THE FELLOWSHIP OF GRIEF
§1
In the antechamber of Catherine Théot's abode of mysteries some two
hours later, half a dozen persons were sitting. The room was long,
narrow and bare, its walls dank and colourless, and save for the rough
wooden benches on which these persons sat, was void of any furniture.
The benches were ranged against the walls; the one window at the end was
shuttered so as to exclude all daylight, and from the ceiling there hung
a broken-down wrought-iron chandelier, wherein a couple of lighted
tallow candles were set, the smoke from which rose in irregular spirals
upwards to the low and blackened ceiling.
These persons who sat or sprawled upon the benches did not speak to one
another. They appeared to be waiting. One or two of them were seemingly
asleep; others, from time to time, would rouse themselves from their
apathy, look with dim, inquiring eyes in the direction of a heavy
portière which hung in front of a door near the far end of the room,
and would strain their ears to listen. This occurred every time that a
cry, or a moan, or a sob came from behind the portière. When this
subsided again all those in the bare waiting-room resumed their patient,
lethargic attitude, and a silence--weird and absolute--reigned once more
over them all. Now and then somebody would sigh, and at one time one of
the sleepers snored.
Far away a church clock struck six.
§2
A few minutes later, the portière was lifted, and a girl came into the
room. She held a shawl, very much the worse for wear, tightly wrapped
around her meagre shoulders, and from beneath her rough woollen skirt
her small feet appeared clad in well-worn shoes and darned worsted
stockings. Her hair, which was fair and soft, was partially hidden under
a white muslin cap, and as she walked with a brisk step across the room,
she looked neither to right nor left, appeared to move as in a dream.
And her large grey eyes were brimming over with tears.
Neither her rapid passage across the room nor her exit through a door
immediately opposite the window created the slightest stir amongst those
who were waiting. Only one of the men, a huge, ungainly giant, whose
long limbs appeared to stretch half-across the bare wooden floor, looked
up lazily as she passed.
After the girl had gone, silence once more fell on the small assembly.
Not a sound came from behind the portière; but from beyond the other
door the faint patter of the girl's feet could be heard gradually fading
away as she went slowly down the stone stairs.
A few more minutes went by, then the door behind the portière was
opened and a cadaverous voice spoke the word, "Enter!"
There was a faint stir among those who waited. A woman rose from her
seat, said dully: "My turn, I think?" and, gliding across the room like
some bodiless spectre, she presently vanished behind the portière.
"Are you going to the Fraternal Supper to-night, citizen Langlois?" the
giant said, after the woman had gone. His tone was rasping and harsh and
his voice came with a wheeze and an obviously painful effort from his
broad, doubled-up chest.
"Not I!" Langlois replied. "I must speak with Mother Théot. My wife
made me promise. She is too ill to come herself, and the poor
unfortunate believes in the Théot's incantations."
"Come out and get some fresh air, then," the other rejoined. "It is
stifling in here!"
It was indeed stuffy in the dark, smoke-laden room. The man put his bony
hand up to his chest, as if to quell a spasm of pain. A horrible,
rasping cough shook his big body and brought a sweat to his brow.
Langlois, a wizened little figure of a man, who looked himself as if he
had one foot in the grave, waited patiently until the spasm was over,
then, with the indifference peculiar to these turbulent times, he said
lightly:
"I would just as soon sit here as wear out shoe-leather on the
cobblestones of this God-forsaken hole. And I don't want to miss my turn
with Mother Théot."
"You'll have another four hours mayhap to wait in this filthy
atmosphere."
"What an aristo you are, citizen Rateau!" the other retorted drily.
"Always talking about atmosphere!"
"So would you, if you had only one lung wherewith to inhale this filth,"
growled the giant through a wheeze.
"Then don't wait for me, my friend," Langlois concluded with a careless
shrug of his narrow shoulders. "And, if you don't mind missing your
turn. . . ."
"I do not," was Rateau's curt reply. "I would as soon be last as not.
But I'll come back presently. I am the third from now. If I'm not back
you can have my turn, and I'll follow you in. But I can't----"
His next words were smothered in a terrible fit of coughing, as he
struggled to his feet. Langlois swore at him for making such a noise,
and the women, roused from their somnolence, sighed with impatience or
resignation. But all those who remained seated on the benches watched
with a kind of dull curiosity, the ungainly figure of the asthmatic
giant as he made his way across the room and anon went out through the
door.
