gathered together, and took their pistols out of their breast-pocket.
Dr. Vermont lifted his face up to the cold wet wind. His lips parted
to the heavens’ moisture, and he felt refreshed. Since there could be
pleasure in the fall of raindrops upon heated lips, why not even then
admit that life may be worth living? Why not see the bright background
to present pain as well as the dark contrast of evil behind joy? We
have said the Doctor was a proud and wilful man, and he would accept no
sensation as admonishment of error,--but this gave him some pause.
In one swift backward glance, he saw the long roll of travelled
years--years misspent, possibly, but not without their baggage of
unearned joys; saw the start of resplendent youth ringing him onward to
a manhood of renown: remembered friends he had once regarded with other
than mere cynical interest: moments that had throbbed with light, and
all the loveliness of untainted freshness--perfumed, dewy like a May
orchard in blossom, swathed in youth’s eternal purple. While the lads
around him faced the inevitable, as they thought, and though shrinking,
white-lipped, and frozen with horror, from his cold acquiescence,
endeavoured to warm themselves to the last act in the spirit of bravado
and contemplation of the deluged earth, he had taken a sudden rebound
from his old attitude. It was no longer the dislike of life and the
weariness of experience that held him in chill imprisonment The old
desire for boyish blisses, and the cordial of laughter mantled and
burst in his brain like a riot of song. It was a revelation, with all
the meaning of prayer first understood. A pulsing regret for all he
was leaving, for what he had known, and, above all, for that which was
yet unknown, swept him instantly upon a fiery wave. It shot his arm
down nervelessly. The pallid, spiritual face of Henriette seemed to
hang in the sullen space of black sky and wet black earth. It glowed
like a lamp, and shed a faint illumination upon the dusk. The faded
monotone of her voice murmured prayerfully above the weighted splash
upon the stones, and awoke the essential impulse of existence. While
such women lived and prayed for men, could the deeps of life be said to
have closed? ’Tis an old-fashioned notion, but, like most old-fashioned
things, ’tis the simplest and the best. It softened the hard
retrospection of Dr. Vermont’s glance, and lent a wavering tenderness
to his peculiar smile.
Upon the sixth stroke of the cathedral bell, he offered his hand in
silence to Julien Renaud, who squeezed it roughly, in assurance of
undiminished courage. Poor lad! He needed the assurance sadly. Upon the
eighth stroke, Dr. Vermont sought Gaston’s hand, but the limp moist
fingers he grasped made no effort to respond to his pressure.
‘Courage, Gaston,’ he cried, in a friendly, animated voice, and upon
the tenth stroke he turned to Anatole, and had there been a ray of
light above or around, Dr. Vermont’s face would have been seen to
undergo a wonderful and beautiful change. Honest affection that makes
no pretence of concealment, humanised it, and a magnanimous resolve
filled its expression with cheering purport. The worst of us, you
see, have our heroic moments, only it often happens that, like Dr.
Vermont’s, they pass unnoticed in the dark.
‘There is happiness ahead for you yet, Anatole,’ he breathed quickly
through his teeth, while he swung the unhappy young fellow’s arm once
up and down, in warm emphasis to communicate the reassuring fluid to
him.
‘Gentlemen, ’twas an excellent joke, and as might be expected of such
excellent lads as you, carried out with uncommon spirit and dash. I’m
proud of you, gentlemen, and shall feel honoured in the privilege of
saluting the new century in your midst. We fire heavenward--a good
omen--and then we shake hands again, in cordial assent that humanity
is not so worn but it may still be relied upon for entertainment.
You will say there are higher things. I’m not so sure there are not.
Anyway, ’tis not an excessive claim that youthful pessimists may
without shame start a fresh century as cheerful philosophers. The
heavens are not always weeping, and most of us are the better for the
sun’s shining.’
He spoke rapidly, and a muffled shout dying away upon a thick sob,
broke from each troubled breast. The first throb of emotion spent
itself in obedience.
When the last stroke of the cathedral bell had fallen upon the silence
with a prolonged thin echo, a loud simultaneous report was heard to
startle the night, and travel above the roar of the river, far across
the empty country.
Gaston and Julien Renaud, utterly unnerved by the reaction, fell
sobbing into each other’s arms, but Anatole, bewildered past
understanding, thought he was shot, and fell in a heap at Dr. Vermont’s
feet.
