Dunoisse had been arrested on the steps of the English Embassy upon the
night of the Monster Ball at the Élysée. Not a moment too soon, it may
have been, for the safety of the chicken that had hatched out of the
basilisk-egg.
Having himself suffered the slow torture of imprisonment, who should
know better than Sire my Friend, how to refine and embroider upon the
sufferings of a prisoner? Dunoisse was assigned to the care of the
Commandant of the Fortress under minute and particular instructions,
which were, by that official, scrupulously carried out.
Solitude and Silence were the regimen prescribed for the captive.
Save the Commandant, or the priest who would on rare occasions be
admitted to administer religious consolation--no one might speak to
Dunoisse, or answer when spoken to, save by certain strictly-regulated
signs. Pens, pencils, ink and paper, newspapers and books--manuals of
devotion excepted--were sternly prohibited. In order to guard against
communication between the prisoner and the soldiers of the garrison,
blinds were nailed over the windows of the barracks looking on that
restricted space upon the ramparts, where Dunoisse was permitted to
take the air.
The room allotted to him in the prison of the Fortress was one of
a suite of three that had in 1840 accommodated a certain political
gamester, ruined by the failure of an ambitious _coup_ at
Boulogne. Luck had turned; the penniless plunger had swept the board,
and broken the bank. Now, lifted and borne high upon the tidal wave of
Fortune, he could look down upon Powers and dignities by whom he had
been despised.
The cage that had held the Imperial bird--repaired at the time of his
incarceration--was now dilapidated and leaky. The floor of uneven
bricks was damp and chilly, the plaster of the ceiling was tumbling
down. The paper hung upon the walls of weeping stone in folds and
festoons--the rusty iron sashes of the thickly-barred windows would
neither shut or open. With the fever and ague of the Dobrudja still
upon him, Dunoisse, denied the comfort of fire or extra bedding,
invalid nourishment, medical attendance, or the commonest human
intercourse; would have died, or sunk into a lethargy of inertia ending
in death, but for one thing.
Habitual criminals, when subjected to the system of solitude and
silence, either become imbecile or are rendered tenfold more
brutal, degraded, and dangerous than they were before. Under the
same process, men and women of wide education and high intelligence
condemned by the laws of Government for political offenses--although
the alternative of idiocy or insanity be open to them as to the
felon or the murderer--usually emerge from the ordeal--presuming
they survive?--confirmed in their convictions, strengthened in
determination, fortified by suffering for endurance of greater ills.
The enthusiast has become a fanatic, the propagandist has become a
leader. The cause for which the man or the woman has suffered becomes
flesh of the flesh and bone of the bone.
That intention of atonement--vague, unspecified--that determination
to unmesh the net that he had woven--upheld and supported this man.
Otherwise the fatigue-party of four soldiers with spades, the box of
tarred planks, and the blanket of quicklime would have been called
into requisition--and Sire my Friend would have been disappointed of a
reprisal he had planned.
He had not given Dunoisse the room for nothing. On the stone lintel of
the low, barred window was scratched, perhaps with the point of a nail
or a pair of scissors, a fragment of erotic verse beginning:
“_O charmante Henriette! Mon ange, ma belle!_...”
Dunoisse knew the handwriting for that of his late master. Reminiscent
of that old intrigue, it had few stings for him, who had done
with intrigue forever. There were other inscriptions, in the same
hand--philosophical, heroic, amatory, cynical--upon the mantelshelf,
upon the balustrade of the staircase, upon the parapet of the ramparts
where the prisoner was allowed to exercise. Two beds of earth were
here, containing some straggling untended annuals. A few sickly violets
were trying to bloom in the shadow of the chill gray stone. Beneath the
rampart, fosse and marsh were flanked by the canal that was edged by
tall straggling poplars, standing ankle-deep in the grim green-black
waters that wind snakily across the plain. Beyond the canal rose the
_demi-lune_--beyond this mass of comparatively modern masonry was
yet another fosse. And then, the interminable marshes spreading to the
misty horizon, and beyond these--the world.
What was taking place out there? Were nations striving against nations?
