CHAPTER XXV.
BEYOND THE SHADOW.
I thank Heaven that I saw little more than I have told. A score offeet trampled on me as the murderers stumbled this way and that,and bruised me and covered me with blood that was not my own. And Iheard screams of men in the death-throe, ear-piercing shrieks ofwomen--shrieks that chilled the blood and stopped the breath--madlaughter, sounds of the pit. But to rise was to court instant death,and, though I had no hope and no looking forward, my momentary passionhad spent itself and I lay quiet. Resistance was useless.
At last I thought the end had come. The body that pressed on me, andpartly hid me, was abruptly dragged away; the light came to my eyes,and a voice cried, briskly: "Here is another! He is alive!"
I staggered to my feet, stupidly willing to die with some sort ofdignity. The speaker was a stranger, but by his side was Buton, andbeyond him stood De Geol; and there were others, all staring at me,face beyond face. Still, I could not believe that I was saved. "If youare going to do it, do it quickly," I muttered; and I opened my arms.
"God forbid!" Buton answered hurriedly. "Enough has been done already,and too much! M. le Vicomte, lean on me! Lean on me, and come thisway. _Mon Dieu_, I was only just in time. If they had killed you----"
"That is the fifth," said De Geol.
Buton did not answer, but taking my arm, gently urged me along, and DeGeol taking the other side, I walked between them, through a lane ofpeople who stared at me with a sort of brutish wonder--a lane ofpeople with faces that looked strangely white in the sunshine. I wasbareheaded, and the sun dazzled and confused me, but obeying thepressure of Buton's hand I swerved and passed through a door thatseemed to open in the wall. As I did so I dropped a kerchief whichsome one had given me to bind up my shoulder. A man standing besidethe door, the last man on the right-hand side of the lane of people,picked it up and gave it to me with a kindly alacrity. He had a pike,and his hands were covered with blood, and I do not doubt that he wasone of the murderers!
Two men were carrying some one into the house before us, and at thesight of the helpless body and hanging head, sense and memory returnedto me with a rush. I caught Buton by the breast of his coat and shookhim--shook him savagely. "Mademoiselle de St. Alais!" I cried. "Whathave you done to her, wretch? If you have----"
"Hush, Monsieur, hush," he answered reproachfully. "And be yourself.She is safe, and here, I give you my word. She was carried in amongthe first. I don't think a hair of her head is injured."
"She was carried in here?" I said.
"Yes, M. le Vicomte."
"And safe?"
"Yes, yes."
I believe that at that I burst into tears not altogether unmanly; forthey were tears of thankfulness and gratitude. I had gone through verymuch, and, though the wound in my arm was a trifle, I had lost someblood; and the tears may be forgiven me. Nor indeed was I alone inweeping that day. I learned afterwards that one of the very murderers,a man who had been foremost in the work, cried bitterly when he cameto himself and saw what he had done.
They killed in Nimes on that day and the two next, about three hundredmen, principally in the Capuchin convent--which Froment had used as aprinting-office, and made the headquarters of his propaganda--in theCabaret Rouge, and in Froment's own house, which held out until theybrought cannon to bear on it. Not more than one-half of these fell inactual conflict or hot blood; the remainder were hunted down in lanesand houses and hiding-places, and killed where they were found, or,surrendering at discretion, were led to the nearest wall, and thereshot.
Later, both in Paris and the provinces, this severity was commended,and held up to admiration as the truest mercy; on the ground that itstamped out the fire of revolt which was on the point of blazing upand prevented it spreading to the rest of France. But, looking back, Ifind in it another thing; I find in it not mercy, but the first, ornearly the first, instance of that strange contempt of human lifewhich marked the Revolution in its later stages; of that extravaganceof cruelty which three years afterwards paralysed society andastounded the world, and, by the horrible excesses into which itoccasionally led men, proved to the philosophers of the Human Racethat France in the last days of the eighteenth century could do in thedaylight, at Arras and Nantes and Paris, deeds which the tyrants ofold confined to the dark recesses of their torture-chambers: deeds--Iblush to say it--that no other polite country has matched in this age.
But with these crimes--and be it understood I do not refer here to thework of the guillotine--I thank God that I have at this time nothingto do. They left their traces on later pages of my life--as on thelife of what Frenchman have they not?--and some day I may revert tothem. But my task here barely touches them. It is enough for me to saythat of eighteen men who shared with me the horrors of the alley bythe Capuchins, four only lived to tell the tale, and look back on thewalls of Nimes; they and I owing our lives in part to the timelyarrival of Buton and some foreign representatives, who did not sharethe Cevennols' fanaticism, and partly to the late relenting of themurderers themselves.
Of the four, Father Benoit and Louis St. Alais were two, and strangewas the meeting, when we three, so wonderfully preserved, with clothesstill torn and disordered, and faces splashed with blood, cametogether in the upstairs _salon_ at Madame Catinot's. The shutters ofthe room, with the exception of one high corner shutter, were stillclosed; dead ashes lay white and cold in the empty fire-place, thathad blazed so cheerfully in my honour the night I supped with MadameCatinot. The whole room was gloomy and chill, the furniture cast longshadows, and up the stairs came the clamour of the mob, that havingseen us into the house eddied curiously round the scene of the murder,and could not have enough of it.
A strange meeting, for we three had all loved one another, and bystress of the times had been separated. Now we met as from the grave,ghostly figures, livid, trembling, with shaking hands and eyes burningwith the light of fever; but with all differences purged away. "MyBrother!" "Your Brother!" and Louis' hands met mine, as if the deadman who had died with the courage of his race joined them; whileFather Benoit wrung his hands in uncontrollable grief or walked theroom, crying: "My poor children! Oh, my poor children! God have mercyon this land!"
