existence? If I chose to forget our relationship, what claim on your
courtesy could I urge? You are too sensitive, too loyal, too good,
Henriette. You were always that. Your father used to say so, and so
used Adèle. Ah! they loved you well--those two. I wish now for your
sake--I honestly wish you had dealt me the measure I deserved, and my
neglect would have stung you less.’
‘It did not sting me, François. I have no pride of that kind. Life is
too full of pain. But I was sorry and grieved for Gabrielle’s sake.’
Had she not the right to hide the rest from him--simple-minded lady?
who believed she had succeeded--since she so honourably strove to hide
it from herself? Dr. Vermont pushed the child away, and came and stood
before his sister-in-law. His imperious glance compelled hers, which
she lifted timidly, apprehensively.
‘You are an angel, Henriette--oh, I don’t mean in the hackneyed
conventional sense, but as a man means it when the goodness of another
forces him to face right and wrong, and he feels he cannot undo the
wrong and cannot choose the right. It is a miserable position. Ah! if
it were not so late? But my tongue is tied. My first mistake was here,
in this very room, years ago--twenty, thirty, a lifetime may be. Your
father lay on the canapé dying, and I was sitting beside him. He spoke
of you; I knew well that he spoke of you, though he did not mention
your name. It was you he wished me to marry, and I, following his
glance, looked at Adèle instead. Happiness seemed to woo me from that
flower-like face, and I believed in happiness then. Now!’ he shrugged
in his expressive way, and added, in a softer voice, drooping humbly to
her: ‘God forgive me, Henriette, but now I question the wisdom of that
choice.’
‘It was a natural choice, François, and it would be anguish for me to
think that you could regret it. Spare me that sorrow. Surely I have
suffered enough, and have not reproached you. But this indignity would
indeed give voice to the pain of silent years, and bid me utter words
neither you nor I could forget. I gave her to you,’ she went on, in a
dull tone of protest. ‘It was the best I had, my dearest and sole one
on earth. But what did it matter if I was the lonelier, so that you and
she were happy together? I have asked so little of life. Leave me that
remembrance, François. No man had a sweeter wife than my Adèle, and for
her I can be satisfied with a loyalty no less from her husband than
that which I have given her.’
She glided from the room without another look for him. He stood and
stared after her, with a fantastic, almost amused movement of eyebrow,
though the heart within him felt heavy to bursting with an odd
assortment of sensations.
When they met again, it was at the luncheon table, with his companions
and Mademoiselle’s foreign friend.
‘Anatole devours her with his eyes,’ he said to himself. ‘Poor moth! he
is sadly burnt, and the fact that she is eight or nine years his senior
makes his hurt the graver. There are compensations in a hopeless love
when the ages are reversed.’
But his mild sarcastic face wore no look of dejection or dismay as he
sat and discoursed upon Shakespeare and Molière with the foreigner,
only of intelligent survey and an amiable satisfaction in all things,
including the clowns of Shakespeare, from whom most Frenchmen
instinctively shrink. After lunch they played chess and discussed,
in the usual way, the school of realists, décadents, symbolists, and
the recent revival of romanticism in a gentleman, said to combine the
melodious style of George Sand with the adventurous spirit of the
great Dumas. It was only when the foreigner retired, and the young men
went upstairs to study the stars in the friendly odour of tobacco, that
the Doctor ventured again to address Henriette.
‘He is an interesting lad, Anatole--eh?’
‘Very. But it distresses me to see him so sad and worried at his age.
He appears to have some trouble on his mind,’ said Mademoiselle,
leaning her elbows on the table and her chin upon her folded hands.
‘He has fallen in love with you--that’s his trouble, Henriette. I
assure you, up in Paris, he is the reverse of sad or worried. He is the
life of Lander’s.’
Dr. Vermont achieved his purpose: he made her blush from neck to
forehead.
‘You forget, François, that you are talking to a middle-aged woman of a
very young man,’ she said, in surprise.
‘Not so middle-aged as that,’ laughed Dr. Vermont, unjoyously. ‘And the
others,--do they appear to have any trouble on their minds?’
‘It has not struck me. I should say they are rather futile men, who
would probably fail in any undertaking in an abject way,’ she said,
dismissing them.