Were Fire and Iron, Lead and Steel, Death, Famine, and Pestilence
playing their parts in the dreadful Theater of War? Were those secret
treaties, those signed contracts, those imposed oaths, bearing fruit,
not in the defeat of an enemy, but in the destruction of an ally? Had
those vast sums of poured-out gold purchased for Sire my Friend the
vengeance that would be sweeter to him than victory? To pace upon
those ancient stones, tainted by his dainty, mincing footsteps--and
wonder--and be kept in ignorance of what was common knowledge to
the drummers of the garrison, the scullions of the Commandant’s
kitchen--was torture to Dunoisse.
Treachery.... Ever since that night of his unexpected return to the
Abbaye, the thought of treachery had held and obsessed him. It had
flavored his food. He had tasted it in his drink. Unknown to himself,
the traveler’s cold accusing glance had stricken terror to the soul
of the Greek or Slav or Turkish innkeepers who had overcharged him,
the peasants who had robbed him, and the knavish servants who had
stolen the fodder from his horses, and the rugs from their backs. The
nomad Tartar who refused payment for shelter in his flea-ridden tent
of felt, and a share of the rancid boiled mutton smoking in his sooty
caldron because it would, to his untutored mind, be a sin to barter for
silver the sacred privilege of hospitality, was puzzled by that chilly,
questioning look.
Suspicion had rankled in the man like a poisonous thorn or an eating
ulcer. Seated near some pretty woman in a public conveyance or a public
place, he would wonder with whom the charming stranger was deceiving
her husband or playing her lover false? Drawing rein before some
Wallach peasant’s hut of turf and reeds at eventide, as the bronzed,
black-eyed maiden drew the woolen threads from the distaff stuck in
her wide, embroidered girdle, the look the traveler cast on her would
question: “Are you as pure as you appear? Does this virginal exterior
cover a spotted conscience?” And when his dog fawned upon him, he would
think, even as he caressed it: “Ah, but suppose I fell, attacked and
worried by other dogs, would you defend me against them, or would you
not rather aid the pack in tearing out my throat?” And as the thievish
innkeeper had quailed, and the innocent young woman or the pure young
girl had trembled beneath that chill regard of his, the dog would quail
and tremble too, and slink guiltily away. And the heart of the man
would contract in a bitter spasm, and drops of sweat would start upon
his forehead. For to the generous it is anguish to suspect.
* * * * *
One does not know what would have been the end of this man--to whom
no man might speak--who was not even permitted to dibble in the earth
of Sire my Friend’s old flower-beds lest he should scratch a message
on the arid soil that might meet some friendly eye; who might not
even feed with crumbs--saved from his scant meals--the doves upon
the ramparts--lest some written communication from that tabued world
outside, cunningly attached to a leg or hidden beneath a wing, should
reach him in his captivity. Perhaps inertia would have ended in
collapse, mental or bodily. But that in his crying need of friendship,
he found a Friend at last.
The Breviary and Vulgate, with the _Imitatione Christi_ of
Thomas à Kempis--left in Dunoisse’s cell by some cynical whim of his
Imperial jailer--proved to contain within them fountains of healing
for his sick and suffering soul. Unguessed, undreamed-of beauty and
delight and sweetness had lain hidden in the narrow columns as in the
closely-printed pages. The casual reader became a student, the student
a scholar, long before he knew.... And the Denier denied no longer.
Dayspring banished the darkness; Faith revived in him--he could pray
again. How strange it is, that only when the meanest and humblest of
our fellow-creatures turn from us, do we seek the companionship of One
Who is King of Kings.
At Christmastide--for the snow lay on the marshes and the ramparts--the
fosse and the canal were frozen--and the church bells of the distant
town had rung the carillon of Nöel at midnight--they admitted a
confessor to the prisoner in his cell.
* * * * *
“What is the news, my Father? What has happened in the great roaring
world whose voice has never reached me since these walls of Cyclopean
masonry rose up about and penned me in? War had been proclaimed when I
was arrested.... Has there been War? Is there War now?” Dunoisse asked.
* * * * *
But the priest made answer to his eager questions:
“My dear son, to gain admittance here I have pledged my word that I
will not discuss with you any worldly matter. Let me, while I have the
opportunity, give you news of the Kingdom of God.”
* * * * *
Dunoisse, so long a willing exile from that Kingdom, had been by slow
and painful stages finding his way back there. Now, with the aid of
the Church, he cleansed his sin-stained soul in the lustral waters of
Confession. He was absolved. He received the Bread of Life.
