THE ORDEAL.
It was wonderful how quickly the room filled--filled with angry faces,
so that almost before I knew what had happened, I found a crowd round
me, asking what it was; M. de St. Alais foremost. As all spoke at
once, and in the background where they could not see, ladies were
screaming and chattering, I might have found it difficult to explain.
But the shattered window and the great stone on the floor spoke for
themselves, and told more quickly than I could what had taken place.
On the instant, with a speed which surprised me, the sight blew into a
flame passions already smouldering. A dozen voices cried, "Out on the
_canaille!_" In a moment some one in the background followed this up
with "Swords, Messieurs, swords!" Then, in a trice half the gentlemen
were elbowing one another towards the door, St. Alais, who burned to
avenge the insult offered to his guests, taking the lead. M. de
Gontaut and one or two of the elders tried to restrain him, but their
remonstrances were in vain, and in a moment the room was almost
emptied of men. They poured out into the street, and began to scour it
with drawn blades and raised voices. A dozen valets, running out
officiously with flambeaux, aided in the search; for a few minutes the
street, as we who remained viewed it from the windows, seemed to be
alive with moving lights and figures.
But the rascals who had flung the stone, whatever the motive which
inspired them, had fled in time; and presently our party returned,
some a little ashamed of their violence, others laughing as they
entered, and bewailing their silk stockings and spattered shoes; while
a few, less fashionable or more impetuous, continued to denounce the
insult, and threaten vengeance. At another time, the act might have
seemed trivial, a childish insult; but in the strained state of public
feeling it had an unpleasant and menacing air which was not lost on
the more thoughtful. During the absence of the street party, the
draught from the broken window had blown a curtain against some
candles and set it alight; and though the stuff had been torn down
with little damage, it still smoked among the _debris_ on the floor.
This, with the startled faces of the ladies, and the shattered glass,
gave a look of disorder and ruin to the room, where a few minutes
before all had worn so seemly and festive an air.
It did not surprise me, therefore, that St. Alais' face, stern enough
at his entrance, grew darker as he looked round.
"Where is my sister?" he said abruptly, almost rudely.
"Here," Madame la Marquise answered. Denise had flown long before to
her side, and was clinging to her.
"She is not hurt?"
"No," Madame answered, playfully tapping the girl's cheek. "M. de Saux
had most reason to complain."
"Save me from my friends, eh, Monsieur?" St. Alais said, with an
unpleasant smile.
I started. The words were not much in themselves, but the sneer
underlying them was plain. I could scarcely pass it by. "If you think,
M. le Marquis," I said sharply, "that I knew anything of this
outrage----"
"That you knew anything? _Ma foi_, no!" he replied lightly, and with
a courtly gesture of deprecation. "We have not fallen to that yet.
That any gentleman in this company should sink to play the fellow to
those--is not possible! But I think we may draw a useful lesson from
this, Messieurs," he continued, turning from me and addressing the
company. "And that is a lesson to hold our own, or we shall soon lose
all."
A hum of approbation ran round the room.
"To maintain privileges, or we shall lose rights."
Twenty voices were raised in assent.
"To stand now," he continued, his colour high, his hand raised, "or
never!"
"Then now! Now!"
The cry rose suddenly not from one, but from a hundred throats--of men
and women; in a moment the room catching his tone seemed to throb with
enthusiasm, with the pulse of resolve. Men's eyes grew bright under
the candles, they breathed quickly, and with heightened colour. Even
the weakest felt the influence; the fool who had prated of the social
contract and the rights of man was as loud as any. "Now! Now!" they
cried with one voice.
What followed on that I have never completely fathomed; nor whether it
was a thing arranged, or merely an inspiration, born of the common
enthusiasm. But while the windows still shook with that shout, and
every eye was on him, M. de Alais stepped forward, the most gallant
and perfect figure, and with a splendid gesture drew his sword.
"Gentlemen!" he cried, "we are of one mind, of one voice. Let us be
also in the fashion. If, while all the world is fighting to get and
hold, we alone stand still and on the defensive--we court attack, and,
what is worse, defeat! Let us unite then, while it is still time, and
show that, in Quercy at least, our Order will stand or fall together.
You have heard of the oath of the Tennis Court and the 20th of June.
Let us, too, take an oath--this 22nd of July; not with uplifted hands
like a club of wordy debaters, promising all things to all men; but
with uplifted swords. As nobles and gentlemen, let us swear to stand
by the rights, the privileges, and the exemptions of our Order!"