But she did not dismiss Anatole from her mind, and when he came to say
‘Good-night’ to her, she greeted him with so much direct and personal
sympathy in her smile, in her glance, and in the slight pressure of
her fingers, that I declare the poor fellow was only restrained by the
presence of Dr. Vermont from bursting into tears then and there, and
confessing all to her. Instead, he choked an inclination to sob, and
turned despairingly on his heel.
It rained heavily all next day--the fatal New Year’s Eve. With an
instinct for dramatic fitness, Anatole spent the first half in a state
of suppressed tearfulness, as an appropriate ending of his young
life. He was unrecognisable to himself even, for never before had he
dropped into the elegiac mood. With the lyric, with the martial, with
the bacchanalian, he was familiar enough. He tried to recover his
self-esteem by imagining what his state would be on the battle-field.
But the satisfaction he might feel in shooting a German, or bayoneting
an insolent Englishman, was wanting to take from the horror of
contemplated death; and the candid wretchedness of his face provoked
sympathetic misery in the glance of all who beheld him. What would he
not give for one more sight of the old fishing town in Normandy, for a
chat with the genial honest fishermen who had never heard that accursed
phrase, _Fin de siècle_, and little cared whether they were at the
beginning or the end of the century. No, if his mother were alive, he
was convinced he never would have entered into that wicked jest upon
matter so solemn as death. He would have known better, had he even a
sister, like that sweet and noble-looking lady, Mademoiselle Lenormant.
It was too late now, and this was his last day. Thank God it rained!
It rained so darkly and so dismally that the regrets of life were
mitigated by the mournfulness of nature. It was relieved thereby of
much of its attraction and of all its enchantment. Had a single ray of
sunlight fallen upon the damp earth, it would have shaken him to the
depth of his being. This fact he jealously kept to himself, dreading
the sneer of those two superior young men, Julien and Gaston, who
thought themselves such very fine fellows because they persisted in
their indifference to eternity, and cared not a rush for the poor
old world they were going from. But Anatole knew better than to envy
them. He held that it requires but a bad heart, or none at all, and
feeble brains atrophied by the cheap philosophy of the hour, to reach
this stage. So, while they smoked and joked downstairs in dismal
hilarity, he sat upstairs with the ladies, and drank tea, and made a
gallant effort to play with little Gabrielle. How happy he might be
if this were to be permanent reality, and Paris, with its unrest, its
bitterness, its noise and glitter, an ugly dream!
Dr. Vermont showed himself neither upstairs nor downstairs. Before
lunch he walked to Beaufort, and on his return, he slowly made the tour
of the island. It had been mentioned that upon one side of the island,
as you stepped from the bridge beyond a broken arch and a dangerous
reach of rocks down to the inky waters, there was an old tower.
Monsieur Lenormant’s house was lower down on the opposite side, facing
the cemetery. This tower had been an ancient fort when the entire isle
was the fortified retreat of an illustrious and rebel house. It had
sustained sieges, and known the roar of musketry, and it still stood
nobly upon its martial memories, albeit a ruin of centuries. All was
silence and desolation on this side of the island. No one walked its
pavements, and the laundresses wheeling their barrows to town from the
lower end, instinctively chose the inhabited quarter to pass.
‘A man might rot to carrion here,’ said Dr. Vermont, as he stood
between the battered walls of the tower, and looked up at the weeping
heavens, and then down at the sullen and swollen river. ‘None would
know, and a few days’ persistent rain would rush the river beyond the
rocks in among these ruins, and carry our bodies away to the sea.’
And then he walked with his hands in his pockets, unmindful of the
rain, to the neglected cemetery. He stood a while against the white
tomb of his young wife, upon which some flowers lay, a lifeless pulp in
a pool of water. Thirty-nine only, and two days ago he believed he had
tasted all life had to offer, and wanted no more of its bitterness or
its sweetness? But he would not humble himself to admit that he had
erred two days ago, and that there still remained at the bottom of the
cup a draught he would willingly drink. He put the present from him,
and the stirring voice of a troubled consciousness, and leaned there in
the rain to dream a while of youth, and hope, and all things good that
have been and are no more.