EPILOGUE
(_From the travellers notebook_)
THE suppressed excitement of the past two days has more than made up
for the stillness of the two months that preceded them. Against these
forty-eight hours of trembling anticipation and surmise, the long
weeks of undisturbed and pleasant converse and childish chatter make a
background of placid years, instead of weeks.
I see them filled with fireside talks, dips into musty volumes, walks
in a long gallery, to the murmured music of water, and in frosty
starlight, with the lamps of Beaufort lending cheerfulness to the
scene. Sometimes an expedition to some castellated town, southward, and
wanderings through vividly coloured streets, or among lovely hills,
where winter flowers grew and sweetened the air, and the grey of the
river was shot with blue, as it glided into sunnier regions. And then
the friendly greetings upon return, and a child’s excited demand to
know what I had seen, how far I had travelled, perhaps since morning,
or the day before; above all, what I had brought back for her.
Beautiful calm days, already remembered regretfully as part of the
for ever past! They will outlive, I hope, recent events, though they
have sent them to slumber a while in the cemetery of the mind. For
perturbation fell upon us, from the hour Mademoiselle and I stood
watching a party of riders bear down toward us along the great road,
like a picture sharply evoked from the time of postchaise and tragedy
carried upon the momentous clatter of hoofs.
I had met Dr. Vermont, had spoken to him, and found he did not realise
in any way my expectations. He was a well-bred man, as far as the
superficialities of the drawing-room permitted me to judge. But his
face was inexplicable and tormenting. It may once have been a strong
face, but its strength was almost effaced by life. And yet there was
no weakness about it--only an indifference that saps at strength. It
could look daring and reckless, was never without a smile of quiet
irony, and there was surely enough humorous observation in the mild
brown eyes to fill his days with easy pleasure and interest. But was
there not something worse than sadness behind this good-humoured mask?
I thought so from the first, and my impression was soon justified by
an incredible episode. I also believed that before the Doctor had been
twenty-four hours in the house, he had fallen in love with Mademoiselle
Lenormant. But why he should have wanted Anatole to marry her, I cannot
understand. Surely, surely, he knew that she loved him! must have known
it all along.
When he and his companions left the salon on that last evening, I said
good-night at once to Mademoiselle. I almost reproached myself with
seeing so much, divining so much that remained untold. I sat in my
room with a pen in my hand, unable to write from excess of interest in
what was going on around me. Why should peaceable modern men start off
upon a midnight expedition in this mediæval fashion? Neither my own
imagination could devise an adequate explanation, nor did I receive any
assistance from the objects that surrounded me in Monsieur Lenormant’s
room, which I attentively examined. How heavily, drearily the rain
fell, and what an awful darkness outside! I stood at the window and
listened to the midnight chimes from the cathedral and churches of
Beaufort. On New Year’s Eve most people feel sentimental at this hour,
and recall the various places and circumstances in which they have
listened to the peal of bells upon the death of the old year. But this
I felt to be a sadder occasion than any other New Year’s Eve, because a
whole century was dying with it, the only century I was familiar with,
and I rather shrank from trial of the new.
An extraordinary sound followed at once upon the last peal of the
bells. It seemed so close, that it jerked me back from the window,
quite shaken with the reverberation. There could be no doubt either of
its nature or of the fact that it rose from some near point upon the
island. It was more than a single pistol-shot. Now, the washerwomen
could not have devised that singular method of saluting the new-born
century. Neither could the chaplain of the Benedictines, who occupied
an old, dark house at the end of the island upon our side. The
wine-shop of Geraud always closed at nine o’clock, and on such a wet
night no living soul would have crossed the bridge for the sake of his
bad liquids.
I went to Mademoiselle’s room, anxious to hear what opinion she would
have upon the startling occurrence.
‘Somebody has been murdered near us,’ she cried excitedly, when I
entered.
‘Good heavens! what ought we to do?’
‘I don’t know what we ought to do, but what I should like to do would
be to go and see for myself,’ she said, and looked questioningly at me.
‘You are a brave woman, Mademoiselle; I should have feared to propose
it, but I will gladly accompany you.’
‘Let us go and call up the chaplain of the Benedictines. He and I
are almost the lords of this island, and if any one were wounded, or
in need of our help, it is our duty to be on the spot. We will take
Joséphine’s big umbrella and her lantern.’