A shout that made the candles flicker and jump, that filled the
street, and was heard even in the distant market-place, greeted the
proposal. Some drew their swords at once, and flourished them above
their heads; while ladies waved their fans or kerchiefs. But the
majority cried, "To the larger room! To the larger room!" And on the
instant, as if in obedience to an order, the company turned that way,
and flushed, and eager, pressed through the narrow doorway into the
next room.
There may have been some among them less enthusiastic than others;
some more earnest in show than at heart; none, I am sure, who, on
this, followed so slowly, so reluctantly, with so heavy a heart, and
sure a presage of evil as I did. Already I foresaw the dilemma before
me; but angry, hot-faced, and uncertain, I could discern no way out of
it.
If I could have escaped, and slipped clear from the room, I would have
done so without scruple; but the stairs were on the farther side of
the great room which we were entering, and a dense crowd cut me off
from them; moreover, I felt that St. Alais' eye was upon me, and that,
if he had not framed the ordeal to meet my case, and extort my
support, he was at least determined, now that his blood was fired,
that I should not evade it.
Still I would not hasten the evil day, and I lingered near the inner
door, hoping; but the Marquis, on reaching the middle of the room,
mounted a chair and turned round; and so contrived still to face me.
The mob of gentlemen formed themselves round him, the younger and more
tumultuous uttering cries of "_Vive la Noblesse!_" And a fringe of
ladies encircled all. The lights, the brilliant dresses and jewels on
which they shone, the impassioned faces, the waving kerchiefs and
bright eyes, rendered the scene one to be remembered, though at the
moment I was conscious only of St. Alais' gaze.
"Messieurs," he cried, "draw your swords, if you please!"
They flashed out at the word, with a steely glitter which the mirrors
reflected; and M. de St. Alais passed his eye slowly round, while all
waited for the word. He stopped; his eye was on me.
"M. de Saux," he said politely, "we are waiting for you."
Naturally all turned to me. I strove to mutter something, and signed
to him with my hand to go on. But I was too much confused to speak
clearly; my only hope was that he would comply, out of prudence.
But that was the last thing he thought of doing. "Will you take your
place, Monsieur?" he said smoothly.
Then I could escape no longer. A hundred eyes, some impatient, some
merely curious, rested on me. My face burned.
"I cannot do so," I answered.
There fell a great silence from one end of the room to the other.
"Why not, Monsieur, if I may ask?" St. Alais said still smoothly.
"Because I am not--entirely at one with you," I stammered, meeting all
eyes as bravely as I could. "My opinions are known, M. de St. Alais,"
I went on more steadfastly. "I cannot swear."
He stayed with his hand a dozen who would have cried out upon me.
"Gently, Messieurs," he said, with a gesture of dignity, "gently, if
you please. This is no place for threats. M. de Saux is my guest; and
I have too great a respect for him not to respect his scruples. But I
think that there is another way. I shall not venture to argue with him
myself. But--Madame," he continued, smiling as he turned with an
inimitable air to his mother, "I think that if you would permit
Mademoiselle de St. Alais to play the recruiting-sergeant--for this
one time--she could not fail to heal the breach."
A murmur of laughter and subdued applause, a flutter of fans and
women's eyes greeted the proposal. But, for a moment, Madame la
Marquise, smiling and sphinx-like, stood still, and did not speak.
Then she turned to her daughter, who, at the mention of her name, had
cowered back, shrinking from sight.
"Go, Denise," she said simply. "Ask M. de Saux to honour you by
becoming your recruit."
The girl came forward slowly, and with a visible tremor; nor shall I
ever forget the misery of that moment, or the shame and obstinacy that
alternately surged through my brain as I awaited her. Thought, quicker
than lightning, showed me the trap into which I had fallen, a trap far
more horrible than the dilemma I had foreseen. Nor was the poor girl
herself, as she stood before me, tortured by shyness, and stammering
her little petition in words barely intelligible, the least part of my
pain.
For to refuse her, in face of all those people, seemed a thing
impossible. It seemed a thing as brutal as to strike her; an act as
cruel, as churlish, as unworthy of a gentleman as to trample any
helpless sensitive thing under foot! And I felt that; I felt it to the
utmost. But I felt also that to assent was to turn my back on
consistency, and my life; to consent to be a dupe, the victim of a
ruse; to be a coward, though every one there might applaud me. I saw
both these things, and for a moment I hesitated between rage and pity;
while lights and fair faces, inquisitive or scornful, shifted mazily
before my eyes. At last--
"Mademoiselle, I cannot," I muttered. "I cannot."