His heavy footsteps were heard descending the stone stairs with a
shuffling sound, and the clatter of his wooden shoes. The women once
more settled themselves against the dank walls, with feet stretched out
before them and arms folded over their breasts, and in that highly
uncomfortable position prepared once more to go to sleep.
Langlois buried his hands in the pockets of his breeches, spat
contentedly upon the floor, and continued to wait.
§3
In the meanwhile, the girl who, with tear-filled eyes, had come out of
the inner mysterious room in Mother Théot's apartments, had, after a
slow descent down the interminable stone stairs, at last reached the
open air.
The Rue de la Planchette is only a street in name, for the houses in it
are few and far between. One side of it is taken up for the major
portion of its length by the dry moat which at this point forms the
boundary of the Arsenal and of the military ground around the Bastille.
The house wherein lodged Mother Théot is one of a small group situated
behind the Bastille, the grim ruins of which can be distinctly seen from
the upper windows. Immediately facing those houses is the Porte St.
Antoine, through which the wayfarer in this remote quarter of Paris has
to pass in order to reach the more populous parts of the great city.
This is just a lonely and squalid backwater, broken up by undeveloped
land and timber yards. One end of the street abuts on the river, the
other becomes merged in the equally remote suburb of Popincourt.
But, for the girl who had just come out of the heavy, fetid atmosphere
of Mother Théot's lodgings, the air which reached her nostrils as she
came out of the wicket-gate, was positive manna to her lungs. She stood
for awhile quite still, drinking in the balmy spring air, almost dizzy
with the sensation of purity and of freedom which came to her from over
the vast stretch of open ground occupied by the Arsenal. For a minute or
two she stood there, then walked deliberately in the direction of the
Porte St. Antoine.
She was very tired, for she had come to the Rue de la Planchette on foot
all the way from the small apartment in the St. Germain quarter, where
she lodged with her mother and sister and a young brother; she had
become weary and jaded by sitting for hours on a hard wooden bench,
waiting her turn to speak with Mother Théot, and then standing for what
seemed an eternity of time in the presence of the soothsayer, who had
further harassed her nerves by weird prophecies and mystic incantations.
But for the nonce weariness was forgotten. Régine de Serval was going
to meet the man she loved, at a trysting-place which they had marked as
their own; the porch of the church of Petit St. Antoine, a secluded spot
where neither prying eyes could see them nor ears listen to what they
had to say. A spot which to poor little Régine was the very threshold
of Paradise, for here she had Bertrand all to herself, undisturbed by
the prattle of Joséphine or Jacques or the querulous complaints of
maman, cooped up in that miserable apartment in the old St. Germain
quarter of the city.
So she walked briskly and without hesitation. Bertrand had agreed to
meet her at five o'clock. It was now close on half-past six. It was
still daylight, and a brilliant April sunset tinged the cupola of Ste.
Marie with gold and drew long fantastic shadows across the wide Rue St.
Antoine.
Régine had crossed the Rue des Balais, and the church porch of Petit
St. Antoine was but a few paces farther on, when she became conscious of
heavy, dragging footsteps some little way behind her. Immediately
afterwards, the distressing sound of a racking cough reached her ears,
followed by heartrending groans as of a human creature in grievous
bodily pain. The girl, not in the least frightened, instinctively turned
to look, and was moved to pity on seeing a man leaning against the wall
of a house, in a state bordering on collapse, his hands convulsively
grasping his chest, which appeared literally torn by a violent fit of
coughing. Forgetting her own troubles, as well as the joy which awaited
her so close at hand, Régine unhesitatingly recrossed the road,
approached the sufferer, and in a gentle voice asked him if she could be
of any assistance to him in his distress.
"A little water," he gasped, "for mercy's sake!"
Just for a second or two she looked about her, doubtful as to what to
do, hoping perhaps to catch sight of Bertrand, if he had not given up
all hope of meeting her. The next, she had stepped boldly through the
wicket-gate of the nearest porte-cochère, and finding her way to the
lodge of the concierge, she asked for a drop of water for a passer-by
who was in pain. A jug of water was at once handed to her by a
sympathetic concierge, and with it she went back to complete her simple
act of mercy.
For a moment she was puzzled not seeing the poor vagabond there, where
she had left him, half-swooning against the wall. But soon she spied
him, in the very act of turning under the little church porch of Petit
St. Antoine, the hallowed spot of her frequent meetings with Bertrand.
§4
He seemed to have crawled there for shelter, and there he collapsed upon
the wooden bench, in the most remote angle of the porch. Of Bertrand
there was not a sign.