The rain was awful, and the darkness of the night was so thick that
we seemed to cleave a way through it as we buffeted with the driving
downpour. To my troubled ear, our steps, along the deluged pavement,
carried a portentous message into the silent night. There was a light
in the priest’s house, and the sound of our footsteps approaching
brought him to the door even before we had knocked.
‘Who is it? What is it?’ he whispered.
‘It is I, Mademoiselle Lenormant, father. We want you to come and
examine the island with us. There is shooting somewhere, and somebody
may have been murdered or dying.’
‘You have a lamp. Wait a moment, and I will join you.’ Outside he said,
‘Let us try the cemetery. Phew! how it rains. It is a deluge. I am not
surprised at your courage, Mademoiselle, for it is not since yesterday
that I know you. But your friend--ah, I forgot, she is English, and the
Englishwoman, I have always heard, is capable of anything.’
I doubt not the little compliment of the good chaplain was as welcome
to my friend as to myself, and warmed us both upon that dreary
adventure. In silence we beat our way round to the cemetery, and then
only remembered, what we should not have forgotten, that it was locked.
Seeing how unlikely it was that any one should have contrived to get
inside without the key for any black purpose whatsoever, the chaplain
thought it unnecessary to go back for it. So we then decided to examine
the rocks along as far as the tower, and afterwards go over the ruin.
There was nothing about the rocks but an occasional water-rat, that ran
into hiding as soon as the gleam of the lantern revealed him. Nothing
along the pavement under the low wall. We bent under the nearest broken
arch of the tower, and entered it upon the river side. At first our
lantern only served to accentuate the darkness, and show the deeper
masses of shadow in the walls. We groped forward, and held our breath,
in mingled fear and expectation. Nothing stirred; only the rain fell
heavily with the noise of splashing when it touched the water below. I
advanced foremost, and my foot brushed something that was not jagged
stone or bramble.
‘Bring your lamp here, Monsieur, whoever you are,’ a familiar voice
cried out, in an imperious tone.
I started, and stood to let the priest and Mademoiselle approach,
wondering what it could mean. The priest held the lantern down low,
and we at once recognised Dr. Vermont’s pale face looking up from a
tangled heap of black against his knee.
‘We stopped before crossing the bridge to fire a shot in welcome to the
new century, and this unstrung boy must needs topple off his balance,
and faint away in sheer fright,’ he hurriedly explained.
‘A very strange proceeding, Monsieur,’ said the priest, frowning.
I knelt down and touched poor Anatole’s chill face, but Mademoiselle
had no word. She could only stand and stare in haggard amazement.
‘I have not asked your opinion, Monsieur. It is your help I desire,’
said Dr. Vermont, with an unabated ferocity of pride.
‘Am I not shot?’ asked Anatole vaguely, opening his eyes and glancing
about in terror.
He made an instinctive gesture to feel for the wound on his forehead,
and sat up straight. He was wild and giddy, and, seeing me first, could
not take his eyes off my face; he even stretched out his hand in awe to
touch me.
‘But for that confounded darkness, we might have had him in shelter
long ago,’ muttered Dr. Vermont. ‘Julien and Gaston have gone to look
for a lamp. Can you stand, Anatole?’ he asked the bewildered youth.
Anatole stood up quite promptly, without any assistance. The rain fell
from every part of his form in rills, and, as he shook himself free, he
breathed a deep, happy sigh.
‘Great God! I am saved,’ he murmured, and staggered forward.
‘Will nobody explain this hideous mystery?’ shouted the chaplain, like
ourselves on the verge of hysterics from emotion.
Dr. Vermont, standing with the lantern in his hand, shrugged
impertinently, and a ray of light glancing off his pale face, revealed
its enigmatic smile.
‘Take my arm, Henriette,’ he said, very gently, approaching
Mademoiselle, who throughout the scene was silent. ‘My poor girl,’ I
heard him add, in quite an altered tone, as he gathered her trembling
frame to him.
