FEARS, HOPES, AND MYSTIFICATION OF M. DES GRAVES
If Louis slept soundly during the remainder of that night M. des
Graves did not. He went down slowly to the library, and sat there a
long time by the dying fire, stunned. Louis in love with Gilbert’s
affianced wife! But that was only a part of the calamity. Had it
stopped there the priest might merely have pitied him, the victim of a
hopeless passion which he had tried to conceal. But the case did not
stand thus; there was more behind. All that sensation of tension which
had afflicted the observer at the return of the cousins from Paris
was explained now, and explained in the most disastrous manner
conceivable. For Gilbert knew something, and therefore there must be
something to know. What was it? That Lucienne was deceiving him? Ah
no! God grant that it was not that! Yet what of the look which he had
surprised on the Marquis’ face that evening when he had spoken to
him of Lucienne—a look which had haunted him ever since? And that
mysterious weight on Louis’ mind, of which, the same evening, he had
so nearly unburdened himself—his fits of depression now. . . . Alas,
it was all too clear. . . . Yet he could not believe that the Vicomte
had acted treacherously. He was in love with Lucienne, granted; it was
a misfortune, but that was all. Back came the other argument; if that
were all, how explain Gilbert’s behaviour, Louis’ own dejection? It
all came round to the same heartbreaking inference. . . .
Between these two verdicts the priest was tossed all the next few
days. He began almost to dread Gilbert’s return; he found himself for
ever gazing at Louis, wondering, hoping, saying to himself that the
boy whom he had loved, whom he had brought up, with whom he had always
been on such terms of semi-intimacy, could not have done such a
thing. But he was always faced by the same conclusion, till at last it
became too painful to be much in the Vicomte’s society, and, feigning
stress of occupation, M. des Graves withdrew more and more into
solitude and the library, because he had not the heart to sit or walk
with the young man and think such things of him. But Louis, absorbed
by the mounting tide of his passion, and dispirited by the conflicts
into which it threw him, noticed nothing. Once or twice indeed it
occurred to him that he was seeing very little of M. des Graves, and
that the dullness was becoming intolerable. He really longed for
Gilbert’s return.
Late one afternoon in November he came riding slowly up the avenue.
Under Saladin’s hoofs the ground, covered with dead and rotting
leaves, plashed soddenly; chill drops descended at intervals from the
half-naked boughs on horse and rider, and the Vicomte, usually a
particularly gallant figure in the saddle, had visible dejection in
his air, as he went up under the elms. Instead of summoning a groom to
take his horse or riding round to the stables he dismounted at the
steps, flung the reins on Saladin’s neck, and, slapping him on the
flank, left him to find his own way to his quarters, while he went to
look in upon M. des Graves. Perhaps the Curé would not now be too busy
to speak to him, as he had been all morning.
The library was sufficiently lit by the firelight to show him that the
priest was not there, but the fancy coming upon him to sit down and
wait a few minutes for him he advanced towards the fire—and suddenly
stood motionless. The glow had revealed to him the top of a familiar
black head resting against the back of one of the arm-chairs.
“Good God!” he said softly. “Is it possible?”
It was. In a second Louis was round the chair, bending over it,
shaking its half-dozing occupant. “Is it really you?” he cried,
dropping to his knees beside him.
The Marquis opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said, with his usual composure;
“it is I. I have been back an hour or more.”
Louis, kneeling there, embraced him. “Ma foi, but I am glad to
see you! I can hardly believe you are here! And you have not got a
crutch, or a wooden leg?”
For answer Château-Foix got to his feet. “No, I am perfectly sound.
And you, Louis?”
He suddenly put both hands on his cousin’s shoulders, and, holding him
at arm’s length in the firelight, gave him a long, intense scrutiny.
“Oh, I am all right,” responded the Vicomte easily. “It is you who are
the more recent invalid now. Let us have a little more light on you.”
He freed himself and went to the mantel-piece for a couple of candles,
while the Marquis dropped back into his chair.
“To think of your coming in upon us in this undramatic fashion,”
remarked Saint-Ermay, a candlestick in either hand. “I should have
liked to organise a triumphal reception for you, mon cher.”
“M. des Graves tells me,” responded Château-Foix, again looking at him
very keenly, “that you are a great hand at organisation—that you have
got the whole village under your thumb.”
Louis lit the candles. “It is very lamentable,” he said deliberately,
“to what an extent holy men will give way to exaggeration. All this is
because I said I’d be shot if I’d have the entire population trooping
up here every morning to Mass. Come now, my dear Gilbert, let me hear
all about your wanderings. You owe us a very detailed account to make
up for all the anxiety you have given us.” He sat himself down on the
arm of his cousin’s chair.
