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Song of the Bower_.
“Jasmin,” said the Vicomte, looking at his retainer in the glass,
“does this remind you of the last time you shaved me? If so, please
don’t cut me as you did then!”
For the old valet, who had at last succeeded in making his way from
Paris, and had arrived the evening before, was now, with joy, tucking
the towel round his master’s neck.
“Oh, M. Louis, don’t speak of it!” he implored.
“Well, I was even worse shaved in La Force, if that is any consolation
to you,” returned Louis teasingly. “And now, just as you are going to
begin, don’t you almost expect to hear a knock at the door?”
“Mon Dieu, I hope not!” said Jasmin with fervour, and ere the words
were out the shaving brush fell from his hand. “Mary Virgin!” he
exclaimed, for some one had knocked at the bedroom door—the quick,
decisive knock of a person who desired to enter at once.
Louis burst out laughing, for, as a matter of fact, his keener ears
had heard and recognised the step. “Come in, Father,” he cried. You
have just given Jasmin a horrible fright.”
But the sight of the priest’s face and of the open letter in his hand
had its effect on the Vicomte also. He jumped up, wrenching away his
towel. “Gilbert!” he exclaimed. “Not bad news?”
“No, thank God, good—on the whole,” answered M. des Graves. “Read it.”
“I take the earliest opportunity,” wrote the Marquis, “of letting you
know that I am laid up in Brittany—at a place whose name I will not
write lest my letter miscarry—with a broken leg. I am in good hands
and well looked after, but some weeks must necessarily elapse before I
can hope to travel. I regret this the more since I hear rumours of a
rising in Deux-Sèvres, and am very anxious to learn that you are still
free from molestation. You might, if you wished, write to me at the
address of 6 Rue Haute-du-Château, Nantes; the letter would reach me
in time. Meanwhile, though I am longing to be back, I must possess my
soul in patience. I have seen ‘Monsieur Milet.’”
Louis drew a long breath of relief. “Well, that’s satisfactory as far
as it goes,” he said, returning the letter. “Gilbert seems to be
seeing life in Brittany. I wonder how he broke his leg. Imagine
Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix climbing out of a window; for I
suppose he was escaping, or something of the kind.”
“I believe,” said the Curé, smiling also, “that you wish you were
‘seeing life’ in Brittany too.”
“Not at all,” returned the Vicomte. “As a temporary country gentleman
I am reaping a perfectly fresh harvest of experience here.” He
suddenly dropped his bantering tone, and gripped the priest’s hands
for a moment. “If you will go down, Father, I will be with you in a
few minutes. Jasmin!” For Jasmin had discreetly vanished.
* * * * * *
A broken leg is not commonly a source of satisfaction to the friends
of the sufferer, but it is undeniable that Gilbert’s injury did appear
in something of this light to M. des Graves and to Louis. So September
drew to a close in less agitating circumstances. It was true that any
day might still see soldiers coming up the avenue to hunt for the
proscribed priest—for whom they had already searched the three months’
empty _presbytère_—that he had to remain closely hidden, that he
was absolutely at the mercy of the denunciation of malice or the
indiscretion of devotion. Above all, there was the danger that the
authorities should see fit to instal a “constitutional” in the cure—a
move which would inevitably have led to the detection of M. des
Graves. But the supply of _assermentés_ was fortunately running short,
and Chantemerle, being a small village, was evidently to remain
(theoretically) priestless. Louis, who really did serve in a measure
as M. des Graves’ means of communication with his parish, was driven
one day to suggest that he himself should seek orders from the
constitutional Bishop of Luçon, and should settle at the _presbytère_.
When Monseigneur de Mercy, the dispossessed prelate, came to his own
again, he could declare the orders invalid, and the Vicomte could
resume his status as a layman without prejudice.
Louis’ spirit of persiflage could not be imagined as wholly deserting
him even in the article of death, but for some time now his gaiety had
appeared to his companion to be a little flagging. The inaction was
indeed fretting him horribly. He seemed to himself to have dropped out
from the contest, he whose ardent royalism had already gone near to
cost him his life. Gilbert and he appeared to have changed places; and
what would he not give to join La Rouërie too! And when, at the end of
August, came the news of Longwy, when, at the beginning of September,
Verdun had opened its gates to Brunswick and the _émigrés_, he
abandoned the attempt to conceal his impatience. The Princes and
the exiles were once more on French soil, would soon be marching
on Paris—and he was not with them. Again he accused himself of
deserting his comrades, for D’Aubeville was in the invading ranks, the
others still in the prisons whence he might have been helping to
deliver them. . . . But that ideal at least could never have known
realisation. Almost simultaneously with the news of Verdun came the
tidings of the September massacres, a red flood which swept away De
Périgny and all the rest with whom Louis had laughed and gamed and
plotted. Jasmin, when he arrived, had furnished terrible details of
gutters running ankle-deep in blood, of harpies dancing wild measures
on the cart-loads of mutilated corpses. And in the smoke of Valmy, a
little later, vanished the illusive hopes of the _émigrés_. That throw
was played and lost. Yet to a man of Saint-Ermay’s temperament it was
poor consolation to have staked nothing on it.