* * * * *
At an end for me the quiet studies and the pleasant talks upon the
lovely long terrace of that old house by the grey river. At an end
for Mademoiselle the waiting; at an end the long shadow of deferred
hope stretched like a pall upon the backward years. I know not if the
defence of the Emperor Julian has been concluded. When last I heard
from her she was in Italy with Joséphine, Gabrielle, and Gabrielle’s
strange father. She stands clear before me in her new home, the snow
gathering early upon her head, and the mark of the silent, tragic
years deepening the austerity that autumnal joys could never melt from
sensitive lips and shadowed glance. I frame her image against some
old Italian palace in the blackened arches of its balcony, and see
her, when the stars are out, and regret throbs more poignantly, gazing
across the blue waters that wash her beloved land, the mirthful, sunlit
waters, into which flows her own grey river.
The old house beyond the broken arches of the bridge, that leads to
the desolate island, has been sold. Who now sits upon the terrace that
overlooks the towers and spires of Beaufort? I cherish the hope that it
is some one with a bosom not insusceptible to the thrill of romance,
some one with a heart that still can beat to the swift measure of fear.
Anatole I have since seen in Paris. He is working steadily at some
profession, and sharp illness has made a saner and stronger man of
him. Upheaval, after a while, when the elements quiet down again,
generally brings reform. The Café Lander knows him no more, I have
ascertained, and while he shrinks from mention of Dr. Vermont’s name,
he is ever glad and grateful to talk of Henriette Lenormant. He bore
his dismissal bravely, after she had so devotedly nursed him through
that heavy shock, and he is generous enough to give thanks for the
cherishing friendship of the woman he loved in vain.
Gaston Favre has accepted an official post in the provinces, and Julien
Renaud is an industrious journalist.
BRASES
_À Madame Bohomoletz_
BRASES
I
LIKE another foreigner, I had my ideal of the Irishwoman--bewitching,
naturally, but built upon somewhat hackneyed and high-coloured lines:
vivacious play of feature, blue-black hair, violet eyes, and complexion
made up of lilies and roses. So when Trueberry, the gallantest friend
man ever found on English shores, asked me to join him in a trip to
Erin, imagination hastily evoked this resplendent creature of my
desire, and I straightway proposed to myself the pleasing excitement
of a flirtatious romance. I told Trueberry I thought nothing more
delightful than the prospect I had formed, to fall in love, and ride
away. Trueberry, in his fatal Saxon way, made some grim rejoinder about
the riding away being the pleasantest part of it.
We shot and rode and fished, and stared at the girls, without any
fervour of glance or flutter of pulse, it must be confessed, I alertly
on the look-out for this creature of dazzling contrasts and laughing
provocation. With fancy still uncomforted, Trueberry was dangerously
hurt, and we were several miles distant from the nearest village. A
peasant offered to help me carry my comrade down the glen, and assured
me that the lady of the grey manor would be glad to receive him. Our
claim at the hall was courteously responded to by an old man-servant,
who drew a couch out on which we stretched my moaning friend, and then
I was directed to the doctor’s house, some way along the uplands. My
guide offered me the shelter of his roof hard by, when I spoke of
looking for a lodging.
It was late in the afternoon when the doctor and I reached the manor.
The sun was level on the western horizon, an arch of misty gold upon
a broad sheet of silver lying behind the nearer low-hanging clouds,
so that the silver heaven, beyond this chain of grey and opal hills,
looked mystically remote and clear, while lower down lake and purple
mountains were softened by a fine white veil of mist, and the sea was
visible curling its delicate foam upon the crest of the tide among
the rocks. The valley below was dusk, shut in by the grand sweep of
girdling mountains, and so still was the air that every far-off sound
carried, from the echo of ocean’s murmuring to the nearer crash of a
waterfall hissing down the rocks, and the pleasant lilt at my feet of
a little rivulet lipping its daisied marge. The birds were in full
chorus, and each of the dense trees nested song. We left the breezy,
wandering moors, which swept the horizon in a measurelessness of space
as triumphant and vast seemingly as the illimitable Atlantic rolling
from their base, and took the narrow road that sloped down to the glen
of firs and oak, where the light could scarce make a path among the
deepening shadows. Outside all was great, in air, on land, on water.
Here intolerable compression of space and such a diminution of light
as to harass nerves and imagination. My preoccupation about Trueberry
rather stimulated than blunted my visual faculties, and I noted with
abhorrence each detail of the sharp, precise landscape; the thin vein
of water glimmering through the darkening grass like a broken mirror,
the abrupt curve of the road from the shoulder of the bluff, and the
stiff, dim plumes of the heather washed of purple pretension in the
twilight, while through a clump of black firs the rough front of the
manor made a fainter shade in the grey air. The solitude was scented
with the fragrance of wild thyme, and as we approached, old-fashioned
odours blew against us from the garden.
