For some minutes I forgot mademoiselle in paying those assiduous
attentions to my mother which her state and my duty demanded; and which
I offered the more anxiously that I recognised, with a sinking heart,
the changes which age and illness had made in her since my last visit.
The shock of mademoiselle’s words had thrown her into a syncope, from
which she did not recover for some time; and then rather through the
assistance of our strange guide, who seemed well aware what to do, than
through my efforts. Anxious as I was to learn what had reduced her
to such straits and such a place, this was not the time to satisfy my
curiosity, and I prepared myself instead for the task of effacing the
painful impression which mademoiselle’s words had made on her mind.
On first coming to herself she did not remember them, but, content to
find me by her side--for there is something so alchemic in a mother’s
love that I doubt not my presence changed her garret to a palace--she
spent herself in feeble caresses and broken words. Presently, however,
her eye falling on mademoiselle and her maid, who remained standing by
the hearth, looking darkly at us from time to time, she recalled, first
the shock which had prostrated her, and then its cause, and raising
herself on her elbow, looked about her wildly. ‘Gaston!’ she cried,
clutching my hand with her thin fingers, ‘what was it I heard? It was of
you someone spoke--a woman! She called you--or did I dream it?--a cheat!
You!’
‘Madame, madame,’ I said, striving to speak carelessly, though the
sight; of her grey hair, straggling and dishevelled, moved me strangely,
‘was it; likely? Would anyone dare to use such expressions of me is your
presence? You must indeed have dreamed it!’
The words, however, returning more and more vividly to her mind, she
looked at me very pitifully, and in great agitation laid her arm on my
neck, as though she would shelter me with the puny strength which just
enabled her to rise in bed. ‘But someone,’ she muttered, her eyes on the
strangers, ‘said it, Gaston? I heard it. What did it mean?’
‘What you heard, madame,’ I answered, with an attempt at gaiety, though
the tears stood in my eyes, ‘was, doubtless, mademoiselle here scolding
our guide from Tours, who demanded three times the proper POURBOIRE. The
impudent rascal deserved all that was said to him, I assure you.’
‘Was that it?’ she murmured doubtfully.
‘That must have been what you heard, madame,’ I answered, as if I felt
no doubt.
She fell back with a sigh of relief, and a little colour came into her
wan face. But her eyes still dwelt curiously, and with apprehension, on
mademoiselle, who stood looking sullenly into the fire; and seeing this
my heart misgave me sorely that I had done a foolish thing in bringing
the girl there. I foresaw a hundred questions which would be asked, and
a hundred complications which must ensue, and felt already the blush of
shame mounting to my cheek.
‘Who is that?’ my mother asked softly. ‘I am ill. She must excuse me.’
She pointed with her fragile finger to my companions.
I rose, and still keeping her hand in mine, turned so as to face the
hearth. ‘This, madame,’ I answered formally, ‘is Mademoiselle--, but her
name I will commit to you later, and in private. Suffice it to say that
she is a lady of rank, who has been committed to my charge by a high
personage.’
‘A high personage?’ my mother repeated gently, glancing at me with a
smile of gratification.
‘One of the highest,’ I said, ‘Such a charge being a great honour to me,
I felt that I could not better execute it madame, since we must lie in
Blois one night, than by requesting your hospitality on her behalf.’
I dared mademoiselle as I spoke--I dared her with my eye to contradict
or interrupt me. For answer, she looked at me once, inclining her head a
little, and gazing at us from under her long eyelashes. Then she turned
back to the fire, and her foot resumed its angry tapping on the floor.
‘I regret that I cannot receive her better,’ my mother answered feebly.
‘I have had losses of late. I--but I will speak of that at another time.
Mademoiselle doubtless knows,’ she continued with dignity, ‘you and your
position in the south too well to think ill of the momentary straits to
which she finds me reduced.’
I saw mademoiselle start, and I writhed under the glance of covert
scorn, of amazed indignation, which she shot at me. But my mother gently
patting my hand, I answered patiently, ‘Mademoiselle will think only
what is kind, madame--of that I am assured. And lodgings are scarce
to-night in Blois.’