* * * * *
It seemed to him at the supreme moment that a burning ray of Divine
Light penetrated and illumined him. He saw himself clearly as he had
never seen himself before. He understood how he had fallen from his
old ideals, and strayed from the way of cleanliness and honor. He
realized that Sympathy had been the missing link between himself and
his fellow-men. He had loved one man. He had worshiped one woman with
an overwhelming, guilty passion. Both friend and mistress had deceived
him; and for this reason he had reared a wall of icy doubt between
himself and the rest of Humanity.
You might have smiled, could you have seen him at this juncture trying
to love his silent jailers, guessing at their hidden lives, wondering
about their wives and families, probing without the aid of words, to
reach their conjectural hearts.
And it seemed to him that they looked more pleasantly upon him.
Probably it was so, for his black eyes had lost their piercing
hardness, and his smile was no longer bitter and edged with scorn.
Yet he suffered more, for the melting of the ice within his bosom had
freed the springs of our common nature. He yearned for human kindness
and human companionship. He thirsted for the voice and the grasp of
friendship. He longed inexpressibly--and none the less that he knew
himself to have forfeited the right to this--for some pure woman’s
devoted love.
He looked out over the ramparts as the snows vanished, and a rosy tinge
that spoke of coming spring stole over the leafless copses, and young
green grass-blades peeped in the sheltered hollows; and the yellow
aconite and the pale primrose bloomed, and the tall scraggy poplars of
the thawing marshes showed the black knots of bud. He had never been
beloved, it seemed to him.... Doubtless his mother had loved him--poor
old Smithwick, dead many years ago, had certainly loved him. Adjmeh
might have loved him--as some pampered pretty animal loves the master
who tends and feeds it. Henriette had entertained a sensuous, fanciful
passion for him. But Love he had never known, in its fullness, as it
may exist between woman and man.
Once he had met a woman with a noble, earnest face and calm, pure,
radiant eyes, and had gone upon his world’s way and had forgotten
her. They had met again, on the night of the _coup d’État_, at
the French Embassy in London. And her glance had pierced to the quick
through his armor of selfishness, and vanity, and lust. She had not
spared him reproach, though at their parting she had softened and
relented. She had said in effect: “Though you are nothing to me now,
I might have loved the man you used to be!” What had he not lost by
that change? What might he not have gained had he chosen, instead
of the easy road of pleasure, the stony path of rectitude! Dimly he
began to realize what an inestimable treasure of tenderness, what an
inexhaustible mine of shining loyalty, and glowing faith, and pure
passion, had lain hidden in the heart of Ada Merling, for the lover who
should prove himself worthy of the supreme boon.
Had the lover come? Was the great gift bestowed, or yet withheld?
Dunoisse wondered as he paced his daily hour upon the Fortress
ramparts, followed by the two warders who were bound to keep him in
sight. Was she wedded or free? He asked himself this question over and
over. And, by the stab of pain that followed when he said: “She is a
wife!” he knew....
He loved her. Happy for her that Fate had sundered them, if by any
remote chance she might have loved a man so little worthy of her
as Hector Dunoisse. But she never would have ... she never could
have.... He tried to follow her in thought as she went upon her
selfless way. He saw her pure, sweet influence shed on other hearts
to soften, and uplift, and cheer them. He saw the poor relieved by
those generous hands. He heard the sick, healed by her skilled and
gentle ministrations, blessing her. He dreamed of her--with a cruel
pang--as endowing some true man with the priceless treasure of her
love. He pictured her with their children rocked in her arms and
nourished at her bosom. He imagined her growing old, and moving down
the vale of years, leaning on the stalwart sons and matronly, handsome
daughters, who should look up to her even as they aided her, in perfect
confidence; and whose children, inheriting their tender reverence
for that dearest mother, should love and trust her, too. And a great
yearning swelled in his desolate heart, and his aching, mateless soul
rushed out across the void to her....
“Ada!...”
In the anguish of his loneliness he lifted his arms to the wild, gray
sky of March, and, in a voice that was like the wailing of the bitter
wind across the marshes, cried on the beloved name:
“Oh, Ada!--Ada!...”
And--spun to the merest spider-thread of sound by infinite distance,
her unforgettable voice answered ... beyond doubt or question answered:
“_I hear you.... Oh, where are you?_”