Régine was soon by the side of the unfortunate. She held up the jug of
water to his quaking lips, and he drank eagerly. After that he felt
better, muttered vague words of thanks. But he seemed so weak, despite
his stature, which appeared immense in this narrow enclosure, that she
did not like to leave him. She sat down beside him, suddenly conscious
of fatigue. He seemed harmless enough, and after awhile began to tell
her of his trouble. This awful asthma, which he had contracted in the
campaign against the English in Holland, where he and his comrades had
to march in snow and ice, often shoeless and with nothing but bass mats
around their shoulders. He had but lately been discharged out of the
army as totally unfit, and as he had no money wherewith to pay a doctor,
he would no doubt have been dead by now but that a comrade had spoken to
him of Mother Théot, a marvellous sorceress, who knew the art of drugs
and simples, and could cure all ailments of the body by the mere laying
on of hands.
"Ah, yes," the girl sighed involuntarily, "of the body!"
Through the very act of sitting still, a deadly lassitude had crept into
her limbs. She was thankful not to move, to say little, and to listen
with half an ear to the vagabond's jeremiads. Anyhow, she was sure that
Bertrand would no longer be waiting. He was ever impatient if he thought
that she failed him in anything, and it was she who had appointed five
o'clock for their meeting. Even now the church clock way above the porch
was striking half-past six. And the asthmatic giant went glibly on. He
had partially recovered his breath.
"Aye!" he was saying, in response to her lament, "and of the mind, too.
I had a comrade whose sweetheart was false to him while he was fighting
for his country. Mother Théot gave him a potion which he administered
to the faithless one, and she returned to him as full of ardour as ever
before."
"I have no faith in potions," the girl said, and shook her head sadly
the while tears once more gathered in her eyes.
"No more have I," the giant assented carelessly. "But if my sweetheart
was false to me I know what I would do."
This he said in so droll a fashion, and the whole idea of this ugly,
ungainly creature having a sweetheart was so comical, that despite her
will, the ghost of a smile crept round the young girl's sensitive mouth.
"What would you do, citizen?" she queried gently.
"Just take her away, out of the reach of temptation," he replied
sententiously. "I should say, 'This must stop,' and 'You come away with
me, ma mie!'"
"Ah!" she retorted impulsively, "it is easy to talk. A man can do so
much. What can a woman do?"
She checked herself abruptly, ashamed of having said so much. What was
this miserable caitiff to her that she should as much as hint at her
troubles in his hearing? In these days of countless spies, of
innumerable confidence tricks set to catch the unwary, it was more than
foolhardy to speak of one's private affairs to any stranger, let alone
to an out-at-elbows vagabond who was just the sort of refuse of humanity
who would earn a precarious livelihood by the sale of information, true
or false, wormed out of some innocent fellow-creature. Hardly, then,
were the words out of her mouth than the girl repented of her folly,
turned quick, frightened eyes on the abject creature beside her.
But he appeared not to have heard. A wheezy cough came out of his bony
chest. Nor did he meet her terrified gaze.
"What did you say, citoyenne?" he muttered fretfully. "Are you
dreaming? . . . or what? . . ."
"Yes--yes!" she murmured vaguely, her heart still beating with that
sudden fright. "I must have been dreaming. . . . But you . . . you are
better----?"
"Better? Perhaps," he replied, with a hoarse laugh. "I might even be
able to crawl home."
"Do you live very far?" she asked.
"No. Just by the Rue de l'Anier."
He made no attempt to thank her for her gentle ministration, and she
thought how ungainly he looked--almost repellent--sprawling right across
the porch, with his long legs stretched out before him and his hands
buried in the pockets of his breeches. Nevertheless, he looked so
helpless and so pitiable that the girl's kind heart was again stirred
with compassion, and when presently he struggled with difficulty to his
feet, she said impulsively:
"The Rue de l'Anier is on my way. If you will wait, I'll return the jug
to the kind concierge who let me have it and I'll walk with you. You
really ought not to be about the street alone."
"Oh, I am better now," he muttered, in the same ungracious way. "You had
best leave me alone. I am not a suitable gallant for a pretty wench like
you."
But already the girl had tripped away with the jug, and returned two
minutes later to find that the curious creature had already started on
his way and was fifty yards and more farther up the street by now. She
shrugged her shoulders, feeling mortified at his ingratitude, and not a
little ashamed that she had forced her compassion where it was so
obviously unwelcome.