THE CALL TO ARMS
The hideous accusation was followed by an awful silence. Élisabeth was
now standing in front of her husband, striving to understand his words,
which had not yet acquired their real meaning for her, but which hurt
her as though she had been stabbed to the heart.
She moved towards him and, with her eyes in his, spoke in a voice so low
that he could hardly hear:
"You surely can't mean what you said, Paul? The thing is too monstrous!"
He replied in the same tone:
"Yes, it is a monstrous thing. I don't believe it myself yet. I refuse
to believe it."
"Then--it's a mistake, isn't it?--Confess it, you've made a mistake."
She implored him with all the distress that filled her being, as though
she were hoping to make him yield. He fixed his eyes again on the
accursed portrait, over his wife's shoulder, and shivered from head to
foot:
"Oh, it is she!" he declared, clenching his fists. "It is she--I
recognize her--it is the woman who killed my----"
A shock of protest ran through her body; and, beating her breast, she
cried:
"My mother! My mother a murderess! My mother, whom my father used to
worship and went on worshiping! My mother, who used to hold me on her
knee and kiss me!--I have forgotten everything about her except that,
her kisses and her caresses! And you tell me that she is a murderess!"
"It is true."
"Oh, Paul, you must not say anything so horrible! How can you be
positive, such a long time after? You were only a child; and you saw so
little of the woman . . . hardly a few minutes . . ."
"I saw more of her than it seems humanly possible to see," exclaimed
Paul, loudly. "From the moment of the murder her image never left my
sight. I have tried to shake it off at times, as one tries to shake off
a nightmare; but I could not. And the image is there, hanging on the
wall. As sure as I live, it is there; I know it as I should know your
image after twenty years. It is she . . . why, look, on her breast, that
brooch set in a gold snake! . . . a cameo, as I told you, and the
snake's eyes . . . two rubies! . . . and the black lace scarf around the
shoulders! It's she, I tell you, it's the woman I saw!"
A growing rage excited him to frenzy; and he shook his fist at the
portrait of Hermine d'Andeville.
"Hush!" cried Élisabeth, under the torment of his words. "Hold your
tongue! I won't allow you to . . ."
She tried to put her hand on his mouth to compel him to silence. But
Paul made a movement of repulsion, as though he were shrinking from his
wife's touch; and the movement was so abrupt and so instinctive that she
fell to the ground sobbing while he, incensed, exasperated by his sorrow
and hatred, impelled by a sort of terrified hallucination that drove him
back to the door, shouted:
"Look at her! Look at her wicked mouth, her pitiless eyes! She is
thinking of the murder! . . . I see her, I see her! . . . She goes up to
my father . . . she leads him away . . . she raises her arm . . . and
she kills him! . . . Oh, the wretched, monstrous woman! . . ."
He rushed from the room.
* * * * *
Paul spent the night in the park, running like a madman wherever the
dark paths led him, or flinging himself, when tired out, on the grass
and weeping, weeping endlessly.
Paul Delroze had known no suffering save from his memory of the murder,
a chastened suffering which, nevertheless, at certain periods became
acute until it smarted like a fresh wound. This time the pain was so
great and so unexpected that, notwithstanding his usual self-mastery and
his well-balanced mind, he utterly lost his head. His thoughts, his
actions, his attitudes, the words which he yelled into the darkness
were those of a man who has parted with his self-control.
One thought and one alone kept returning to his seething brain, in which
his ideas and impressions whirled like leaves in the wind; one terrible
thought:
"I know the woman who killed my father; and that woman's daughter is the
woman whom I love."
Did he still love her? No doubt, he was desperately mourning a happiness
which he knew to be shattered; but did he still love Élisabeth? Could he
love Hermine d'Andeville's daughter?
When he went indoors at daybreak and passed Élisabeth's room, his heart
beat no faster than before. His hatred of the murderess destroyed all
else that might stir within him: love, affection, longing, or even the
merest human pity.
The torpor into which he sank for a few hours relaxed his nerves a
little, but did not change his mental attitude. Perhaps, on the
contrary, and without even thinking about it, he was still more
unwilling than before to meet Élisabeth. And yet he wanted to know, to
ascertain, to gather all the essential particulars and to make quite
certain before taking the resolve that would decide the great tragedy of
his life in one way or another.
Above all, he must question Jérôme and his wife, whose evidence was of
no small value, owing to the fact that they had known the Comtesse
d'Andeville. Certain matters concerning the dates, for instance, might
be cleared up forthwith.