Trueberry was restored to a vague consciousness, and lay with shut eyes
in a darkened room. I walked outside with the doctor, who was a cheery,
hopeful fellow, and in diagnosing my friend’s case, furnished me with
no occasion for alarm. I found it strange that no member of the family
had come forward to explain the gracious hospitality by a personal
interest in the wounded man. As I stood in the chill air musing on this
odd unconcern, I heard a light step behind, coming from the house. I
turned, and faced the woman who was to dominate my heart by one swift
sweep of all that had ever claimed it.
She looked at me, and in one grave, steadfast glance the miracle was
accomplished. Is this love? I have been so often, so continuously in
love, and yet have never known anything that approached it. It was
like the mystery of life and death--not to be explained, not to be
conquered, not to be eluded. It needs no will to be born, to die; so it
needs no will to surrender to such an influence. Upon a single throb of
pulse, it has established itself permanently upon the altar of life,
and sentimental fancies and shabby yearnings drop out of memory with
the sacramental transfusion of soul.
Of course I saw that she was a beautiful woman, but this only
afterwards. What I first saw was the deep impersonal gaze that drew
the heart from my breast. It met mine with a full, free beam, and held
it upon a wave of inexplicable emotion. Bondage to it was a glory,
a consecration of my manhood. The subtle, the elusive nature of my
captivation was the spiritual point upon an ordinary passion. It was
the spurs, the belt of knighthood. For this I understood to be no mere
command of senses, but the imperative claims of life-long allegiance,
whether for suffering or for happiness.
Perhaps by nature I was attuned to such surrender. Since ever romantic
hopes first broke their deeps in my boyish brain, and my heart was
lifted on the first warm wave of desire, I have eagerly yearned for
free passionate servitude to one sovereign lady. There was always the
mediæval strain in me, though I have fluttered idly enough, like the
moth round the flame, and hovered in a sort of protective sympathy and
admiration, round pretty womanhood, not objecting to being trampled on
as a holocaust to graceful and bewildering caprice. But now had come
the enslavement of the soul, not of the senses; of the spirit, not of
the eye. Homage did not bend in banter, but was exalted on the wings
of reverence. It was only afterwards that I remembered the details of
the face: its unchanging pallor and exceeding finish, the peculiar
unrippling sheen of the blonde hair, like gold leaf in its unshaded
polish, the inner curves of coil as deep an amber as the outer edges,
without shadow of curl or ring round neck and temple. So smooth and
shining a frame was admirably adjusted to the small, grave, glacial
oval, with its look of wistful abstracted charm, with a delicate
chiselling only an inspired pencil could copy, with an exquisite line
from brow to chin. Such was the transparency of the colourless skin
that like a shell, it seemed in the light to reflect the warm rose of
life beneath. Under the arch of the unerring brows, long grey eyes,
shadowed blackly, that in girlhood must have presaged storm, but now
the black lay broodingly, a seal to the clear grey depths. You looked
into, not through them; and found them too bewilderingly unstirred by
the yearning trouble of the gazer.
There was, perhaps, a conscious but not an undignified expression in
her dress. Sweeping folds of grey matched the austere stillness of
her eyes, as did the full cambric of throat a wanness reminiscent of
a mediæval saint. Long sleeves lined with silk fell backward, and the
inner ones were of crimped cambric: hardly affectation, but the supreme
touch to beauty so visibly haloed as hers. Her voice was in keeping
with the clear eloquence of her glance; full, unperturbed, sustained
without conscious modulation or trick, harmonious like all sounds
of natural sweetness. It fell with the sentence, as the Irish voice
habitually does, but softly, without abrupt cadences or huskiness.
‘All that lies in our power for your friend’s care and comfort will be
done,’ she said, after her unhurried survey of me. ‘There is little
to offer in such an out-of-the-way place but home medicines and home
resources, and there will not be much in the way of distraction for
him, since I live here alone with my children, and my solitude is
unbroken. I regret that you have decided to lodge elsewhere, but pray
do not spare us your visits. The house is your friend’s, and I am
honoured in being of use to him.’