It was late in the afternoon when he returned and shut himself in the
blue-room to write letters. This done, he examined a pair of pistols,
loaded one which he laid upon the table, and with his odd, hard
smile, carried the other into the dressing-room where Anatole slept,
and placed it on the bed. There was still half an hour to dispose of
before dinner--his last half hour of solitude. He took up the candle,
and walked slowly round the room, inspecting each object, pricking by
association, memory, that just then needed no pricking. The pity was
that the man’s sharp face never lost its calm irony of expression,
and his shapely mouth never lost its trick of quiet smiling. For him
absurdity lay at the bottom of all things--if not absurdity, something
so much worse as to be beyond toleration.
Man in all his moods, he insisted, was a mixture of grossness and
absurdity, and it mattered little which of the two elements prevailed.
The one excess worked mischief for himself, and the other mischief for
his neighbours.
When the dinner-bell rang, Dr. Vermont appeared still smiling and
humorously observant. He it was who spoke most, and most coherently,
at table. Julien and Gaston swaggered a little, and their faces were
pale and excited. Anybody with an eye in his head might have guessed
they were morally perturbed, and Mademoiselle, mindful of the hurried
departure that night, questioned her foreign friend, sitting below
with Dr. Vermont, in a swift, apprehensive glance. But the Doctor was
so cool and steady, and discoursed so blandly with his neighbour,
that she dismissed her fears, and set herself to cheer and encourage
poor Anatole. If his depression were really due to a violent fancy
for herself, then she was in duty bound to act the part of mother, or
at least of elder affectionate sister,--which she did with consummate
ability, and drove the unhappy lad to despair.
After dinner the Doctor, instead of rising, said, laughing--
‘Henriette, to-night we men will follow the example of our barbarous
brothers of England, and will remain over our wine after the ladies. To
borrow a habit from your countrymen, Madame, cannot offend your taste,
though I am afraid I should not find a Frenchwoman tolerant of it.’
‘I believe Englishmen sit at wine and the ladies retire,’ said
Mademoiselle, hesitating. She did not like the innovation, and frankly
showed it.
‘Your pardon, Henriette, we have our plans to discuss. You, Madame,
too, will hold us excused?’
‘Certainly, Monsieur, I think it a commendable custom which keeps men
and women so much apart. They meet then with greater zest and novelty.’
Dr. Vermont held the door for the ladies and bowed. He stooped and
kissed little Gabrielle, and held her head a moment against him. And
then when the door closed, he shrugged his shoulders, and sighed.
‘That’s the Englishwoman for you--a creature without tact or charm.
The British matron is only fitted to be a mother of a family. She can
neither hold us back, nor encourage us with dignity. Ah! lucky we are,
gentlemen, to be the slaves and masters of that adorable bundle of
perversities--_la femme française_!’
While he spoke he uncorked a bottle of Monsieur Lenormant’s fine old
Burgundy, and filled each glass to the brim.
‘_Allons, Messieurs._ Let us drink the last hours away. I give you a
toast to begin with--the delicious Frenchwoman.’
The young men half emptied their glasses at a draught, and then cast
haggard glances at the sarcastic Doctor. He slowly drained his glass,
and lifted the bottle again.
‘And since our delightful torment would never consent to go unmated,
even in a toast, let us drink, gentlemen, to her inadequate, but
sympathetic partner--the gallant Frenchman.’
The first bottle of Burgundy loosened their tongues again, and inspired
them to a febrile gaiety. They laughed loudly, broke into snatches of
song, and by the time the second bottle was empty, one and all had
fallen upon sentimental reminiscences. They thought themselves back
at Lander’s, and the discretion of the ladies’ retreat could not be
questioned. Anatole thundered roughly upon the perfidy of a certain
Susanne, and Gaston vowed that none of her crimes could equal the trick
one Blanche played him--the men used to call her ‘Blanche of Castille,’
in recognition of the many virtues she seemed to have inherited from
her illustrious namesakes, doubtless; and Julien interposed dryly, with
a droll anecdote of a lady once known in Paris as ‘_La Perle Noire_’.
Dr. Vermont said nothing, but listened and attacked the third bottle.
He reached across, and filled Anatole’s glass, and smiled upon him
almost pleasantly.
‘Never mind Susanne, or any other perfidious fair, my lad. It comes
to the same at the end, whether they have been faithful or not. They
die, and we die, and sleep “a long, an endless, unawakeable sleep”.