He found them in their lodge, both of them greatly excited, Jérôme with
a newspaper in his hand and Rosalie making gestures of dismay.
"It's settled, sir," cried Jérôme. "You can be sure of it: it's coming!"
"What?" asked Paul.
"Mobilization, sir, the call to arms. You'll see it does. I saw some
gendarmes, friends of mine, and they told me. The posters are ready."
Paul remarked, absent-mindedly:
"The posters are always ready."
"Yes, but they're going to stick them up at once, you'll see, sir. Just
look at the paper. Those swine--you'll forgive me, sir, but it's the
only word for them--those swine want war. Austria would be willing to
negotiate, but in the meantime the others have been mobilizing for
several days. Proof is, they won't let you cross into their country any
more. And worse: yesterday they destroyed a French railway station, not
far from here, and pulled up the rails. Read it for yourself, sir!"
Paul skimmed through the stop-press telegrams, but, though he saw that
they were serious, war seemed to him such an unlikely thing that he did
not pay much attention to them.
"It'll be settled all right," he said. "That's just their way of
talking, with their hand on the sword-hilt; but I can't believe . . ."
"You're wrong, sir," Rosalie muttered.
He no longer listened, thinking only of the tragedy of his fate and
casting about for the best means of obtaining the necessary replies from
Jérôme. But he was not able to contain himself any longer and he
broached the subject frankly:
"I daresay you know, Jérôme, that madame and I have been to the Comtesse
d'Andeville's room."
The statement produced an extraordinary effect upon the keeper and his
wife, as though it had been a sacrilege to enter that room so long kept
locked, the mistress' room, as they called it among themselves.
"You don't mean that, sir!" Rosalie blurted out.
And Jérôme added:
"No, of course not, for I sent the only key of the padlock, a safety-key
it was, to Monsieur le Comte."
"He gave it us yesterday morning," said Paul.
And, without troubling further about their amazement, he proceeded
straightaway to put his questions:
"There is a portrait of the Comtesse d'Andeville between the two
windows. When was it hung there?"
Jérôme did not reply at once. He thought for a moment, looked at his
wife, and then said:
"Why, that's easily answered. It was when Monsieur le Comte sent all his
furniture to the house . . . before they moved in."
"When was that?"
Paul's agony was unendurable during the three or four seconds before the
reply.
"Well?" he asked.
When the reply came at last it was decisive:
"Well, it was in the spring of 1898."
"Eighteen hundred and ninety-eight!"
Paul repeated the words in a dull voice: 1898 was the year of his
father's murder!
Without stopping to reflect, with the coolness of an examining
magistrate who does not swerve from the line which he has laid out, he
asked:
"So the Comte and Comtesse d'Andeville arrived . . ."
"Monsieur le Comte and Madame le Comtesse arrived at the castle on the
28th of August, 1898, and left for the south on the 24th of October."
Paul now knew the truth, for his father was murdered on the 19th of
September. And all the circumstances which depended on that truth, which
explained it in its main details or which proceeded from it at once
appeared to him. He remembered that his father was on friendly terms
with the Comte d'Andeville. He said to himself that his father, in the
course of his journey in Alsace, must have learnt that his friend
d'Andeville was living in Lorraine and must have contemplated paying him
a surprise visit. He reckoned up the distance between Ornequin and
Strasburg, a distance which corresponded with the time spent in the
train. And he asked:
"How far is this from the frontier?"
"Three miles and three-quarters, sir."
"On the other side, at no great distance, there's a little German town,
is there not?"
"Yes, sir, Èbrecourt."
"Is there a short-cut to the frontier?"
"Yes, sir, for about half-way: a path at the other end of the park."
"Through the woods?"
"Through Monsieur le Comte's woods."
"And in those woods . . ."
To acquire total, absolute certainty, that certainty which comes not
from an interpretation of the facts but from the facts themselves, which
would stand out visible and palpable, all that he had to do was to put
the last question: in those woods was not there a little chapel in the
middle of a glade? Paul Delroze did not put the question. Perhaps he
thought it too precise, perhaps he feared lest it should induce the
gamekeeper to entertain thoughts and comparisons which the nature of the
conversation was already sufficient to warrant. He merely asked:
"Was the Comtesse d'Andeville away at all during the six weeks which she
spent at Ornequin? For two or three days, I mean?"
"No, sir, Madame le Comtesse never left the grounds."
"She kept to the park?"
"Yes, sir. Monsieur le Comte used to drive almost every afternoon to
Corvigny or in the valley, but Madame la Comtesse never went beyond the
park and the woods."