‘But tell me of yourself, Gaston,’ my mother cried eagerly; and I had
not the heart, with her touch on my hand, her eyes on my face, to tear
myself away, much as I dreaded what was coming, and longed to end the
scene. ‘Tell me of yourself. You are still in favour with the king of--I
will not name him here?’
‘Still, madame,’ I answered, looking steadily at mademoiselle, though my
face burned.
‘You are still--he consults you, Gaston?’
‘Still, madame.’
My mother heaved a happy sigh, and sank lower in the bed. ‘And your
employments?’ she murmured, her voice trembling with gratification.
‘They have not been reduced? You still retain them, Gaston?’
‘Still, madame,’ I answered, the perspiration standing on my brow, my
shame almost more than I could bear.
‘Twelve thousand livres a year, I think?’
‘The same, madame.’
‘And your establishment? How many do you keep now? Your valet, of
course? And lackeys--how many at present?’ She glanced, with an eye of
pride, while she waited for my answer, first at the two silent figures
by the fire, then at the poverty-stricken room; as if the sight of its
bareness heightened for her the joy of my prosperity.
She had no suspicion of my trouble, my misery, or that the last question
almost filled the cup too full. Hitherto all had been easy, but this
seemed to choke me. I stammered and lost my voice. Mademoiselle, her
head bowed, was gazing into the fire. Fanchette was staring at me, her
black eyes round as saucers, her mouth half-open. ‘Well, madame,’
I muttered at length, ‘to tell you the truth, at present, you must
understand, I have been forced to--’
‘What, Gaston?’ Madame de Bonne half rose in bed. Her voice was sharp
with disappointment and apprehension; the grasp of her fingers on my
hand grew closer.
I could not resist that appeal. I flung away the last rag of shame.
‘To reduce my establishment somewhat,’ I answered, looking a miserable
defiance at mademoiselle’s averted figure. She had called me a liar and
a cheat--here in the room! I must stand before her a liar and a cheat
confessed. ‘I keep but three lackeys now, madame.’
Still it is creditable,’ my mother muttered thoughtfully, her eyes
shining. ‘Your dress, however, Gaston--only my eyes are weak--seems to
me--’
‘Tut, tut! It is but a disguise,’ I answered quickly.
‘I might have known that,’ she rejoined, sinking back with a smile and
a sigh of content. ‘But when I first saw you I was almost afraid that
something had happened to you. And I have been uneasy lately,’ she
went on, releasing my hand, and beginning to play with the coverlet,
as though the remembrance troubled her. ‘There was a man here a while
ago--a friend of Simon Fleix there--who had been south to Pau and Nerac,
and he said there was no M. de Marsac about the Court.’
‘He probably knew less of the Court than the wine-tavern,’ I answered
with a ghastly smile.
‘That was just what I told him,’ my mother responded quickly and
eagerly. ‘I warrant you I sent him away ill-satisfied.’
‘Of course,’ I said; ‘there will always be people of that kind. But
now, if you will permit me, madame, I will make such arrangements for
mademoiselle as are necessary.’
Begging her accordingly to lie down and compose herself--for even so
short a conversation, following on the excitement of our arrival,
had exhausted her to a painful degree--I took the youth, who had just
returned from stabling our horses, a little aside, and learning that he
lodged in a smaller chamber on the farther side of the landing, secured
it for the use of mademoiselle and her woman. In spite of a certain
excitability which marked him at times, he seemed to be a quick, ready
fellow, and he willingly undertook to go out, late as it was, and
procure some provisions and a few other things which were sadly needed,
as well for my mother’s comfort as for our own. I directed Fanchette to
aid him in the preparation of the other chamber, and thus for a while I
was left alone with mademoiselle. She had taken one of the stools, and
sat cowering over the fire, the hood of her cloak drawn about her head;
in such a manner that even when she looked at me, which she did from
time to time, I saw little more than her eyes, bright with contemptuous
anger.