It’s half-past nine now,’ he added, looking at his watch. ‘In two more
hours, we shall be starting out upon the road that has no ending, leads
nowhither, unless it be to dark, bottomless space.’
‘Why so?’ asked Julien. ‘May we not be shooting through the stars?
Anatole in his present mood will make straight for Venus, but I,
seeking compensation for the dulness of a peaceful life, will rather
choose Mars. One ought to fall in for some good fighting there, eh?’
Anatole stood up, and went over to the window. The melancholy flow of
water from the drooping eaves could be heard, and the sky was as black
as the river and the landscape. No light in the heavens, no light below
nearer than Beaufort, no sound but the splash of rain. The susceptible
fellow shivered visibly, and went back to the table to comfort himself
with another draught of Burgundy.
‘There is not a star to be shot into,’ he said gloomily; ‘and it is
raining as if the whole universe were melted.’
‘We have a couple more toasts to drink, gentlemen,’ said the Doctor,
standing. ‘Are your glasses filled?’
Well, if they could do nothing else, they could at least get drunk
before they went on a voyage among the stars, or fell asleep like dogs
for eternity.
‘An Englishman, when he is tired of life, takes to drink; a Frenchman
blows his brains out,’ Julien observed, as he helped his neighbour to
the bottle.
‘Upon my conscience, I do not know that the Englishman has not the best
of it.’
‘He is of hardier build, my friend, and can take his drinking and
pessimism in equal doses. We are the slaves of our nerves, and can
stand neither pessimism nor drink.’
‘Are you ready? The toast is the downfall of France.’
The young men stolidly laid down their untasted wine, and looked at the
Doctor for explanation. They themselves might go to the dogs, and the
mischief take them there, or elsewhere. The universe might melt away
into nothingness, but France, beloved France, must ever stand fast,
proud and honoured and beautiful. Drink to her downfall? Was Doctor
Vermont mad?
‘Why not?’ said Doctor Vermont imperturbably. ‘We shall be no more. And
what can it matter to us? France has had her day, as Egypt, Greece, and
Rome had theirs. I would have her spared the misery of a slow decline.
It is now the turn of Russia, which will be the civilisation of the
future. If you prefer it, we will drink then to Russia.’
So they drank to Russia, long and deeply; and Anatole, who had a pretty
tenor voice, intoned the Russian Hymn, which the others listened to on
their feet. And then to keep up the musical glow, and the golden moment
of unconsciousness, he burst into the _Marseillaise_, knowing well that
few can resist that most thrilling and spirited of national songs.
When he had finished the last verse, and the last chorus was sung,
his companions sat silently gazing into their empty glasses. They had
finished six bottles of Burgundy between them, and were now passably
drunk, though not incapable of presenting themselves before the ladies
to say good-bye. The Doctor went first, and waited for Anatole outside
the salon door.
‘Remember, boy, it is “Good-night”--not “Good-bye,”’ he said sadly, as
he pressed his friend’s shoulder.
Mademoiselle and her companion sat before a low wood fire, chatting
quietly. They heard the songs from the dining-room, and smiled and
shook their heads. Mademoiselle remarked that the young men were
discourteous enough to carry the habits of the Latin Quarter into
private houses, but since her brother-in-law tolerated such behaviour,
it was not for her to object, since they were his guests.
When the door opened, both ladies looked blankly round at the invasion.
The Doctor stood a moment on the threshold and arched his brows in
smiling signification. The foreigner felt she would give a good deal
to get behind that smile, and understand that queer lifting of the
eyebrow. That the man wore his smile as a mask, she had no doubt, and
she was not without suspicion that behind it lay concealed a different
personage from the actor on view. He advanced, and came and stood in
front of his sister-in-law, looking down on her with a new gravity on
his reckless handsome face. The flush under his eyes gave a brilliance
to his wistful gaze that justified the fascinated flutter of the poor
lady’s heart. For she had never seen him look in the least like that,
though she had seen his eyes melt to another.
‘Henriette, good-night,’ he said softly.
She gave him her hand, with a glance of sharp inquiry.
‘Is it good-bye, François?’