“You must wait till M. des Graves comes back,” said the Marquis
quietly. “I was just beginning to tell him when he was called away,
about twenty minutes ago.”
“What a nuisance,” observed Louis. “Well, tell me at least how you
broke your leg. Were you climbing out of the window with a regiment of
Blues after you? I had a vivid picture of your doing so.”
“No, it was nothing so romantic. I got kicked by a horse.”
“But that might have happened to you at home!” exclaimed the Vicomte
in tones of profound disappointment. . . . “Father, he was _not_
escaping by the window!” For the door had opened, and M. des Graves
was standing there looking at them. And a few minutes later, with the
priest in his accustomed chair, and Louis, still booted and spurred,
leaning against the hearth, the returned traveller began his promised
recital.
“The whole thing was the merest chance. After I had seen off my mother
I happened to go into a certain eating-house in Nantes, and sat down
at a table alone. Behind me were two men—not peasants—talking Breton,
which, as you know, I do not understand. But in the midst of their
conversation, to which I was paying no attention, came suddenly,
several times repeated, the words ‘Monsieur Milet.’ And instantly I
found myself devoured by curiosity to know what these men were saying
about La Rouërie—supposing, indeed, that they were speaking of him. I
waited a little, and then in a pause of their conversation I leant
over to them and said: ‘Gentlemen, I do not understand Breton, so that
I have not been eavesdropping on you, but I could not help overhearing
a name which you mentioned. I once had an acquaintance of that name—a
Monsieur Milet.’
“They looked at me in a curious manner, and one of them—he was quite a
young man, and, now I saw him closer, a gentleman—said: ‘It is not an
uncommon name, sir. Of what profession was this friend of yours?’
“I hesitated for a moment, and then, remembering how La Rouërie had
described himself to me, I said: ‘A merchant of Bordeaux.’”
“Tableau!” exclaimed Louis.
“Not at all. On the contrary, we fenced for fully five minutes, I
afraid alike of compromising M. de la Rouërie and myself. For all I
knew they might be police spies, and I suppose that they had the same
conjecture about me. Well, in the end we satisfied each other most
fully. They were confidential agents of the Marquis reconnoitring in
Nantes—a pretty perilous business—and were just about to return to
the interior. As they saluted me and left the ordinary I had an
overmastering desire to send a message to La Rouërie. I cursed myself
for having let slip the opportunity, paid my score and hurried after
them. I found them standing at a corner, talking and looking back, and
as I came up it was evident to me that I was the person they were
waiting for.
“‘Messieurs,’ said I, ‘would it be imposing too much on your kindness
if I asked you to take a message from me to Monsieur Milet?’
“To this they answered that if I would go with them to their lodgings
they would do better, if I liked. I was perfectly convinced of their
good faith, and (I confess it was foolish of me) it occurred to me
that they possibly meant that La Rouërie himself was in hiding there,
and I wanted very much to see him again, so I accompanied them.”
“Do you know,” commented the Vicomte, “that for a rather particularly
prudent person you have the most extraordinary lapses from sagacity?”
A smile glimmered round Gilbert’s mouth. “I went in with them,” he
pursued. “There was, of course, no La Rouërie there—but directly the
door was shut the younger man took my hand and said: ‘I remember now
the Marquis speaking to me of a Vendean noble whom he met recently
near Laval. Are you not he?’ I said that I was. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘if I
know Armand de la Rouërie, he would give a thousand pounds to meet you
again.’ I believe I replied that I would do the same. Well, to cut a
long story short, I arranged to go with them (as it would be a matter
of a few days only) to see La Rouërie, who was supposed to be still at
Launay-Villiers.”
“And he was not?” asked the priest.
“No. Nor was he at Mauron, whither we went afterwards. Finally, after
a fortnight’s travelling and adventures, with which I will not bore
you, we ran him to earth right in North Brittany, near Lamballe.”
“And then?”
“Then, after I had seen him and talked with him, I found it was not so
easy to get back as it had been to get there. The Blues were hunting
vigorously for him; he had constantly to change his hiding-place and I
was forced to go with him. Nor could I send a message to you. So it
happened that I was with him when the news came of Valmy, with all
that it meant to his plans. Calonne’s letter was the final blow.”
“Calonne’s letter?” enquired Louis.
