IT GOES ILL.
It was August, and the leaves of the chestnuts were still green, when
they sacked the St. Alais' house at Cahors, and I fell senseless on
the stairs. The ash trees were bare, and the oaks clad only in russet,
when I began to know things again; and, looking sideways from my
pillow into the grey autumnal world, took up afresh the task of
living. Even then many days had to elapse before I ceased to be merely
an animal--content to eat, and drink, and sleep, and take Father
Benoit kneeling by my bed for one of the permanent facts of life. But
the time did come at last, in late November, when the mind awoke, as
those who watched by me had never thought to see it awake; and,
meeting the good Cure's eyes with my eyes, I saw him turn away and
break into joyful weeping.
A week from that time I knew all--the story, public and private, of
that wonderful autumn, during which I had lain like a log in my bed.
At first, avoiding topics that touched me too nearly, Father Benoit
told me of Paris; of the ten weeks of suspicion and suspense which
followed the Bastille riots--weeks during which the Fauxbourgs,
scantly checked by Lafayette and his National Guards, kept jealous
watch on Versailles, where the Assembly sat in attendance on the King;
of the scarcity which prevailed through this trying time, and the
constant rumours of an attack by the Court; of the Queen's unfortunate
banquet, which proved to be the spark that fired the mine; last of
all, of the great march of the women to Versailles, on the 5th of
October, which, by forcing the King and the Assembly to Paris, and
making the King a prisoner in his own palace, put an end to this
period of uncertainty.
"And since then?" I said in feeble amazement. "This is the 20th of
November, you tell me?"
"Nothing has happened," he answered, "except signs and symptoms."
"And those?"
He shook his head gravely. "Every one is enrolled in the National
Guards--that, for one. Here in Quercy, the corps which M. Hugues took
it in hand to form numbers some thousands. Every one is armed,
therefore. Then, the game laws being abolished, every one is a
sportsman. And so many nobles have emigrated, that either there are no
nobles or all are nobles."
"But who governs?"
"The Municipalities. Or, where there are none, Committees."
I could not help smiling. "And your Committee, M. le Cure?" I said.
"I do not attend it," he answered, wincing visibly. "To be plain, they
go too fast for me. But I have worse yet to tell you!"
"What?"
"On the Fourth of August the Assembly abolished the tithes of the
Church; early in this month they proposed to confiscate the estates of
the Church! By this time it is probably done."
"What! And the clergy are to starve?" I cried in indignation.
"Not quite," he answered, smiling sadly. "They are to be paid by the
State--as long as they please the State!"
He went soon after he had told me that; and I lay in amazement,
looking through the window, and striving to picture the changed world
that existed round me. Presently Andre came in with my broth. I
thought it weak, and said so; the strong gust of outside life, which
the news had brought into my chamber, had roused my appetite, and
given me a distaste for _tisanes_ and slops.
But the old fellow took the complaint very ill. "Well," he grumbled,
"and what else is to be expected, Monsieur? With little rent paid,
and half the pigeons in the cot slaughtered, and scarcely a hare left
in the country side? With all the world shooting and snaring, and
smiths and tailors cocked up on horses--ay, and with swords by their
sides--and the gentry gone, or hiding their heads in beds, it is a
small thing if the broth is weak! If M. le Vicomte liked strong broth,
he should have been wise enough to keep the cow himself, and not----"
"Tut, tut, man!" I said, wincing in my turn. "What of Buton?"
"Monsieur means M. le Capitaine Buton?" the old man answered with a
sneer. "He is at Cahors."
"And was any one punished for--for the affair at St. Alais?"
"No one is punished now-a-days," Andre replied tartly. "Except
sometimes a miller, who is hung because corn is dear."
"Then even Petit Jean----"
"Petit Jean went to Paris. Doubtless he is now a Major or a Colonel."
With this shot the old man left me--left me writhing. For through all
I had not dared to ask the one thing I wished to know; the one thing
that, as my strength increased, had grown with it, from a vague
apprehension of evil, which the mind, when bidden do its duty, failed
to grasp, to a dreadful anxiety only too well understood and defined;
a brooding fear that weighed upon me like an evil dream, and in spite
of youth sapped my life, and retarded my recovery.
I have read that a fever sometimes burns out love; and that a man
rises cured not only of his illness, but of the passion which consumed
him, when he succumbed to it. But this was not my fate; from the
moment when that dull anxiety about I knew not what took shape and
form, and I saw on the green curtains of my bed a pale child's face--a
face that now wept and now gazed at me in sad appeal--from that moment
Mademoiselle was never out of my waking mind for an hour. God knows,
if any thought of me on her part, if any silent cry of her heart to me
in her troubles, had to do with this; but it was the case.
