THE CUP BRIMS OVER
“He was first always. Fortune
Shone bright in his face.
I fought for years; with no effort
He conquered the place.
We ran: my feet were all bleeding,
But he won the race.
“My home lay deep in the shadow,
His full in the sun.
Whatever service he called for
It straightway was done.
Once I staked all my heart’s treasure:
We played—and he won.
“Spite of his many successes
Men loved him the same;
My one pale ray of good fortune
Met scoffing and shame.
We sinned: and men gave him pity,
And me only blame.”
It was that very moral change so rightly diagnosed by M. des Graves in
Gilbert which accounted for the bewildering subsidence of the emotions
that the priest had expected him to manifest. The metamorphosis
was like a river which, suddenly swerving from its course, invades
a valley and makes of it a lake. A new landscape surprises the
traveller, but underneath the encroaching waters lie all the time the
features which were there before them, to emerge, perhaps, but little
altered from their burial. So, under the new interests which flooded
Gilbert’s mind, partly submerged by them in a wholly natural manner,
but in part voluntarily thrust down and held down, there existed,
unforgotten, the turmoil of feeling with which he had left his home in
July. But he had come back full of ardour, on fire with schemes, and
quite consciously he had resolved that his own affairs should wait a
little. The carrying out of this resolution demanded, even in his new
frame of mind, not a little carefulness and self-control. He had been
at some pains, by laying stress, in his narrative, on the force of
circumstances, to hide deeply from his hearers—perhaps even to obscure
from himself—how much less he had snatched at the opportunity of a
journey into Brittany from political desire than from the craving for
a respite from his own private passions. It was true that, on the
journey so undertaken, the secondary motive had at last swallowed up
the primary and sharper. He knew that, but it was his concern that
others should be ignorant of the double incentive.
Yet his feelings towards Lucienne, far from having paled, were
infinitely fiercer. That intensification of the powers of his will,
which was really the heart of the change in him, had reacted on his
attitude towards her, of which it was itself in part the offspring.
His love for her, since passion had flowed into it that day in the
Tuileries, had suffered neither diminution nor increase, but his
determination to possess her in spite of everything had immensely
grown. That same feeling, at once loverlike and paternal, which had
dictated the terms of the letter sent by Trenchard, still ruled his
thoughts of her and the letters which he constantly wrote to her.
But the natural result of his wilful exoneration of the girl was
insensibly to throw heavier and heavier odium on the man who had
entrapped her. In spite of his resolution the old nightmare of his
wrongs began to press on him again, yet not so heavily but that he
could control the expression of it. Indeed, he had slipped back so
insensibly to the cold reserve of his pre-Brittany relations with
Louis that neither of them had been quite aware of the reversion.
Even the priest could only ask himself sometimes whether his manner
to Louis was not suspicious, and could not answer his own question.
As for the Vicomte himself, he had always been accustomed to a certain
occasional moodiness and lack of cordiality in his cousin, and that
scene at the supper table in July was blurred by time, by his
recognition of his own physical condition at the moment, and by the
absence of hostility in the Marquis’ greeting when he came back in
November. It was further obliterated by the shock and horror of the
King’s execution, and by the very welcome, if fruitless, activity into
which, with Gilbert, he had plunged. Ere February was out he had
ridden some three score miles on various errands, had enjoyed two
narrow escapes from arrest, and the sensation of a bullet through his
hat. The personal danger, the excitement after the long months of
inaction, was like wine to him, and even had there been any signs of
approaching catastrophe, he might have failed to observe them.
* * * * * *
One evening at the end of February Gilbert found by his plate at
supper-time a letter, dirty, worn, and looking either as if it had
travelled far or had been a long time on the road. Letters were not
now very frequent at Chantemerle, for though the Marquise and Lucienne
wrote regularly, a good proportion of their communications never
reached Vendée. This missive, however, was addressed not to the
Marquis, but to Madame de Château-Foix, seeing which he pushed it
aside.
The three had that evening a not altogether agreeable topic of
conversation, the two-days-old decree of the Directory of Fontenay
requiring all fathers of _émigrés_ to take up their residence at the
_chef-lieu_ and report themselves every morning to the authorities.
“And if Gilbert is not the father of an _émigré_, he is the son of
one,” observed Louis. “Where will you settle at Fontenay, mon cher? I
will come and see you sometimes.”
“It is no jesting matter, Louis,” said the priest. “Not only the
fathers of _émigrés_ are summoned, but their relations and other
persons who, as the decree puts it, are likely to trouble the public
peace by their anti-revolutionary conduct or discourse. You may find
yourself there.”
“I wonder,” said the Marquis thoughtfully, scanning the letter by his
plate, “if this letter to my mother can possibly have any connection
with the decree—be a means of ascertaining whether she has emigrated
or no? I do not know the writing. The postmark is Paris.”
“In the circumstances,” suggested the Vicomte, “had you not better
open it?”
“I think I had,” said Château-Foix, and took it up. But Antoine coming
in at that moment he laid it down again.
“How did this letter come here, Antoine?” he asked as he helped
himself to another dish.
“By the post, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“You did not hesitate about receiving it, or say that Madame la
Marquise was not here, I hope?”