M. des Graves knew this, and sympathised with all his heart. And, as
the monotonous days dragged on, he was touched, even to admiration, by
the Vicomte’s unwearied good temper and courtesy towards himself. He
gave him, in return, much of his time, and, having always tended to
assume in the young man a side for which other people—including Louis
himself—never gave him credit, he would often talk to him of subjects
near his heart. Louis had a curious faculty of understanding.
But Louis himself had a subject not to be discussed with anybody.
Never again, since that evening of fever and weakness, had he been
tempted to speak of Lucienne to the priest. His secret and hers must
remain inviolate. He thought of her constantly. She was dearer than
ever now that the sea lay between them. He could see her in the
English autumn; he could even see her in the future—the uncertain
future—here at Chantemerle, its mistress, when he himself would be far
away fighting under an alien flag. And in the past. . . . But to think
of that was madness. He had held her in his arms and had let her go.
The sting of the thought sent him out on the long lonely rides to
which he was becoming more and more addicted—rides in which the
peasants sometimes saw him galloping like one possessed, and which
brought Saladin home in a state to horrify the stable-yard. For the
old conflict had all to be fought out again between passion and
honour, love and conscience, his duty and his desire.
And yet, though time and separation had fanned his love into a more
ardent flame, would he have done differently if he had his chance
again? He could not bring himself to say so. This seemed strange to
him. He did not know that loss and sacrifice, besides intensifying,
had purified the fire, and that the heavy price which he had paid to
keep his shield in this one thing at least unstained, had come back to
him in other ways.
Besides, it was not a purely abstract question. Nothing of the sort
ever is. Sometimes Louis thought to himself that if he had the spirit
of a man he would go over to England even now at the eleventh hour and
claim her. What kept him back? Not, assuredly, the difficulty of
getting out of the country. . . . No, it was the thought of Gilbert,
of that undemonstrative and reliable kinsman, who held such odd social
views, who was so lacking in geniality, who could be so actively
unpleasant, whose high moral standard was quixotic and irritating,
whom he heartily respected and for whose good opinion he was almost
ashamed to find how much he cared. The discovery that he really loved
his cousin Louis never consciously made.
M. des Graves, though he did not know the truth, saw quite well, in
spite of Louis’ careful and elaborate defences, that he was engulfed
in some mental turmoil. As the days went on the young man fell,
despite himself, into long and most unusual silences. Were these
things merely due to the enforced solitude of what Louis had himself
termed his “retreat”? The priest did not think so.
One event only broke the monotony of the end of October. As Louis was
standing one morning in the hall awaiting his horse, the Curé opened
the library door and came out.
“Good-morning, my dear Louis,” he said. “I wanted to see you before
you started, to tell you that, with your permission, I shall have a
guest at dinner to-day.”
“I shall be delighted,” responded the young man, pulling on his gloves.
“It is not, by any good chance, a lady—one of your parishioners, of
course.”
“If you want to give a dinner-party a to the tenants’ wives,” replied
M. des Graves imperturbably, “I do not see why you should deprive
yourself of the pleasure. No, it is merely a priest who is coming to
see me, and to whom I should be glad if you would extend your
hospitality. He will be here this morning, and has come a long
way—from Rome, in fact.”
Louis gave vent to a little whistle. “And is travelling about in
France at this juncture? Rather a dangerous occupation. Bring him by
all means. He will stay the night?”
M. des Graves replied that he was not sure, and Louis went down the
steps to his impatient horse.
He rode far that morning, and had almost forgotten about the
prospective guest, so that when he entered the dining-room he was
surprised to see, standing by the window in converse with M. des
Graves, a tall thin man in lay dress. Turning round, he revealed to
Saint-Ermay’s view an emaciated face with a bird-like nose and tight,
thin-lipped mouth.
“Louis,” said the Curé, “let me present you to Monsignor Giuseppe
Cantagalli. Monsignore, M. le Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”
The newcomer’s bow savoured as much of a court as Louis’ own. His
peculiarly polished air was indeed the first thing to strike the young
man as they sat at meat together; next, the resolution which lay
coiled beneath it, like a spring of steel. The very way he carried his
head, his neat, precise enunciation, were indications of it. Last of
all the Vicomte noticed the extreme deference which he surprisingly
paid to the Curé.