"Monsieur!"
It was not the girl's word, but Madame's, and it rang high and sharp
through the room; so that I thanked God for the intervention. It
cleared in a moment the confusion from my brain. I became myself. I
turned to her; I bowed.
"No, Madame, I cannot," I said firmly, doubting no longer, but
stubborn, defiant, resolute. "My opinions are known. And I will not,
even for Mademoiselle's sake, give the lie to them."
As the last word fell from my lips, a glove, flung by an unseen hand,
struck me on the cheek; and then for a moment the room seemed to go
mad. Amid a storm of hisses, of "_Vaurien!_" and "_A bas le traitre!_"
a dozen blades were brandished in my face, a dozen challenges were
flung at my head. I had not learned at that time how excitable is a
crowd, how much less merciful than any member of it; and surprised and
deafened by the tumult, which the shrieks of the ladies did not tend
to diminish, I recoiled a pace.
M. de St. Alais took advantage of the moment. He sprang down, and
thrusting aside the blades which threatened me, flung himself in front
of me.
"Messieurs, listen!" he cried, above the uproar. "Listen, I beg! This
gentleman is my guest. He is no longer of us, but he must go unharmed.
A way! A way, if you please, for M. le Vicomte de Saux."
They obeyed him reluctantly, and falling back to one side or the
other, opened a way across the room to the door. He turned to me, and
bowed low--his courtliest bow.
"This way, Monsieur le Vicomte, if you please," he said. "Madame la
Marquise will not trespass on your time any longer."
I followed him with a burning face, down the narrow lane of shining
parquet, under the chandelier, between the lines of mocking eyes; and
not a man interposed. In dead silence I followed him to the door.
There he stood aside, and bowed to me, and I to him; and I walked out
mechanically--walked out alone.
I passed through the lobby. The crowd of peeping, grinning lackeys
that filled it stared at me, all eyes; but I was scarcely conscious of
their impertinence or their presence. Until I reached the street, and
the cold air revived me, I went like a man stunned, and unable to
think. The blow had fallen on me so suddenly, so unexpectedly.
When I did come a little to myself, my first feeling was rage. I had
gone into M. de St. Alais' house that evening, possessing everything;
I came out, stripped of friends, reputation, my betrothed! I had gone
in, trusting to his friendship, the friendship that was a tradition in
our families; he had worsted me by a trick. I stood in the street, and
groaned as I thought of it; as I pictured the sorry figure I had cut
amongst them, and reflected on what was before me.
For, presently, I began to think that I had been a fool--that I should
have given way. I could not, as I stood in the street there, foresee
the future; nor know for certain that the old France was passing, and
that even now, in Paris, its death-knell had gone forth. I had to live
by the opinions of the people round me; to think, as I paced the
streets, how I should face the company to-morrow, and whether I should
fly, or whether I should fight. For in the meeting on the morrow----
Ah! the Assembly. The word turned my thoughts into a new channel. I
could have my revenge there. That I might not raise a jarring note
_there_, they had cajoled me, and when cajolery failed, had insulted
me. Well, I would show them that the new way would succeed no better
than the old, and that where they had thought to suppress a Saux they
had raised a Mirabeau. From this point I passed the night in a fever.
Resentment spurred ambition; rage against my caste, a love of the
people. Every sign of misery and famine that had passed before my eyes
during the day recurred now, and was garnered for use. The early
daylight found me still pacing my room, still thinking, composing,
reciting; when Andre, my old body-servant, who had been also my
father's, came at seven with a note in his hand, I was still in my
clothes.
Doubtless he had heard downstairs a garbled account of what had
occurred, and my cheek burned. I took no notice of his gloomy looks,
however, but, without speaking, I opened the note. It was not signed,
but the handwriting was Louis'.
"Go home," it ran, "and do not show yourself at the Assembly. They
will challenge you one by one; the event is certain. Leave Cahors at
once, or you are a dead man."
That was all! I smiled bitterly at the weakness of the man who could
do no more for his friend than this.
"Who gave it to you?" I asked Andre.
"A servant, Monsieur."
"Whose?"
But he muttered that he did not know; and I did not press him. He
assisted me to change my dress; when I had done, he asked me at what
hour I needed the horses.
"The horses! For what?" I said, turning and staring at him.
"To return, Monsieur."