“Certainly not, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied his retainer fervently,
and as he left the room there were signs that he was hurt at the
question.
“By the way, Gilbert,” remarked M. des Graves, “I suppose you know
that there was rioting at La Caillère on Sunday, over the recruiting
for the National Guard?”
“Yes, I know,” answered Gilbert, taking up the letter again. “And
Chevallier the commissioner was stoned, so I hear.”
“There was,” observed Louis, “a much more amusing affair on Sunday at
Fontenay, at the meeting of the Society of the Friends of Liberty and
Equality. It seems that Laparra, the president of that precious club,
has met with a great dressing-down from one Pranger, a professor who
writes poetry and has called Laparra an artisan of discord. That was
in print, but on Sunday——”
And since Gilbert was reading his letter he continued his recital to
the priest.
“This can’t be meant for my mother,” said the Marquis suddenly, and
apparently to himself. Then he folded up the letter and put it rather
quickly into his pocket. “What were you saying about Laparra, Louis?”
But to his cousin’s account of the feud which was rending society at
the _chef-lieu_ he seemed to pay only a divided attention, and when
the meal was ended he disappeared.
M. des Graves looked after him. “I fear there was some cause for
anxiety in that letter,” he said. “Are you coming with me to the
library, Louis? That’s right.” And he smiled at the Vicomte, as the
latter held open the door for him with his usual politeness.
* * * * * *
In his own room, standing by the two candles he had lighted on the
mantel-piece, Gilbert was re-reading the letter addressed to Madame de
Château-Foix.
“I have never forgotten you in my prayers; and now that death is
coming very near to us I wish to send you a line of farewell, though I
fear that it will never reach you. I make no doubt that you are
married now, and finding, perhaps, the happiness that comes from doing
right. But my heart bled for you, my child, in September, for I cannot
hope that he escaped the fate of the other prisoners. Yet he died, I
like to think, a noble gentleman; let this be the reward of the
sacrifice that you both made. God bless you and give you strength.
Pray for me.—ELISABETH.”
These words, when he had made acquaintance with them downstairs, had
seemed to the Marquis simple nonsense; they had conveyed to him
nothing whatever, except a conviction that they could not be meant for
his mother—unless she maintained some very cryptic correspondence of
which he was ignorant. Yet during the short remainder of the meal a
desire had burnt in him to read them again; for, after all, they must
mean something. Now he had his wish.
The characters of the single word of the signature, clear and pointed,
as large again as the others, were beginning to dance before his eyes.
In them lay naturally the key to the rest. But it was impossible! The
Princess was a prisoner, closely watched; how could she conceivably
have got a letter out of the Temple? But argument on that score was
futile, since here was such a letter. And to whom of the name of
Château-Foix could she have desired to send a farewell message save to
the girl who was soon to bear that name? “I make no doubt that you are
married now . . . and finding, perhaps, the happiness that comes from
doing right.” What did that mean?
And this reference to some one killed in September, a prisoner, who
had “died a noble gentleman”? Gilbert’s hand shook. He was beginning
to be unable to think. What, in God’s name, was this mystery? Feeling
that he was on the brink of something unimaginable, he laid the letter
down and lit yet another candle, as if that would make it easier to
read between the lines. What was the sacrifice? Who was the dead man?
It could not be himself . . . nor Louis . . .
God! had Lucienne then yet a third lover!
Horrible ideas began to flash before him. . . . He caught hold of the
mantel-piece to steady himself. . . . Then all at once, with a rushing
illumination, his brain cleared, and he saw everything.
Madame Elisabeth had been Lucienne’s confidante; had known, had
sympathised with Louis. She had heard of the arrest of the young
Royalist plotters; she had heard, in her prison, of their fate in the
September massacres; she had never known that he, the dupe, had saved
his cousin. And Louis was the “noble gentleman,” who had evidently
died, to the Princess’ thinking, in a sort of odour of sanctity—Louis,
the thief, the traitor! He laughed; the situation was full of humour.
Louis as a martyr to honour!
But his brief contemptuous mirth was whirled away like a leaf in the
blazing wind of fury which descended on him. What stung him beyond
endurance was the thought that this meddlesome saint was praying that
Lucienne might have strength to bear her married life with him. To be
the subject of such a petition! . . . And his secret was common
property, then; no doubt there were others who knew of his cousin’s
perfidy, of his own disgrace. . . . For what woman had Louis fought De
Bercy? Do not ask, had said the courtesan from whom he had stooped to
beg the life of the betrayer. Why, even she knew!
He tore the letter in two, and flinging it blindly into the fire,
watched it shrivel, and began to stride up and down the room sick with
rage, and with one word of the expiring handwriting a-dance before his
eyes. _Sacrifice!_
_Sacrifice!_ That meant—the Princess meant—that they had parted.
_Sacrifice!_ What did the fatuous woman know? Evidently, from the
whole tone of the letter, it had been no light thing with either of
them, no passing fancy such as he had insisted on believing it on
Lucienne’s part. Well, Madame Elisabeth might have been duped too.
Since there had been so much between them, there might have been more.
How should the Princess know? And that terrible thought, which had
hitherto spared him, raised its snake-like head and looked him every
moment a little nearer in the face. What exactly had been Louis’
relations with Lucienne?