However, on the next day the fear and the weight were removed. I
suppose that Father Benoit had made up his mind to broach the subject,
which hitherto he had shunned with care; for his first question, after
he had learned how I did, brought it up. "You have never asked what
happened after you were injured, M. le Vicomte?" he said with a little
hesitation. "Do you remember?"
"I remember all," I said with a groan.
He drew a breath of relief. I think he had feared that there was still
something amiss with the brain. "And yet you have never asked?" he
said.
"Man! cannot you understand why--why I have not asked?" I cried
hoarsely, rising, and sinking back in my seat in uncontrollable
agitation. "Cannot you understand that until I asked I had hope? But
now, torture me no longer! Tell me, tell me all, man, and then----"
"There is nothing but good to tell," he answered cheerfully,
endeavouring to dispel my fears at the first word. "You know the
worst. Poor M. de Gontaut was killed on the stairs. He was too infirm
to flee. The rest, to the meanest servant, got away over the roofs of
the neighbouring houses."
"And escaped?"
"Yes. The town was in an uproar for many hours, but they were well
hidden. I believe that they have left the country."
"You do not know where they are, then?"
"No," he answered, "I never saw any of them after the outbreak. But I
heard of them being in this or that chateau--at the Harincourts', and
elsewhere. Then the Harincourts left--about the middle of October, and
I think that M. de St. Alais and his family went with them."
I lay for a while too full of thankfulness to speak. Then, "And you
know nothing more?"
"Nothing," the Cure answered.
But that was enough for me. When he came again I was able to walk with
him on the terrace, and after that I gained strength rapidly. I
remarked, however, that as my spirits rose, with air and exercise, the
good priest's declined. His kind, sensitive face grew day by day more
sombre, his fits of silence longer. When I asked him the reason, "It
goes ill, it goes ill," he said. "And, God forgive me, I had to do
with it."
"Who had not?" I said soberly.
"But I should have foreseen!" he answered, wringing his hands openly.
"I should have known that God's first gift to man was Order. Order,
and to-day, in Cahors, there is no tribunal, or none that acts: the
old magistrates are afraid, and the old laws are spurned, and no man
can even recover a debt! Order, and the worst thing a criminal, thrown
into prison, has now to fear is that he may be forgotten. Order, and I
see arms everywhere, and men who cannot read teaching those who can,
and men who pay no taxes disposing of the money of those who do! I see
famine in the town, and the farmers and the peasants killing game or
folding their hands; for who will work when the future is uncertain? I
see the houses of the rich empty, and their servants starving; I see
all trade, all commerce, all buying and selling, except of the barest
necessaries, at an end! I see all these things, M. le Vicomte, and
shall I not say, '_Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa_'?"
"But liberty," I said feebly. "You once said yourself that a certain
price must----"
"Is liberty licence to do wrong?" he answered with passion--seldom had
I seen him so moved. "Is liberty licence to rob and blaspheme, and
move your neighbour's landmark? Does tyranny cease to be tyranny, when
the tyrants are no longer one, but a thousand? M. le Vicomte, I know
not what to do, I know not what to do," he continued. "For a little I
would go out into the world, and at all costs unsay what I have said,
undo what I have done! I would! I would indeed!"
"Something more has happened?" I said, startled by this outbreak.
"Something I have not heard?"
"The Assembly took away our tithes and our estates!" he answered
bitterly. "That you know. They denied our existence as a Church. That
you know. They have now decreed the suppression of all religious
houses. Presently they will close also our churches and cathedrals.
And we shall be pagans!"
"Impossible!" I said.
"But it is true."
"The suppression, yes. But for the churches and cathedrals----"
"Why not?" he answered despondently. "God knows there is little faith
abroad. I fear it will come. I see it coming. The greater need--that
we who believe should testify."
I did not quite understand at the time what he meant or would be at,
or what he had in his mind; but I saw that his scrupulous nature was
tormented by the thought that he had hastened the catastrophe; and I
felt uneasy when he did not appear next day at his usual time for
visiting me. On the following day he came; but was downcast and
taciturn, taking leave of me when he went with a sad kindness that
almost made me call him back. The next day again he did not appear;
nor the day after that. Then I sent for him, but too late; I sent,
only to learn from his old housekeeper that he had left home suddenly,
after arranging with a neighbouring cure to have his duties performed
for a month.