Paul knew what he wanted to know. Not caring what Jérôme and his wife
might think, he did not trouble to find an excuse for his strange series
of apparently disconnected questions. He left the lodge and walked away.
Eager though he was to complete his inquiry, he postponed the
investigations which he intended to pursue outside the park. It was as
though he dreaded to face the final proof, which had really become
superfluous after those with which chance had supplied him. He therefore
went back to the château and, at lunch-time, resolved to accept this
inevitable meeting with Élisabeth. But his wife's maid came to him in
the drawing-room and said that her mistress sent her excuses. Madame was
not feeling very well and asked did monsieur mind if she took her lunch
in her own room. He understood that she wished to leave him entirely
free, refusing, on her side, to appeal to him on behalf of a mother whom
she respected and, if necessary, submitting beforehand to whatever
eventual decision her husband might make.
Lunching by himself under the eyes of the butler and footman waiting at
table, he felt in the utmost depths of his heart that his happiness was
gone and that Élisabeth and he, thanks to circumstances for which
neither of them was responsible, had on the very day of their marriage
become enemies whom no power on earth could bring together. Certainly,
he bore her no hatred and did not reproach her with her mother's crime;
but unconsciously he was angry with her, as for a fault, inasmuch as
she was her mother's daughter.
For two hours after lunch he remained closeted with the portrait in the
boudoir: a tragic interview which he wished to have with the murderess,
so as to fill his eyes with her accursed image and give fresh strength
to his memories. He examined every slightest detail. He studied the
cameo, the swan with unfurled wings which it represented, the chasing of
the gold snake that formed the setting, the position of the rubies and
also the draping of the lace around the shoulders, not to speak of the
shape of the mouth and the color of the hair and the outline of the
face.
It was undoubtedly the woman whom he had seen that September evening. A
corner of the picture bore the painter's signature; and underneath, on
the frame, was a scroll with the inscription:
Portrait of the Comtesse H.
No doubt the portrait had been exhibited with that discreet reference to
the Comtesse Hermine.
"Now, then," said Paul. "A few minutes more, and the whole past will
come to life again. I have found the criminal; I have now only to find
the place of the crime. If the chapel is there, in the woods, the truth
will be complete."
He went for the truth resolutely. He feared it less now, because it
could no longer escape his grasp. And yet how his heart beat, with
great, painful throbs, and how he loathed the idea of taking the road
leading to that other road along which his father had passed sixteen
years before!
A vague movement of Jérôme's hand had told him which way to go. He
crossed the park in the direction of the frontier, bearing to his left
and passing a lodge. At the entrance to the woods was a long avenue of
fir-trees down which he went. Four hundred yards farther it branched
into three narrow avenues. Two of these proved to end in impenetrable
thickets. The third led to the top of a mound, from which he descended,
still keeping to his left, by another avenue of fir-trees.
In selecting this road, Paul realized that it was just this avenue of
firs the appearance of which aroused in him, through some untold
resemblance of shape and arrangement, memories clear enough to guide his
steps. It ran straight ahead for some time and then took a sudden turn
into a cluster of tall beeches whose leafy tops met overhead. Then the
road sloped upwards; and, at the end of the dark tunnel through which he
was walking, Paul perceived the glare of light that points to an open
space.
The anguish of it all made his knees give way beneath him; and he had to
make an effort to proceed. Was it the glade in which his father had
received his death-blow? The more that luminous space became revealed to
his eyes, the more did he feel penetrated with a profound conviction. As
in the room with the portrait, the past was recovering the very aspect
of the truth in and before him.
It was the same glade, surrounded by a ring of trees that presented the
same picture and covered with a carpet of grass and moss which the same
paths divided as of old. The same glimpse of sky was above him, outlined
by the capricious masses of foliage. And there, on his left, guarded by
two yew-trees which Paul recognized, was the chapel.
The chapel! The little old massive chapel, whose lines had etched
themselves like furrows into his brain! Trees grow, become taller, alter
their form. The appearance of a glade is liable to change. Its paths
will sometimes interlock in a different fashion. A man's memory can play
him a trick. But a building of granite and cement is immutable. It takes
centuries to give it the green-gray color that is the mark which time
sets upon the stone; and this bloom of age never alters. The chapel that
stood there, displaying a grimy-paned rose-window in its east front, was
undoubtedly that from which the German Emperor had stepped, followed by
the woman who, ten minutes later, committed the murder.
Paul walked to the door. He wanted to revisit the place in which his
father had spoken to him for the last time. It was a moment of tense
emotion. The same little roof which had sheltered their bicycles
projected at the back; and the door was the same, with its great rusty
clamps and bars.