‘Good-bye? Why good-bye? It’s a lugubrious word. _Au revoir, ma sœur._’
His lips touched her fingers an instant, and already he had turned to
shake hands with her companion. Gaston and Julien came behind him, and
bent their bodies in two in a dignified salute, but Anatole held out
his hand, and clung feverishly to hers when she took it, while his eyes
held hers in dismayed conjecture. Was it despair she read in them, or
terror, or simply the pain of young love? But his speech was lagging
and broken, not that, she decided, of a sober man, and she withdrew her
hand abruptly, with a curt movement of dismissal of her head.
The boy turned to follow his companions, and felt his heart break
within him as he went downstairs. While they passed through the
blue-room, the Doctor again leant in affectionate pressure upon his
shoulder.
‘Courage, Anatole. No woman is worth a pang.’
‘Ah, Monsieur le Docteur, you cannot think that of her. She is worth
the best man could offer, and all he might suffer. You know it, Doctor.
Deny if you admire her.’
‘I don’t deny it, if that will console you.’
‘And you can fling away such a chance,’ moaned Anatole.
‘I fling away nothing, for the simple reason, I have nothing to fling
away. It is not chance any of us lack, chances of making fools of
ourselves, of others. Chance, my friend, is generally another word for
blunder. Some philosophers call the world chance, and is not that the
biggest blunder of all?’
‘You mystify me, Vermont. I call perversity the worst of all blunders.
And is it not perversity, if you love Mademoiselle Lenormant, to----’
‘Who says I love Mademoiselle Lenormant? I loved her sister, in a way,
and she is dead. You’ll find your pistol all ready there on the bed.
Put it into your pocket. It is half-past eleven. Tell the others I will
join them instantly.’
Before crossing the passage to the other bedroom, Anatole stole softly
upstairs, and knocked at the salon door. Mademoiselle Lenormant opened
the door, and surveyed him in disapproving surprise.
‘In what way can I serve you, Monsieur?’ she asked. He slipped into
the room under her arm. There was an empty chair near, and into it he
dropped, glancing up at her prayerfully.
‘Mademoiselle, I am about to face a long, perhaps a perilous voyage,’
he said, and the slight break in his voice and the wet lustre of his
boyish blue eyes captivated her judgment, and melted her into all heart
as she listened and looked down upon him.
‘I have come back to you, to ask you before I set out for the unknown,
just one moment, to place your hand on my forehead and say, “God bless
you, Anatole.” Do you pardon the presumption?’
She bent forward, brushed the tossed hair off his forehead, kissed it
tenderly, and said, ‘God bless you, Anatole.’
Silently and sobered the four men went out into the wet night. They
walked round the island first to make sure that every house slept.
There was not a light anywhere, not a sound. They trod the ground as
quietly as booted men can tread, and came round by the cemetery and
the low broken wall to the tower. Here they entered, and the Doctor
struck a match that through the blurred illumination they might see
the advantages of the spot he had chosen to salute the new century. It
was certainly better than the sensation they should create anywhere
near Paris. I doubt not that each one privately regretted the rash
engagement they had made over their punch at Lander’s a week ago. But
none had the courage to give the first voice to regret. False shame and
fear of ridicule held them tongue-tied, and resolved to make the best
of their bargain.
When they had selected a spot near the hollow of the encroaching rocks,
where, if they fell, they might be washed unnoted down into the river
when the flood came high, Julien separated himself from the group,
and walked over to the lower wall, whence the lights of Beaufort
could be seen. These lights were rare and dim, but they cheered him
inexpressibly. They were eloquent of life in the monotony of darkness.
He sat on the edge of the wall, and stared past the shadow of the
bridge, out into the terrible loneliness of night, and shuddered at
the roar of the eddying river below. Upon the breast of that river one
might float into the beautiful South--a word made up of the sense of
sweetness, and flowers, and sunshine, and blue waters, and clear skies.
When he was a youngster he used to tell himself that he would save up
his money, and go to Italy. And now he was no longer young, had not
saved up his money, had not seen Italy, and was going to die--and
leave it all behind.
At that moment a peal of bells was heard from over the water, and
Gaston Favre announced in a cold, dull voice that the cathedral of
Beaufort was pealing the midnight chimes. Had there been light, each
man would have been seen to quiver from head to foot, and then grow
rigid upon his feet.
‘My friends, is it agreed that we salute the dying century upon the
last stroke of the cathedral bell?’ asked Dr. Vermont, in a hushed,
muffled voice.