I was able by this time to go abroad a little, and I walked down to
his cottage; I could learn no more there, however, than that a
Capuchin monk had been his guest for two nights, and that M. le Cure
had left for Cahors a few hours after the monk. That was all; I
returned depressed and dissatisfied. Such villagers as I met by the
way greeted me with respect, and even with sympathy--it was the first
time I had gone into the hamlet; but the shadow of suspicion which I
had detected on their faces some months before had grown deeper and
darker with time. They no longer knew with certainty their places or
mine, their rights or mine; and shy of me and doubtful of themselves,
were glad to part from me.
Near the gates of the avenue I met a man whom I knew; a wine-dealer
from Aulnoy. I stayed to ask him if the family were at home.
He looked at me in surprise. "No, M. le Vicomte," he said. "They left
the country some weeks ago--after the King was persuaded to go to
Paris."
"And M. le Baron?"
"He too."
"For Paris?"
The man, a respectable bourgeois, grinned at me. "No, Monsieur, I
fancy not," he said. "You know best, M. le Vicomte; but if I said
Turin, I doubt I should be little out."
"I have been ill," I said. "And have heard nothing."
"You should go into Cahors," he answered; with rough good-nature.
"Most of the gentry are there--if they have not gone farther. It is
safer than the country in these days. Ah, if my father had lived to
see----"
He did not finish the sentence in words, but raised his eyebrows and
shoulders, saluted me, and rode away. In spite of his surprise it was
easy to see that the change pleased him, though he veiled his
satisfaction out of civility.
I walked home feeling lonely and depressed. The tall stone house, the
seigneurial tower and turret and dovecot, stripped of the veil of
foliage that in summer softened their outlines, stood up bare and
gaunt at the end of the avenue; and seemed in some strange way to
share my loneliness and to speak to me of evil days on which we had
alike fallen. In losing Father Benoit I had lost my only chance of
society just when, with returning strength, the desire for
companionship and a more active life was awakening. I thought of this
gloomily; and then was delighted to see, as I approached the door, a
horse tethered to the ring beside it. There were holsters on the
saddle, and the girths were splashed.
Andre was in the hall, but to my surprise, instead of informing me
that there was a visitor, he went on dusting a table, with his back to
me.
"Who is here?" I said sharply.
"No one," he answered.
"No one? Then whose is that horse?"
"The smith's, Monsieur."
"What? Buton's?"
"Ay, Buton's! It is a new thing hanging it at the front door," he
added, with a sneer.
"But what is he doing? Where is he?"
"He is where he ought to be; and that is at the stables," the old
fellow answered doggedly. "I'll be bound that it is the first piece of
honest work he has done for many a day."
"Is he shoeing?"
"Why not? Does Monsieur want him to dine with him?" was the
ill-tempered retort.
I took no notice of this, but went to the stables. I could hear the
bellows heaving; and turning the corner of the building I came on
Buton at work in the forge with two of his men. The smith was stripped
to his shirt, and with his great leather apron round him, and his
bare, blackened arms, looked like the Buton of six months ago. But
outside the forge lay a little heap of clothes neatly folded, a blue
coat with red facings, a long blue waistcoat, and a hat with a huge
tricolour; and as he released the horse's hoof on which he was at
work, and straightened himself to salute me, he looked at me with a
new look, that was something between appeal and defiance.
"Tut, tut!" I said, fleering at him. "This is too great an honour, M.
le Capitaine! To be shod by a member of the Committee!"
"Has M. le Vicomte anything of which to complain?" he said, reddening
under the deep tan of his face.
"I? No, indeed. I am only overwhelmed by the honour you do me."
"I have been here to shoe once a month," he persisted stubbornly.
"Does Monsieur complain that the horses have suffered?"
"No. But----"
"Has M. le Vicomte's house suffered? Has so much as a stack of his
corn been burned, or a colt taken from the fields, or an egg from the
nest?"
"No," I said.
Buton nodded gloomily. "Then if Monsieur has no fault to find," he
replied, "perhaps he will let me finish my work. Afterwards I will
deliver a message I have for him. But it is for his ear, and the
forge----"
"Is not the place for secrets, though the smith is the man!" I
answered, with a parting gibe, fired over my shoulders. "Well, come to
me on the terrace when you have finished."
