CLÉMENCE
The lantern failed, and the moonlight was often obscured, or
completely blotted out by the passing sullen clouds.
Luc’s right arm was stiff about the heavy child and his left hand
cold on the bridle; his very blood was chill. It seemed to him that
the creeping bitterness of the night was more intense than all the
hurricane snows of Bohemia. He seldom moved his head, and his body was
cramped in one position with the weight of the little girl against it;
but his mind had never been clearer, more alert, more active.
Picture after picture flashed before him with agonizing vividness--all
that had gone to make his life since his return from Bohemia to
his last parting, a few hours ago, with Clémence in her father’s
house formed and faded with mechanical repetition, and against the
background of their visionary memories raced his thoughts.
It came to this: a little while ago he had been happy with the
ecstatic happiness of youth--of proud, ambitious youth; he had seen
honourable labour behind, honourable labour ahead; he had felt love
rest against his heart, and seen glory hovering very near. And now--he
was riding through the dark, with disease, corruption, perhaps death,
in his arms; riding away from the home to which he had lately pledged
himself, away from Clémence and all she stood for--with a woman
associated with humiliation and sadness for his companion--with great
chances that he would never be able to turn back again to those things
he had left behind.
Yet he was conscious all the time of the highest exaltation perhaps
that he had ever known--an intermittent sensation, now weaker, now
stronger, that, however, held his heart up steadily.
The night seemed endless. Only once did they meet anyone--some
peasants in a cart, who stopped and seemed to wonder at them.
“We carry the plague!” cried Carola as they galloped past, and they
heard the men’s cries of terror and supplications to God.
The child began to stir in Luc’s arms. He himself felt faint; the
night wind brought on his cough, which had troubled him since his last
campaign. He tried to comfort the little girl; she became still again,
and, he thought, heavier.
He turned to Carola beside him; since they started she had not spoken
to him.
“It must be near the dawn,” he said.
“I do not know,” she answered, and added, after a little, “Are we not
off the road? I think we have lost the way.”
The moon was setting. Luc had been dwelling so in his thoughts that
he had not noticed through what growing blackness they were riding.
A wind was up, and they could hear it shaking some trees near with a
deep rustling sound.
“Poplar trees,” came Carola’s voice; and he thought, as he knew she
thought, of the poplar trees in the garden off the Rue Deauville.
They drew rein; he had no light whatever, and her lantern had gone out.
“We must wait for the dawn,” said Carola again. “I cannot find the
way. The dawn must be soon now, I think.”
He heard her dismount and sigh.
“This is grass--a field,” she continued. “We have left the road. How
is the child?”
He turned back the woollen cloak that was damp with dew and delicately
touched the small face in the hollow of his arm.
“Very cold,” he answered. “Ah!”
“What is it?” asked Carola.
“Her eyes are wide open and her mouth, but she does not move.”
“Dead?” asked Carola.
“I think--dead.”
He moved his cramped arm from under his burden and laid her across his
shoulder while he dismounted; out of the dark came Carola’s hand and
touched his arm, then her other hand, and took the child from him.
“We must let the horses go,” he said. “It is raining. Perhaps we could
find some shelter.”
Carola’s voice came faintly, as if it was a long way off.
“The child is dead. I cannot feel her heart at all. What soft hair she
has!”
Luc heard the jingle of harness as the horses moved away. The rain
fell with a cold sting on his bare hands, his blood was frozen, his
limbs stiff; the darkness lay like a weight on his eyes.
“We must wait here for the light,” he said.
He heard Carola move.
“Yes, we will wait,” she answered. “Perhaps we had better have stayed
in the tent--yet what chance had she there? Oh, my dear, my poor
dear!” and he heard her kiss the little tight-rope dancer.
“Give me your hand,” he said; “we might find the trees.” He turned to
where he thought she was, and presently felt her hand again, ungloved,
in his. With his right hand flung before him, he discovered the long
narrow trunks of the trees.
“Here!” he called to his companion. She withdrew her hand from his;
he guessed that she was still carrying the child. There was a little
pause, then he heard her cast herself on the ground.
“O God, believe that I am tired, tired!” she cried out.
Luc leant against the tree-trunk, gazing across the blackness. For
the second time they were alone together in the cold and dark with a
dead child between them; it seemed to him a symbol of what separated
them and yet what brought them together: death and sorrow--but
endeavour and exaltation. The enigma that had seemed to have poorly
solved itself in the house of M. de Richelieu was now suddenly again
unsolvable. Was she not brave and kind?--what she had appeared in
Bohemia--had not all his estimates been utterly wrong? And what was
the meaning of this constant crossing of their lives--connected always
with death?