He stood on the single step that led to it, raised the latch and pushed
the door. But as he was about to enter, two men, hidden in the shadow on
either side, sprang at him.
One of them aimed a revolver full in his face. By some miracle, Paul
noticed the gleaming barrel of the weapon just in time to stoop before
the bullet could strike him. A second shot rang out, but he had hustled
the man and now snatched the revolver from his hand, while his other
aggressor threatened him with a dagger. He stepped backwards out of the
chapel, with outstretched arm, and twice pulled the trigger. Each time
there was a click but no shot. The mere fact, however, of his firing at
the two scoundrels terrified them, and they turned tail and made off as
fast as they could.
Bewildered by the suddenness of the attack, Paul stood for a second
irresolute. Then he fired at the fugitives again, but to no purpose. The
revolver, which was obviously loaded in only two chambers, clicked but
did not go off.
He then started running after his assailants; and he remembered that
long ago the Emperor and his companion, on leaving the chapel, had taken
the same direction, which was evidently that of the frontier.
Almost at the same moment the men, seeing themselves pursued, plunged
into the wood and slipped in among the trees; but Paul, who was swifter
of foot, rapidly gained ground on them, all the more so as he had gone
round a hollow filled with bracken and brambles into which the others
had ventured.
Suddenly one of them gave a shrill whistle, probably a warning to some
accomplice. Soon after they disappeared behind a line of extremely dense
bushes. When he had passed through these, Paul saw at a distance of
sixty yards before him a high wall which seemed to shut in the woods on
every side. The men were half-way to it; and he perceived that they were
making straight for a part of the wall containing a small door.
Paul put on a spurt so as to reach the door before they had time to open
it. The bare ground enabled him to increase his speed, whereas the men,
who were obviously tired, had reduced theirs.
"I've got them, the ruffians!" he murmured. "I shall at last know . . ."
A second whistle sounded, followed by a guttural shout. He was now
within twenty yards of them and could hear them speak.
"I've got them, I've got them!" he repeated, with fierce delight.
And he made up his mind to strike one of them in the face with the
barrel of his revolver and to spring at the other's throat.
But, before they even reached the wall, the door was pushed open from
the outside and a third man appeared and let them through.
Paul flung away the revolver; and his impetus was such and the effort
which he made so great that he managed to seize the door and draw it to
him.
The door gave way. And what he then saw scared him to such a degree that
he started backwards and did not even dream of defending himself against
this fresh attack. The third man--Oh, hideous nightmare! Could it
moreover be anything but a nightmare?--the third ruffian was raising a
knife against him; and Paul knew his face . . . it was a face resembling
the one which he had seen before, a man's face and not a woman's, but
the same sort of face, undoubtedly the same sort: a face marked by
fifteen additional years and by an even harder and more wicked
expression, but the same sort of face, the same sort!
And the man stabbed Paul, even as the woman of fifteen years ago, even
as she who was since dead had stabbed Paul's father.
* * * * *
Paul Delroze staggered, but rather as the result of the nervous shock
caused by the sudden appearance of this ghost of the past; for the blade
of the dagger, striking the button on the shoulder-strap of his
shooting-jacket, broke into splinters. Dazed and misty-eyed, he heard
the sound of the door closing, the grating of the key in the lock and
lastly the hum of a motor car starting on the other side of the wall.
When Paul recovered from his torpor there was nothing left for him to
do. The man and his two confederates were out of reach.
Besides, for the moment he was utterly absorbed in the mystery of the
likeness between the figure from the past and that which he had just
seen. He could think of but one thing:
"The Comtesse d'Andeville is dead; and here she is revived under the
aspect of a man whose face is the very face which she would have to-day.
Is it the face of some relation, of a brother of whom I never heard, a
twin perhaps?"
And he reflected:
"After all, am I not mistaken? Am I not the victim of an hallucination,
which would be only natural in the crisis through which I am passing?
How do I know for certain that there is any connection between the
present and the past? I must have a proof."
The proof was ready to his hand; and it was so strong that Paul was not
able to doubt for much longer. He caught sight of the remains of the
dagger in the grass and picked up the handle. On it four letters were
engraved as with a red-hot iron: an H, an E, an R and an M.
H, E, R, M; the first four letters of Hermine! . . . At this moment,
while he was staring at the letters which were to him so full of
meaning, at this moment, a moment which Paul was never to forget, the
bell of a church nearby began to ring in the most unusual manner: a
regular, monotonous, uninterrupted ringing, which sounded at once brisk
and unspeakably sinister.