"But I do not return to-day!" I said in cold displeasure. "Of what are
you speaking? We came only yesterday."
"True, Monsieur," he muttered, continuing to potter over my dressing
things, and keeping his back to me. "Still, it is a good day for
returning."
"You have been reading this note!" I cried wrathfully. "Who told you
that----"
"All the town knows!" he answered, shrugging his shoulders coolly. "It
is, 'Andre, take your master home!' and, 'Andre, you have a hot-pate
for a master,' and Andre this, and Andre that, until I am fairly
muddled! Gil has a bloody nose, fighting a Harincourt lad that called
Monsieur a fool; but for me, I am too old for fighting. And there is
one other thing I am too old for," he continued, with a sniff.
"What is that, impertinent?" I cried.
"To bury another master."
I waited a minute. Then I said: "You think that I shall be killed?"
"It is the talk of the town!"
I thought a moment. Then: "You served my father, Andre," I said.
"Ah! Monsieur."
"Yet you would have me run away?"
He turned to me, and flung up his hands in despair.
"_Mon Dieu!_" he cried, "I don't know what I would have! We are ruined
by these _canaille_. As if God made them to do anything but dig and
work; or we could do without poor! If you had never taken up with
them, Monsieur----"
"Silence, man!" I said sternly. "You know nothing about it. Go down
now, and another time be more careful. You talk of the _canaille_ and
the poor! What are you yourself?"
"I, Monsieur?" he cried, in astonishment.
"Yes--you!"
He stared at me a moment with a face of bewilderment. Then slowly and
sorrowfully he shook his head, and went out. He began to think me mad.
When he was gone I did not at once move. I fancied it likely that if I
showed myself in the streets before the Assembly met, I should be
challenged, and forced to fight. I waited, therefore, until the hour
of meeting was past; waited in the dull upper room, feeling the
bitterness of isolation, and thinking, sometimes of Louis St. Alais,
who had let me go, and spoken no word in my behalf, sometimes of men's
unreasonableness; for in some of the provinces half of the nobility
were of my way of thinking. I thought of Saux, too; and I will not say
that I felt no temptation to adopt the course which Andre had
suggested--to withdraw quietly thither, and then at some later time,
when men's minds were calmer, to vindicate my courage. But a certain
stubbornness, which my father had before me, and which I have heard
people say comes of an English strain in the race, conspired with
resentment to keep me in the way I had marked out. At a quarter past
ten, therefore, when I thought that the last of the Members would have
preceded me to the Assembly, I went downstairs, with hot cheeks, but
eyes that were stern enough; and finding Andre and Gil waiting at the
door, bade them follow me to the Chapter House beside the Cathedral,
where the meetings were held.
Afterwards I was told that, had I used my eyes, I must have noticed
the excitement which prevailed in the streets; the crowd, dense, yet
silent, that filled the Square and all the neighbouring ways; the air
of expectancy, the closed shops, the cessation of business, the
whispering groups in alleys and at doors. But I was wrapped up in
myself, like one going on a forlorn hope; and of all remarked only one
thing--that as I crossed the Square a man called out, "God bless you,
Monsieur!" and another, "_Vive Saux!_" and that thereon a dozen or
more took off their caps. This I did notice; but mechanically only.
The next moment I was in the entry which leads alongside one wall of
the Cathedral to the Chapter House, and a crowd of clerks and
servants, who blocked it almost from wall to wall, were making way for
me to pass; not without looks of astonishment and curiosity.
Threading my way through them, I entered the empty vestibule, kept
clear by two or three ushers. Here the change from sunshine to shadow,
from the life and light and stir which prevailed outside, to the
silence of this vaulted chamber, was so great that it struck a chill
to my heart. Here, in the greyness and stillness, the importance of
the step I was about to take, the madness of the challenge I was about
to fling down, in the teeth of my brethren, rose before me; and if my
mind had not been braced to the utmost by resentment and obstinacy, I
must have turned back. But already my feet rang noisily on the stone
pavement, and forbade retreat. I could hear a monotonous voice droning
in the Chamber beyond the closed door; and I crossed to that door,
setting my teeth hard, and preparing myself to play the man, whatever
awaited me.
Another moment, and I should have been inside. My hand was already on
the latch, when some one, who had been sitting on the stone bench in
the shadow under the window, sprang up, and hurried to stop me. It was
Louis de St. Alais. He reached me before I could open the door, and,
thrusting himself in front of me, set his back against the panels.