He put his hand wearily to his forehead; her voice came up from the
ground, near his feet.
“These fields are not new to me, Monsieur de Vauvenargues. I have
slept under these trees before. I used to watch the sheep here when I
was a little ragged child. Sometimes I used to go to Aix with milk,
and see you, Monsieur le Marquis, riding with your brother. Then I had
another name--it was before I went to Paris.”
“So you are from Provence?” he murmured.
“Yes. Here I was born, homeless, nameless; and here I shall die,
homeless, nameless also. I have done what I wished to, and I regret
nothing.”
Luc could not speak; that their lives should have been so twisted
together strangely troubled him.
She seemed to divine his silence.
“I could not help this. For Mademoiselle de Séguy’s sake, I would have
done anything it had not happened.”
The rosy face of Clémence with her devoted eyes sprang out of the
blackness to confront Luc; he shivered and put his hands over his
forehead.
“Why do you not speak?” came the weak voice from his feet. “Are you
thinking of the future?”
“Yes,” said Luc, with an effort.
He felt that she shuddered.
“Are you--afraid?” she asked, in a tone of horror.
“Yes,” said Luc simply.
The terror of that admission filled the darkness.
Luc set his back against the tree. He could feel the fine rain on his
hands and dripping from his hat; he coughed and shivered.
“In Bohemia we were on the heights,” came Carola’s voice; “but this is
the lowlands, and there is not one star.”
Luc was thinking again of Paris, and the river, and the beggar on
the quay, and of Clémence as she had stood in her father’s hall to
say good-bye to him with soft lamplight over her face that seemed to
express something never to be put into words, and her gown, lace,
perfume, and pale colours.
“Speak, Monsieur le Marquis, speak!” the woman’s voice implored. “I am
here with a dead child.”
“She _is_ dead, then?” asked Luc.
“I cannot warm her or make her move.” The answer was unsteady and
wistful. “Yes, she is dead.”
Luc was thinking now of his home, of his family waiting for him, of
their wonder at his absence. He recalled the work he had meant to do
to-night and the letters he had intended to write. He was now as cut
off from that as if he had been swept to another world.
A sob came shivering up to him; he started with a sense of his great
selfishness.
“Rise up, Madame,” he said; “rise up. Take my hand, and stand beside
me. It has happened that those brought as near contagion as you are
have escaped.”
She did not answer.
“And it may not be the smallpox,” added Luc, against his own deep
conviction.
This time she answered.
“I know it is. We are infected, perhaps doomed. As for me, it is no
matter; but you--your future?”
Luc made no reply; darkness lay on his brain as well as before his
eyes. He felt his strength, almost his life, being drawn from him by
the chill and the damp; it seemed worse than the snows of Bohemia. He
realized how weak he had been since his illness at Eger; how even the
burden of a child and the cold of a night in one of his native fields
was almost beyond his endurance.
He turned towards the spot where Carola must be still seated.
“You are cold, Madame? Take my cloak--I am warm enough.”
“No--no!” she said sharply. “I have my own, and I have often slept out
in an old thin shawl--I should be used to it.”
“And I,” answered Luc sadly--“I who was a soldier.”
He was unclasping his cloak with numb fingers when he heard her rise
to her feet; she touched his shoulder.
“I am warm,” she said.
Her hand trembled down his arm, found his hand and held it. He let her
clasp it between hers, which were, as she said, warm. The touch of her
soft palms caused a wave of mingled anguish and pleasure to rise to
his heart. She came closer; he felt her heavy cloak sweep his foot;
the faint Eastern perfume he always associated with her crept into his
nostrils; his head sunk slightly on his chest, and he shivered.
She drew his cold hand to her bosom. He felt, with a quickening of
all his senses, the stiff smoothness of her satin gown, the straining
of her breast against the silk cords, and even the hasty beating of
her heart. She raised his hand, and he felt her throat, her chin, and
finally her lips.
A soft and timid kiss was lightly pressed on his fingers--the kiss of
a suppliant, of one who asks for mercy.
Then she brought his slack hand down to her bosom again.
“You are very cold, Monsieur,” she said; her voice was infinitely sad.
Luc saw her as a humble peasant girl with black hair hanging about her
shoulders and bare feet. The great lady had disappeared; he thought
only of the girl she had described, keeping sheep in the fields and
sleeping under the trees. His brain was numb, and fantasy dazed him.
He put out his free hand and caught her shoulder; though he felt the
rich velvet of her cloak, he still imagined her as the poor peasant
orphan.
She came closer; he felt her breath, and knew her face was very near
his. She loosened his hand, and he raised it to her other shoulder.
He felt velvet, hard embroidery, and the rise and fall of her breath
shaking her frame under his delicate grasp.