‘So, sir,’ she presently began, speaking in a low voice, and turning
slightly towards me, ‘you practise lying even here?’
I felt so strongly the futility of denial or explanation that I shrugged
my shoulders and remained silent under the sneer. Two more days--two
more days would take us to Rosny, and my task would be done, and
Mademoiselle and I would part for good and all. What would it matter
then what she thought of me? What did it matter now?
For the first time in our intercourse my silence seemed to disconcert
and displease her. ‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’ she muttered
sharply, crushing a fragment of charcoal under her foot, and stooping
to peer at the ashes. ‘Have you not another lie in your quiver, M. de
Marsac?’ De Marsac!’ And she repeated the title, with a scornful laugh,
as if she put no faith in my claim to it.
But I would answer nothing--nothing; and we remained silent until
Fanchette, coming in to say that the chamber was ready, held the light
for her mistress to pass out. I told the woman to come back and fetch
mademoiselle’s supper, and then, being left alone with my mother, who
had fallen asleep, with a smile on her thin, worn face, I began to
wonder what had happened to reduce her to such dire poverty.
I feared to agitate her by referring to it; but later in the evening,
when her curtains were drawn and Simon Fleix and I were left together,
eyeing one another across the embers like dogs of different breeds--with
a certain strangeness and suspicion--my thoughts recurred to the
question; and determining first to learn something about my companion,
whose pale, eager face and tattered, black dress gave him a certain
individuality, I asked him whether he had come from Paris with Madame de
Bonne.
He nodded without speaking.
I asked him if he had known her long.
‘Twelve months,’ he answered. ‘I lodged on the fifth, madame on the
second, floor of the same house in Paris.’
I leaned forward and plucked the hem of his black robe. ‘What is this?’
I said, with a little contempt. ‘You are not a priest, man.’
‘No,’ he answered, fingering the stuff himself, and gazing at me in a
curious, vacant fashion. ‘I am a student of the Sorbonne.’
I drew off from him with a muttered oath, wondering--while I looked at
him with suspicious eyes--how he came to be here, and particularly how
he came to be in attendance on my mother, who had been educated from
childhood in the Religion, and had professed it in private all her life.
I could think of no one who, in old days, would have been less welcome
in her house than a Sorbonnist, and began to fancy that here should lie
the secret of her miserable condition.
‘You don’t like, the Sorbonne?’ he said, reading my thoughts; which
were, indeed, plain enough.
‘No more than I love the devil!’ I said bluntly.
He leaned forward and, stretching out a thin, nervous hand, laid it
on my knee. ‘What if they are right, though?’ he muttered, his voice
hoarse. ‘What if they are right, M. de Marsac?’
‘Who right?’ I asked roughly, drawing back afresh.
‘The Sorbonne.’ he repeated, his face red with excitement, his eyes
peering uncannily into mine. ‘Don’t you see,’ he continued, pinching
my knee in his earnestness, and thrusting his face nearer and nearer
to mine, ‘it all turns on that? It all turns on that--salvation or
damnation! Are they right? Are you right? You say yes to this, no to
that, you white-coats; and you say it lightly, but are you right? Are
you right? Mon Dieu!’ he continued, drawing back abruptly and clawing
the air with impatience, ‘I have read, read, read! I have listened to
sermons, theses, disputations, and I know nothing. I know no more than
when I began.’
He sprang up and began to pace the floor, while I gazed at him with a
feeling of pity. A very learned person once told me that the troubles of
these times bred four kinds of men, who were much to be compassionated:
fanatics on the one side or the other, who lost sight of all else in the
intensity of their faith; men who, like Simon Fleix, sought desperately
after something to believe, and found it not; and lastly, scoffers, who,
believing in nothing, looked on all religion as a mockery.
He presently stopped walking--in his utmost excitement I remarked that
he never forgot my mother, but trod more lightly when he drew near the
alcove--and spoke again. ‘You are a Huguenot?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘So is she,’ he rejoined, pointing towards the bed. ‘But do you feel no
doubts?’