“The minister wrote bidding him defer action till March. That was
really the end of everything. The confederates dispersed, and I, too,
could delay no longer. I started homewards. Then came my accident. I
was nursed at the _manoir_ where it happened, in the family of an old
gentleman, a M. de Saint-Gervais, who had just been sheltering La
Rouërie himself. That was why I dared not give you the name. As soon
as I was fit to travel I started again—and here I am.”
“Then where is La Rouërie now?” asked both his hearers in a breath.
“Somewhere in the heart of Brittany. He absolutely refused to seek
safety in Jersey. I understand that he left the château of La
Fosse-Hingant, near Saint Malo, at the beginning of October. If
Chalons had fallen he and his Bretons would be in Paris now; perhaps
the King would be back at the Tuileries.”
Gilbert spoke with a fire new to him, and the priest looked at him in
a contemplative silence. Yet the recital, whose beginning had been
full of promising description, had disappointingly tailed off when it
came to the real issue. Both men were conscious of this, but Louis’
attempts to extract more particulars met with small success.
“Then what,” asked the Curé at last, “do you consider to be the
result of your journey?”
“To be frank,” replied the Marquis, “nothing at all.”
But the priest did not believe him.
He was more mystified than ever. He had re-entered the room that
evening—he had paused at the door with a prayer on his lips—strung up
to a most uncomfortable pitch of expectation, prepared to see he knew
not what menacing interview going forward within. Instead of that he
had beheld Louis, his depression banished, sitting laughing on the arm
of his cousin’s chair, in amiable converse with the kinsman whom he
had (perhaps) deeply wronged, and who (perhaps) knew it. It was more
than M. des Graves could fathom. Must he accuse Louis of being,
besides a traitor, the most consummate of hypocrites? No; the most
finished acting in the world could not simulate so well. He _was_
pleased to see the Marquis back; his spirits _were_ genuine. And
Gilbert . . . what of his past bearing? M. des Graves knew the
Marquis’ power of concealing his feelings, his reserve, his mastery of
himself; but he did not credit him with adding to these gifts that of
pretending to an emotion which he did not feel. Therefore the ease
which he displayed in Louis’ presence must be real. What had happened
to him? Did he know nothing, after all? Or—blessed supposition—was
there nothing to know?
Of one thing, however, the priest went to bed that night convinced.
Though he could not yet define or measure it, Gilbert had suffered
some moral transformation during his absence. Next day, however, its
nature was made clearer to him, in the course of a long conversation—a
talk more intimate indeed than they often enjoyed—wherein Château-Foix
frankly admitted some change in himself. Contact with facts had at
last shattered the Liberal ideals which he had so carefully cherished.
La Rouërie’s influence possibly counted for something in the process
of iconoclasm. At any rate, M. des Graves was struck with the
attraction which the Breton had exercised upon him; for in this
interview, perhaps because Louis was not present, Gilbert was much
more prodigal of details about their intercourse.
And it was scarcely a surprise to M. des Graves to find that Gilbert
had brought back from Brittany, besides the increased zeal and energy
for which he could not altogether account, a perfectly formulated
desire of emulating, in some measure at least, the work which La
Rouërie had done in that province. For several days the two discussed
this possibility in all its bearings, before Gilbert, once so opposed
to the mere idea, would yield to the priest’s conviction that to set
on foot throughout Vendée a Royalist organisation analogous to that of
Brittany was not yet desirable and would only court disaster.
Moreover, Château-Foix had changed in other ways—or so it seemed. A
day or two after his return a recrudescence of the search for hidden
priests had led both Gilbert and M. des Graves to the conclusion that
prudence demanded the suppression, during the day, of any sign that
the little chapel at the château was still used for worship. It had
therefore been dismantled one morning after Mass, and later in the day
the Curé took Gilbert to look at it.
Everything was gone—the houselling-cloth from the rails, the peasants’
little votive candles from the shrine of the Madonna, the holy water
from the stoup at the door; and the altar itself, stripped of
everything, even of its crucifix, stood deserted and lightless against
the bare wall.
“Jerusalem is indeed made an heap of stones,” said M. des Graves
sadly, looking at the empty tabernacle. “This is the first day for
half a century at least that you have been without the presence of
the Blessed Sacrament here.”
The Marquis said nothing, but when they got outside he began suddenly:
“I saw a thing in Brittany which struck me very much. When I was at
Mauron there was a riot in the church, in which several lives were
lost. In the midst of the turmoil a man, a young man—I learnt
afterwards that he was a noble—sprang up the altar steps and stood
with drawn sword in front of the tabernacle. It was a fearfully
conspicuous position, and he was shot down by a soldier from the end
of the church. The instant that he fell a peasant took his place,
snatching the sword from his hand. I think it was the finest thing I
have ever seen.”