“I think the dawn is breaking,” he said. “You and I are strange
company to watch the sun rise.”
And he laughed under his breath.
The brim of her hat touched his beaver as she sharply turned her head.
“My God, yes, the dawn!” she murmured. She drew away from him
altogether. They were facing east, it seemed, for the sky before
them was a watery grey, faint, faint and melancholy; a blue of misty
silver, a mere promise of light. Slowly the shapes of things began to
form out of the darkness; a pallid glow overspread the heavens; the
rain ceased.
Luc never moved. He put his hand before his eyes; in his ears was the
rustle of the poplar leaves, sounding very far away. A deeper chill
seemed to seize his limbs, to penetrate to his very heart, which was
beating faintly, reluctantly, and with a certain sense of pain.
He made an effort to free himself from the invading host of fancies
that beset him, and lifted his eyes from the shelter of his palm.
The wet, colourless world was revealed about him; a long gleam of
yellow silver divided earth from sky. He saw before him flat meadow
land, a few bare trees, a distant wood.
He moved stiffly and looked round for Carola.
Under one of the poplars was the figure of the young woman standing
in much the same attitude as that he had observed at the fête a
few days ago, very still, her head slightly bent, her whole pose
expressing containment, humility, and yet a certain pride. His
fantasy of a peasant girl was dispelled now. Her clothes, though wet
and mud-stained, showed of an incongruous grandeur: the dress that
trailed over the damp fallen leaves was brocade and shot with gold
threads, the white feathers on her drooping beaver were fastened with
a jewelled clasp, and in her ears hung long red diamonds.
She seemed to feel his gaze on her, for she raised and turned her
head. Her black hair had fallen under her hat and lay heavy in the
folds of her violet velvet cloak.
“We can go on our way now,” she said evenly.
Luc looked at what lay between him and her: a bundle wrapped in the
gaudy striped mummer’s cloak; at one end two small feet clad in bright
green stockings showed, and at the other a fair damp curl had fallen
between the folds of the wrap.
He glanced away, utterly sick; not all the dead that had lined the way
from Prague to Eger had power to move him as this little corpse. He
heard Carola coming over the leaves, but would not look round.
Now the sun was above the horizon, the whole landscape was brightening
rapidly; a faint sparkle of gold began to appear on the wet leaves, on
the wet grass. Luc saw the two horses waiting with drooping heads not
far off. With a long shiver he moved towards them; when he returned
with the bridles in his hand, he found Carola kneeling beside the
little girl, who was now decently covered from head to foot in the
velvet cloak, which folded her like a rich pall.
Carola was praying. She held between her bare ringless hands a silver
and ivory rosary. Her head was bowed reverently, so that her face was
hidden by the shade of her hat. The strengthening sun gleamed on the
red and gold and brown of the riding-habit that revealed her slight,
womanly figure.
Luc stood watching her.
“Do you find consolation in that, Madame?” he asked gently.
She looked up; then, seeing he was holding the horses, rose, slipping
the rosary back into the bosom of her gown.
“If not there, where else?” she asked, very sadly. “God is the only
kind person I know.”
She came towards her horse, and he helped her to mount. When she was
in the saddle he gave her his cloak, and she took it now, without a
word, and shivered into it. The dawn seemed colder than the night.
“Do you remember the story of Madame de Montespan and the pigs?” she
asked, leaning a little towards Luc.
He stared at her.
“She was very beautiful and very great,” continued Carola, “and when
King Louis loved her there were no flowers in France considered worthy
to lie on her breast. Then when she fell into disgrace she left the
Court and died--still beautiful. And they took her heart to bury it
at a certain convent; and the peasant who carried it became weary of
the journey, and cast the heart into a ditch, and turned back--and
_no one cared_. And some pigs nosing in the ditch ate the heart of
the beautiful Marquise, and lay down that night in their sty with
the proudest blood in France staining their jaws--and _no one cared_
except God!” Her eyes flashed. “I think He remembered it against King
Louis.”
“Why do you tell me this?” asked Luc, with a shudder.
“Because I have been thrown to the ditch and the swine,” she answered;
“and out of the dirt I ask God to remember that I have paid for some
of my sins--here on earth.”
He did not understand her, but her speech held him. With his hand on
his bridle, he looked up at her, his haggard, resolute, and beautiful
face clear in the light of the rising sun.
“M. de Richelieu----” he began.
“Let M. de Richelieu be!” answered Carola. “It is _you_ who have
punished me most.”
“I?” he questioned.
“You--to-night--when I was lonely as the damned--and facing death and
hell--and you would not kiss me.”
Luc looked at her steadily.
“You have cast my heart alive to the swine,” she said, in a trembling
voice, “and God will remember it against you.”