‘None,’ I said quietly.
‘Nor does she.’ he answered again, stopping opposite me. You made up
your mind--how?’
‘I was born in the Religion,’ I said.
‘And you have never questioned it?’
‘Never.’
‘Nor thought much about it?’
‘Not a great deal,’ I answered.
‘Saint Gris!’ he exclaimed in a low tone. ‘And do you never think of
hell-fire--of the worm which dieth not, and the fire which shall not be
quenched? Do you never think of that, M. de Marsac?’
‘No, my friend, never!’ I answered, rising impatiently; for at
that hour, and in that silent, gloomy room I found his conversation
dispiriting. ‘I believe what I was taught to believe, and I strive to
hurt no one but the enemy. I think little; and if I were you I would
think less. I would do something, man--fight, play, work, anything but
think! I leave that to clerks.’
‘I am a clerk,’ he answered.
‘A poor one, it seems,’ I retorted, with a little scorn in my tone.
‘Leave it, man. Work! Fight! Do something!’
‘Fight?’ he said, as if the idea were a novel one. ‘Fight? But there, I
might be killed; and then hell-fire, you see!’
‘Zounds, man!’ I cried, out of patience with a folly which, to tell the
truth, the lamp burning low, and the rain pattering on the roof, made
the skin of my back feel cold and creepy. ‘Enough of this! Keep your
doubts and your fire to yourself! And answer me,’ I continued, sternly.
‘How came Madame de Bonne so poor? How did she come down to this place?’
He sat down on his stool, the excitement dying quickly out of his face.
‘She gave away all her money,’ he said slowly and reluctantly. It may be
imagined that this answer surprised me. ‘Gave it away?’ I exclaimed. ‘To
whom? And when?’
He moved uneasily on his seat and avoided my eye, his altered manner
filling me with suspicions which the insight I had just obtained into
his character did not altogether preclude. At last he said, ‘I had
nothing to do with it, if you mean that; nothing. On the contrary, I
have done all I could to make it up to her. I followed her here. I swear
that is so, M. de Marsac.’
‘You have not told me yet to whom she gave it,’ I said sternly.
‘She gave it,’ he muttered, ‘to a priest.’
‘To what priest?’
‘I do not know his name. He is a Jacobin.’
‘And why?’ I asked, gazing incredulously at the student. ‘Why did
she give it to him? Come, come! have a care. Let me have none of your
Sorbonne inventions!’
He hesitated a moment, looking at me timidly, and then seemed to make up
his mind to tell me. ‘He found out--it was when we lived in Paris, you
understand, last June--that she was a Huguenot. It was about the time
they burned the Foucards, and he frightened her with that, and made her
pay him money, a little at first, and then more and more, to keep her
secret. When the king came to Blois she followed his Majesty, thinking
to be safer here; but the priest came too, and got more money, and more,
until he left her--this.’
‘This!’ I said. And I set my teeth together.
Simon Fleix nodded.
I looked round the wretched garret to which my mother had been reduced,
and pictured the days and hours of fear and suspense through which she
had lived; through which she must have lived, with that caitiff’s threat
hanging over her grey head! I thought of her birth and her humiliation;
of her frail form and patient, undying love for me; and solemnly, and
before heaven, I swore that night to punish the man. My anger was too
great for words, and for tears I was too old. I asked Simon Fleix no
more questions, save when the priest might be looked for again--which
he could not tell me--and whether he would know him again--to which he
answered, ‘Yes.’ But, wrapping myself in my cloak, I lay down by the
fire and pondered long and sadly.
So, while I had been pinching there, my mother had been starving here.
She had deceived me, and I her. The lamp flickered, throwing uncertain
shadows as the draught tossed the strange window-curtain to and fro.
The leakage from the roof fell drop by drop, and now and again the wind
shook the crazy building, as though it would lift it up bodily and carry
it away.