“I agree with you,” said the priest, his face shining. “Yet your
own countrymen might show you a devotion as lofty. Do you remember
the sublime retort of the dying peasant in the troubles at Saint
Christophe eighteen months ago, when the soldier shouted to him,
‘_Rends-toi!_’ ‘_Rends-moi mon Dieu!_’”
“Yes, I heard of it,” said the Marquis, and fell silent.
M. des Graves went to his room. He had by now given up trying to
penetrate the mystery of Gilbert’s relations with Louis. It was
evident that in Château-Foix’ mind there was no room at once for the
resentment which the priest had feared and the new interests and
enthusiasms whose presence he welcomed with ever-increasing surprise.
The Marquis seemed a different man—a man who was at last perhaps in a
fair way to be able to use his own dormant qualities.
And then . . . was this the prelude to a still greater change? The
priest flung himself down before his prie-dieu. Oh, if what Gilbert
had said this morning only meant that his eyes were opening at last to
the greatest motive power of human life, he would not grudge these
years of anguish in which he had been forced to watch the dying, as it
seemed, of early faith and early enthusiasms in the man whom he had
loved more than a son. He would not grudge his own retirement during
these long twenty years, his voluntary serving of a simple and
credulous people, the despair which had threatened sometimes to
overwhelm him. He would be a thousand-fold repaid.
But gradually, as the weeks wore on to Christmas, the priest’s hope in
this respect died out. Yet his conviction of a change in Gilbert had
become certainty. The Marquis’ moderation was gone; he was filled with
a restless zeal for a cause on which, before his journey to Paris, he
had looked almost as a spectator. Not Louis himself was more enraged
at the imprisonment of the Royal Family, more horror-struck at the
King’s trial. At last the supreme shock of the 21st of January hurried
matters to a crisis.
Gilbert would not lay a finger on his own tenantry; it was not a time,
had it been possible, to collect powder or arms, but he must try, if
not to establish, at least to discover some accord among such of the
neighbouring gentry as had not emigrated. There were, for instance,
Gabriel Baudry d’Asson still in hiding at Brachain, Grelier de
Concize at La Chapelle-Themer, M. de Verteuil, the three De Béjarry
brothers. . . . All this, stern, resolute, and eager, he propounded
one snowy evening at the end of January in the library to M. des
Graves and to Louis, who, white as a sheet in his deep mourning, sat
at the end of the table with his chin in his hand and stared at him,
for once deprived of speech by the catastrophe. Before them lay a
printed sheet, which began by stating that the Directory of the
department had considered “that the death of a tyrant might lead the
slaves who served him to excesses likely to disturb the public
peace. . . .” It was the latest proclamation against priests and
_émigrés_, the King’s execution having, ironically enough, stirred up
the authorities at Fontenay to fresh activity against those who were
most crushed by it.
So, in the hush of horror that lay heavy on them all, Gilbert, with
the example and the precept of La Rouërie before him, began to make
plans. But the apathy of the countryside was remarkable. He could see
quite well from the attitude of his own tenantry that the King’s
death, instead of stirring them to action, had numbed them. And with
them he held his hand. The idea of influencing ignorant peasantry, of
pushing them like sheep into they knew not what, was intensely
repugnant to him. If they themselves moved, well and good. Louis, who
had no such quixotic scruples, was made to give his word that he would
say nothing to incite them. Therefore anything that Château-Foix could
accomplish must be done amongst men of his own class, and of these
there were not many remaining. He entered into correspondence with a
few; he thought, he planned, but the day of action seemed after all a
long way off.
Suddenly the promise of it sprang into much nearer view. Lulled by the
quiet reigning in the department, the authorities had not thought it
necessary to replace the troops of the line, which had been drawn off
during the previous summer. Now, at the beginning of February, it
occurred to them to reorganise the National Guard on a more solid
basis, and they issued a decree to that not very unreasonable effect.
Commissioners were to be sent into every canton, and all persons
capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, if necessary by force.
And at once it was made clear to the misguided Directory how deceptive
was the apathy on which they had relied. The commissioners met almost
everywhere with the most lively opposition, which sometimes ended in
actual affray. Even the village of Chantemerle was in a ferment, and
the peasants at first refused absolutely to send their contingent to
Chantonnay. But the thought that, if they did not, the commissioners
would presently descend upon them, finally decided them, very
grudgingly, to do as they were required. Gilbert had advised them to
this course. It did not seem to him, nor to M. des Graves, that the
crisis had come, but . . . was it coming?