"Stop, man! for God's sake, stop!" he cried passionately, yet kept his
voice low. "What can one do against two hundred? Go back, man, go
back, and I will----"
"_You will!_" I answered with fierce contempt, yet in the same low
tone--the ushers were staring curiously at us from the door by which I
had entered. "You will? You will do, I suppose, as much as you did
last night, Monsieur."
"Never mind that now!" he answered earnestly; though he winced, and
the colour rose to his brow. "Only go! Go to Saux, and----"
"Keep out of the way!"
"Yes," he said, "and keep out of the way. If you will do that----"
"Keep out of the way?" I repeated savagely.
"Yes, yes; then everything will blow over."
"Thank you!" I said slowly; and I trembled with rage. "And how much,
may I ask, are you to have, M. le Comte, for ridding the Assembly of
me?"
He stared at me. "Adrien!" he cried.
But I was ruthless. "No, Monsieur le Comte--not Adrien!" I said
proudly; "I am that only to my friends."
"And I am no longer one?"
I raised my eyebrows contemptuously. "_After last night?_" I said.
"After last night? Is it possible, Monsieur, that you fancy you played
a friendly part? I came into your house, your guest, your friend, your
all but relative; and you laid a trap for me, you held me up to
ridicule and odium, you----"
"I did?" he exclaimed.
"Perhaps not with your own voice. But you stood by and saw it done!
You stood by and said no word for me! You stood by and raised no
finger for me! If you call that friendship----"
He stopped me with a gesture full of dignity. "You forget one thing,
M. le Vicomte," he said, in a tone of proud reticence.
"Name it!" I answered disdainfully.
"That Mademoiselle de St. Alais is my sister!"
"Ah!"
"And that, whether the fault was yours or not, you last evening
treated her lightly--before two hundred people! You forget that, M. le
Vicomte."
"I treated her lightly?" I replied, in a fresh excess of rage. We had
moved, as if by common consent, a little from the door, and by this
time were glaring into one another's eyes. "And with whom lay the
fault if I did? With whom lay the fault, Monsieur? You gave me the
choice--nay, you forced me to make choice between slighting her and
giving up opinions and convictions which I hold, in which I have been
bred, in which----"
"_Opinions!_" he said more harshly than he had yet spoken. "And what
are, after all, opinions? Pardon me, I see that I annoy you, Monsieur.
But I am not philosophic; I have not been to England; and I cannot
understand a man----"
"Giving up anything for his opinions!" I cried, with a savage sneer.
"No, Monsieur, I daresay you cannot. If a man will not stand by his
friends he will not stand by his opinions. To do either the one or the
other, M. le Comte, a man must not be a coward."
He grew pale, and looked at me strangely. "Hush, Monsieur!" he
said--involuntarily, it seemed to me. And a spasm crossed his face, as
if a sharp pain shot through him.
But I was beside myself with passion. "A coward!" I repeated. "Do you
understand me, M. le Comte? Or do you wish me to go inside and repeat
the word before the Assembly?"
"There is no need," he said, growing as red as he had before been
pale.
"There should be none," I answered, with a sneer. "May I conclude that
you will meet me after the Assembly rises?"
He bowed without speaking; and then, and not till then, something in
his silence and his looks pierced the armour of my rage; and on a
sudden I grew sick at heart, and cold. It was too late, however; I had
said that which could never be unsaid. The memory of his patience, of
his goodness, of his forbearance, came after the event. I saluted him
formally; he replied; and I turned grimly to the door again.
But I was not to pass through it yet.
A second time when I had the latch in my grasp, and the door an inch
open, a hand plucked me back; so forcibly, that the latch rattled as
it fell, and I turned in a rage. To my astonishment it was Louis
again, but with a changed face--a face of strange excitement. He
retained his hold on me.
"No," he said, between his teeth. "You have called me a coward, M. le
Vicomte, and I will not wait! Not an hour. You shall fight me now.
There is a garden at the back, and----"
But I had grown as cold as he hot. "I shall do nothing of the kind," I
said, cutting him short. "After the Assembly----"
He raised his hand and deliberately struck me with his glove across
the face.
"Will that persuade you, then?" he said, as I involuntarily recoiled.
"After that, Monsieur, if you are a gentleman, you will fight me.
There is a garden at the back, and in ten minutes----"
"In ten minutes the Assembly may have risen," I said.
"I will not keep you so long!" he answered sternly. "Come, sir! Or
must I strike you again?"
"I will come," I said slowly. "After you, Monsieur."