Monsignor Cantagalli did stay overnight, and at supper Louis got
another impression of him. He had been talking easily and rather
racily about the Curia, seeming to fling about great names in rather a
careless fashion, but giving the listener no clue to the reason of his
visit, which Louis, though he would have liked to know it, was much
too well-bred to ask outright. The Pope’s patronage of the arts, his
love of building, his munificence to the newly-founded Vatican museum
next engaged his tongue, and it was plain that he himself appreciated
to the full the advantages of living under a cultured Pontiff in an
almost Renaissance Rome. Thence the talk had drifted on to the
persecution of the Church in Vendée. Enquiring about the expatriated
priests, Monsignor Cantagalli had been told the story of one, old and
ill, who had been dragged, in a state unfit to travel, to Les Sables,
and had there died from the effects of his journey.
Instead of showing pity or horror, the Italian broke into exclamations
of envy. “_Dio mio_, how glorious! May I die the death of the
righteous, and may my last end be like his!” he said, crossing
himself. “And one has wondered whether there was a chance of martyrdom
nowadays! Here in France you have it. How enormously favoured a
country!”
Louis was tickled. “I think we might manage to do with a little less
of the blessing in Vendée,” he observed. “But of course it is a good
locality. Do you yearn to be a martyr, Monsignore? Personally I should
prefer something a little more sensational than to die of overwalking
myself.”
A veritable fire flashed in the priest’s eyes as he turned them on the
flippant young man. Yet it was not the flame of indignation nor of
reproof but of something else.
“It would be presumption, Monsieur,” was all he said; yet, as Louis
remarked afterwards to M. des Graves, “he threw back his head as if he
were already at the stake snuffing up the smoke.” The Vicomte added:
“If the Monsignore makes a really determined effort to get martyred I
think he has every chance of succeeding.” For Louis had not been
greatly drawn to the visitor; and another cause of offence, though one
which he naturally refrained from mentioning, was his suspicion that
M. des Graves had taken advantage of the rare advent of a priest to be
shriven, and for some reason the critic did not consider the newcomer
worthy to confess a saint like M. des Graves.
One more surprise still Monsignor Cantagalli was to cause the young
man before he departed. It was next morning, and Louis, after
breakfasting in his room, had descended to the library. There was no
one there, and it was not at once that he realised the presence of the
two priests outside the open window, for he could not see them in the
balcony. But suddenly he caught the words, “The Holy Father’s most
express wish,” something in a very low voice from M. des Graves, and
then the Monsignore’s clear, finished tones, with an additional ring
of expostulation—“But, Eminence, surely—” And then they passed along
the balcony out of hearing.
The Vicomte stood stupefied. He felt literally as though he were
standing on his head. That title, which not long ago he himself had
used in jest! No, it was impossible. His hearing had played him a
trick. Granted that the Italian was an envoy charged with some message
from the Curia—though that in itself seemed improbable—what he must
have said was “His Eminence,” referring to some Cardinal or other of
whom he had previously been speaking. But what a queer sensation the
misapprehension had caused him, the listener!
He felt a delicacy, on this, of ever asking the priest why Monsignor
Cantagalli had come to the château, and abstained from doing so. He
had a secret; probably M. des Graves had his. And his own, with the
arrival of another letter from Gilbert announcing his return in a week
or two, began to press heavily on him again, so heavily that in the
end, through no wish or knowledge of his own, it escaped his control.
It had been a long, dull day, during which depression had made inroads
on Louis’ mind so noticeable that by the evening M. des Graves had
found himself, most unusually, conducting almost a monologue, and at
last the young man, on the plea of being tired, had betaken himself
early to bed. The priest sat on by the fire reading. At eleven o’clock
he rose to look for the second volume of his book, was unable to find
it on the library shelves, and recollected that the Marquis had been
reading it before he went to Paris. It was probably still in his room,
and after a moment’s hesitation he lighted a candle and set forth in
search of it. The few servants had gone to bed, and the wide staircase
was black, ghostly, and silent as he ascended. He was still immersed
in what he had been reading, as he gently opened the door of the
Marquis’ empty room and entered.
But the room was not empty! There was a burnt-down fire on the hearth,
a couple of candles on the table, and a coat and waistcoat flung upon
a chair. For a moment M. des Graves was staggered, until he suddenly
remembered having heard that the Vicomte was a temporary occupant of
Gilbert’s apartment. Vexed at his intrusion he turned to go, hoping
that he had not disturbed the sleeper, and speculating as to the
incendiary possibilities of the two guttering candles. “I have a very
good mind to blow them out,” he said to himself. “Louis will tell me
that I am becoming an old maid, but it is really very careless of him.
As he has not heard me he is obviously asleep and cannot need them.”
Having resolved on this precaution the priest advanced softly round
the screen which cut off from his view the bed and a portion of the
table. He did not get very far.
Louis was not in bed, nor was he asleep. He was sitting half dressed
at the table, his face hidden in his arms, in an attitude whose
significance there was no mistaking. . . . And as M. des Graves stood
petrified he saw the young man’s shoulders move and his right hand
tighten convulsively at the same instant round some unseen object
which it held. The priest could not avoid knowing what it was, for
between the fingers flowed the broad blue ribbon which commonly
suspended on the wall the little miniature of Lucienne d’Aucourt.