He came an hour later, looking hugely clumsy in his fine clothes; and
with a sword--heaven save us!--a sword by his side. Presently the
murder came out; he was the bearer of a commission appointing me
Lieutenant-Colonel in the National Guard of the Province. "It was
given at my request," he said, with awkward pride. "There were some,
M. le Vicomte, who thought that you had not behaved altogether well in
the matter of the riot, but I rattled their heads together. Besides I
said, 'No Lieutenant-Colonel, no Captain!' and they cannot do without
me. I keep this side quiet."
What a position it was! Ah, what a position it was! And how for a
moment the absurdity of it warred in my mind with the humiliation! Six
months before I should have torn up the paper in a fury, and flung it
in his face, and beaten him out of my presence with my cane. But much
had happened since then; even the temptation to break into laughter,
into peal upon peal of gloomy merriment, was not now invincible. I
overcame it by an effort, partly out of prudence, partly from a
better motive--a sense of the man's rough fidelity amid circumstances,
and in face of anomalies, the most trying. I thanked him instead,
therefore--though I almost choked; and I said I would write to the
Committee.
Still he lingered, rubbing one great foot against another; and I
waited with mock politeness to hear his business. At length, "There is
another thing I wish to say, M. le Vicomte," he growled. "M. le Cure
has left Saux."
"Yes?"
"Well, he is a good man; or he was a good man," he continued
grudgingly. "But he is running into trouble, and you would do well to
let him know that."
"Why?" I said. "Do you know where he is?"
"I can guess," he answered. "And where others are, too; and where
there will presently be trouble. These Capuchin monks are not about
the country for nothing. When the crows fly home there will be
trouble. And I do not want him to be in it."
"I have not the least idea where he is," I said coldly. "Nor what you
mean." The smith's tone had changed and grown savage and churlish.
"He has gone to Nimes," he answered.
"To Nimes?" I cried in astonishment. "How do you know? It is more than
I know."
"I do know," he answered. "And what is brewing there. And so do a
great many more. But this time the St. Alais and their bullies, M. le
Vicomte--ay, they are all there--will not escape us. We will break
their necks. Yes, M. le Vicomte, make no mistake," he continued,
glaring at me, his eyes red with suspicion and anger, "mix yourselves
up with none of this. We are the people! The people! Woe to the man or
thing that stands in our way!"
"Go!" I said. "I have heard enough. Begone!"
He looked at me a moment as if he would answer me. But old habits
overcame him, and with a sullen word of farewell he turned, and went
round the house. A minute later I heard his horse trot down the
avenue.
I had cut him short; nevertheless the instant he was gone I wished him
back, that I might ask him more. The St. Alais at Nimes? Father Benoit
at Nimes? And a plot brewing there in which all had a hand? In a
moment the news opened a window, as it were, into a wider world,
through which I looked, and no longer felt myself shut in by the
lonely country round me and the lack of society. I looked and saw the
great white dusty city of the south, and trouble rising in it, and in
the middle of the trouble, looking at me wistfully, Denise de St.
Alais.
Father Benoit had gone thither. Why might not I?
I walked up and down in a flutter of spirits, and the longer I
considered it, the more I liked it; the longer I thought of the dull
inaction in which I must spend my time at home, unless I consented to
rub shoulders with Buton and his like, the more taken I was with the
idea of leaving.
And after all why not? Why should I not go?
I had my commission in my pocket, wherein I was not only appointed to
the National Guards, but described as _ci-devant_ "President of the
Council of Public Safety in the Province of Quercy"; and this taking
the place of papers or passport would render travelling easy. My long
illness would serve as an excuse for a change of air; and explain my
absence from home; I had in the house as much money as I needed. In a
word, I could see no difficulty, and nothing to hinder me, if I chose
to go. I had only to please myself.
So the choice was soon made. The following day I mounted a horse for
the first time, and rode two-thirds of a league on the road, and home
again very tired.
Next morning I rode to St. Alais, and viewed the ruins of the house
and returned; this time I was less fatigued.
Then on the following day, Sunday, I rested; and on the Monday I rode
half-way to Cahors and back again. That evening I cleaned my pistols
and overlooked Gil while he packed my saddle-bags, choosing two plain
suits, one to pack and one to wear, and a hat with a small tricolour
rosette. On the following morning, the 6th of March, I took the road;
and parting from Andre on the outskirts of the village, turned my
horse's head towards Figeac with a sense of freedom, of escape from
difficulties and embarrassments, of hope and anticipation, that made
that first hour delicious; and that still supported me when the March
day began to give place to the chill darkness of evening--evening that
in an unknown, untried place is always sombre and melancholy.