"The tocsin," he muttered to himself, without attaching the full sense
to the word. And he added: "A fire somewhere, I expect."
A few minutes later Paul had succeeded in climbing over the wall by
means of the projecting branches of a tree. He found a further stretch
of woods, crossed by a forest road. He followed the tracks of a motor
car along this road and reached the frontier within an hour.
A squad of German constabulary were sitting round the foot of the
frontier post; and he saw a white road with Uhlans trotting along it. At
the end of it was a cluster of red roofs and gardens. Was this the
little town where his father and he had hired their bicycles that day,
the little town of Èbrecourt?
The melancholy bell never ceased. He noticed that the sound came from
France; also that another bell was ringing somewhere, likewise in
France, and a third from the direction of the Liseron; and all three on
the same hurried note, as though sending forth a wild appeal around
them.
He repeated, anxiously:
"The tocsin! . . . The alarm! . . . And it's being passed on from church
to church. . . . Can it mean that . . ."
But he drove away the terrifying thought. No, his ears were misleading
him; or else it was the echo of a single bell thrown back in the hollow
valleys and ringing over the plains.
Meanwhile he was gazing at the white road which issued from the little
German town, and he observed that a constant stream of horsemen was
arriving there and spreading across-country. Also a detachment of French
dragoons appeared on the ridge of a hill. The officer in command scanned
the horizon through his field-glasses and then trotted off with his men.
Thereupon, unable to go any farther, Paul walked back to the wall which
he had climbed and found that the wall was prolonged around the whole of
the estate, including the woods and the park. He learnt besides from an
old peasant that it was built some twelve years ago, which explained why
Paul had never found the chapel in the course of his explorations along
the frontier. Once only, he now remembered, some one had told him of a
chapel; but it was one situated inside a private estate; and his
suspicions had not been aroused.
While thus following the road that skirted the property, he came nearer
to the village of Ornequin, whose church suddenly rose at the end of a
clearing in the wood. The bell, which he had not heard for the last
moment or two, now rang out again with great distinctness. It was the
bell of Ornequin. It was frail, shrill, poignant as a lament and more
solemn than a passing-bell, for all its hurry and lightness.
Paul walked towards the sound. A charming village, all aflower with
geraniums and Marguerites, stood gathered about its church. Silent
groups were studying a white notice posted on the Mayor's office. Paul
stepped forward and read the heading:
"Mobilization Order."
At any other period of his life these words would have struck him with
all their gloomy and terrific meaning. But the crisis through which he
was passing was too powerful to allow room for any great emotion within
him. He scarcely even contemplated the unavoidable consequences of the
proclamation. Very well, the country was mobilizing: the mobilization
would begin at midnight. . . . Very well, every one must go; he would
go. . . . And this assumed in his mind the form of so imperative an act,
the proportions of a duty which so completely exceeded every minor
obligation and every petty individual need that he felt, on the
contrary, a sort of relief at thus receiving from the outside the order
that dictated his conduct. There was no hesitation possible. His duty
lay before him: he must go.
Go? In that case why not go at once? What was the use of returning to
the house, seeing Élisabeth again, seeking a painful and futile
explanation, granting or refusing a forgiveness which his wife did not
ask of him, but which the daughter of Hermine d'Andeville did not
deserve?
In front of the principal inn a diligence stood waiting, marked,
"Corvigny-Ornequin Railway Service." A few passengers were getting in.
Without giving a further thought to a position which events were
developing in their own way, he climbed into the diligence.
At the Corvigny railway station he was told that his train would not
leave for half an hour and that it was the last, as the evening train,
which connected with the night express on the main line, was not
running. Paul took his ticket and then asked his way to the jobmaster of
the village. He found that the man owned two motor cars and arranged
with him to have the larger of the two sent at once to the Château
d'Ornequin and placed at Mme. Paul Delroze's disposal.
And he wrote a short note to his wife:
"_Élisabeth:_
"Circumstances are so serious that I must ask you to
leave Ornequin. The trains have become very uncertain;
and I am sending you a motor car which will take you
to-night to your aunt at Chaumont. I suppose that the
servants will go with you and that, if there should be
war (which seems to me very unlikely, in spite of
everything), Jérôme and Rosalie will shut up the house
and go to Corvigny.
"As for me, I am joining my regiment. Whatever the
future may hold in store for us, Élisabeth, I shall
never forget the woman who was my bride and who bears
my name.
"PAUL DELROZE."