He caught her meaning through a confusion of pain. He realized his own
self-absorption; he saw, suddenly and very vividly, her point of view.
“You think I hold you in contempt?” he said hoarsely.
“Why not?” she answered. “Why not?”
Luc shook his head.
“I am not fine, and I am not true,” said Carola. “There is no paint on
my face now, and you must see I am a very common creature, Monsieur le
Marquis.”
Luc’s hand was so slack on the bridle that his horse began cropping
the thin blades of grass that sprouted between the dead leaves.
“Give me the child,” said the Countess.
The day was quite bright now; fields of emerald, skies of pale azure,
trees of faint gold were about them as he raised his burden to her
saddle. The purple velvet trailed over the wet sides of her white
horse; he flung across his own holster the coarse striped mantle, and
mounted.
“These nuns,” she said, “are very good. They had, three years ago,
when the plague was bad, a hundred people in their hospice.”
Luc offered to take the mummer’s child from her, but she refused. They
rode from the fields on to the flat, muddy grey road. The horses were
weary, and Carola, using only one hand, rode awkwardly. They went
slowly across a country that was wet, glimmering, and silent.
Luc’s thoughts began to stir like waking birds, first shivering, then
mounting into the circle of the sunlight. All disturbing pictures of
the past vanished from his mind; he only saw the future, an ineffable
blaze of glory. He spoke aloud, lifting his face to the fragrant early
heavens.
“Whatever happens, I will overcome,” he said.
Carola looked at him, and seemed to shrink into herself. They neither
of them spoke until they had crossed a river by a low bridge, and
ridden up to the walls and outbuildings of an ancient abbey and
convent.
Luc dismounted and helped Carola from her horse. Between them they
laid the little girl on the long grass beneath the wall. Luc fastened
the horses to a staple that was there for that purpose; his hands
were very cold and his whole body shivering. When he came back to the
narrow door, he found Carola standing beside the great iron bell.
Above her head an ash drooped over the wall; the hard scarlet fruit
hung against the grey stone and mortar. She had removed her hat;
through the fine black ringlets showed the long red diamonds, flame
in crystal, that glittered in her ears. Under Luc’s black cloak, her
dress gleamed rich, and soft, and bright. Her face was pallid, hollow,
and expressionless.
Luc stepped towards her. She thought he meant to ring, and moved
aside; but he stopped before her, looking at her intently.
She glanced up at that: her eyes were bloodshot, and the lids swollen.
He saw that she must have been crying, silently, in the dark. She
seemed frightened and very humble. She held herself flat against the
wall, and the beaver she held dropped from her loosening fingers.
Luc took off his hat. His face was serene and proud; his long locks
of hazel-coloured hair, escaping from the black ribbon, blew over his
forehead and shoulders; his cravat and the thick lace on his bosom
stirred in this same breeze. The beautiful lines of his face showed
fatigue but no sadness, and his eyes were clear and radiant.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Clémence,” she answered.
“Clémence!”
“It is true--that was my name in Provence,” she murmured. “I would
never have told you--why did you ask?”
“Clémence,” he repeated. He stood with his hat in his hand as if he
was in attendance on a great lady.
“Why do you not ring?” she asked hoarsely.
He made a gesture with his sword hand towards the convent.
“You know what we go into,” he said: “perhaps death--perhaps hideous
corruption.”
She smiled bravely.
“There is no need that a nun should be--desirable.”
“You are not afraid?”
“No.”
“Ah--I saw a man once--who had been a soldier--disfigured.”
“I know. I have seen them. I hope it may be me, not you. Ring,
Monsieur.”
“One moment. We are set apart from the world, you and I, Clémence. We
have met many times, very strangely. I think this is going to be the
last time.”
“The last time,” she echoed. “And you--are afraid?”
“Afraid that I may miss death, and live--useless. Afraid
of--her--afterwards; afraid--of fear.” He smiled grandly as he spoke.
“I am the only person who will ever know that,” she said proudly.
He held out his right hand; she put hers into it, and then he cast his
hat away, and suddenly clasped her.
“Take the last kiss I have to give in this gorgeous world!” she cried.
As he kissed her, she sobbed in her throat; and her quick tears wetted
his cheek as their lips met the second time. He kissed the ends of her
hair, her neck, her hands, the brocade that covered her bosom, then
let her free of his embrace, and pulled the long iron chain.
As the strident clang of the bell echoed through the convent, he
picked up her beaver and gave it her.
“You know?” she asked. Her lips were still throbbing, so that she
could scarcely speak.
“Know?” he murmured unsteadily.
“The great--the useless--love I have always had--for you.”
The convent door opened.