A low sound of women's voices, and weeping, with the hurrying of feetgoing softly to and fro, came from the next room: and that it was, Ithink, that presently calmed us, so that except for an occasionalburst of grief on Louis' part we could talk quietly. I learned thatMadame St. Alais lay there, sadly injured in the _melee_, either byher fall or a blow from a foot; and that Denise and Madame Catinot anda surgeon were with her. The very room in its gloom was funereal, andwe talked in whispers--and then sank into silence; or again one orother would rise with a shudder of remembrance, and walk the room withheaving breast. Presently, the sound of guns coming to our ears, weforgot ourselves for a while and talked of Froment, and what chance ofescape he had, and listened and heard the mob raving and howling as itsurged by; and then talked again. But always as men who were no longerconcerned; as men whom death had released from the common obligations.
Presently they came and called Louis, who went to his mother; and thenafter another interval Father Benoit was summoned, and I walked theroom alone. Silence after so great commotion, solitude, when an hourbefore I had dealt death and faced it in that inferno, safety afterdanger so imminent, all stirred the depths of my heart. When, inaddition, I thought of St. Alais' death, and recalled the brilliantpromise, the daring, the brightness of that haughty spirit now forever quenched, I felt the tears rise again. I paced the room inuncontrollable emotion, and was thankful for the gloom that allowed meto give it vent. Old times, old scenes, old affections rose up, and myboyhood; I remembered that we had played together, I forgot that wehad gone different ways.
After a long time, a long, long time, when evening had nearly come,Louis came in to me. "Will you come?" he said abruptly.
"To Madame St. Alais?"
"Yes, she wants
to see you," he replied, holding the door open, andspeaking in the dull even tone of one who knows all.
After such a scene as we had passed through comes reaction; I was wornout and I went with him mechanically, thinking rather of the past thanthe present. But no sooner was I over the threshold of the next room,which, unlike that I had left, was brilliantly lit by candles set insconces, the shutters being closed, than I came to myself with ashock. Propped up with pillows on a bed opposite the door, so that Imet her eyes and had a full view of her face as I entered, lay MadameSt. Alais; and I stood. Her face was white with a red spot burning ineach cheek; her eyes matched the colour in brilliance; but it wasneither of these things that brought me up suddenly, nor--though Inoticed it with foreboding--the way in which she plucked at thecoverlet when she spoke. It was something in her expression; somethingso unfitting the occasion, so bizarre and light that I stood appalled.
She saw my hesitation, and in a gay and slightly affected tone, thatin a moment told the story, a tone more dreadful under thecircumstances than the most pathetic outbursts, she reproached me withit. "Welcome, M. le Vicomte," she said. "And yet I am glad to see thatyou have some modesty. We will not be hard on you, however. A laterepentance is better than none, and--where is my fan, Denise? Child,my fan!"
Denise rose with a choking sound from her seat by the bed, and must, Ithink, have broken down; we had all nerves worn to the last thread.But Madame Catinot saved the situation. Hastily reaching a fan from aside table she laid a firm hand on the younger woman's shoulder as shepassed, and gently pressed her back into her seat.
"Thank you, my dear," Madame St. Alais said, playing an instant withthe fan, and smiling from side to side, as I had seen her smile ahundred times in her _salon_. "And now, M. le Vicomte," she continuedwith ghastly archness, "I think that you will have the grace to saythat I was a true prophet?"
I muttered something, heaven knows what; the scene, with Madame'ssmiling face, and the others' bowed shoulders and averted eyes, wasdreadful.
"I never doubted that you would have to join us," she went on, withcomplacency. "And if I were cruel, I should have much to say. But asyou have returned to your allegiance before it was too late, we willlet bygones be bygones. His Majesty is so good that--but where are theothers? We cannot proceed without them."
She looked round with a touch of her native peremptoriness. "Where isM. de Gontaut?" she said. "Louis, has not M. de Gontaut arrived? Hepromised to be here to witness the contract."
Louis, from his place by one of the closed windows, where he stoodwith Father Benoit and the surgeon, answered in a strained voice thathe had not yet arrived.
Madame seemed to find something unnatural in his tone and ourattitude, she looked uneasily from one to the other of us. "There isnothing the matter, is there?" she said, flirting her fan morevigorously. "Nothing has happened?"
"No, no, Madame," Louis answered, striving to soothe her. "Doubtlesshe will be here by-and-by."
But a shadow of anxiety still clouded Madame's face. "And Victor?" shesaid. "He has not come either? Louis, are you sure that there isnothing the matter?"
"Madame, Madame, you will see him presently," he answered with ahalf-stifled sob; and he turned away with a gesture of horror, which,but for one of the curtains of the alcove, she must have seen.
She did not, though there was enough in this to arouse a sane person'ssuspicions. As he spoke, however, Madame's eyes fell on me, and thepiteous anxiety which had for the moment darkened her face, passedaway as quickly as the shadow of a cloud passes on an April morning.She took up her fan again, and looked at me gaily. "Do you know," shesaid, "I had the strangest dream last night, M. le Vicomte--or was itwhen I was ill, Denise? Never mind. But I dreamed all sorts ofhorrors; that our house here was burned, and the house at Cahors, andthat we had to fly and take refuge at Montauban, and then--I think itwas at Nimes. And that M. de Gontaut was murdered, and all the_canaille_ were up in arms! As if--as if," she continued, with alittle laugh, cut short by a gasp of pain, "the King would permit suchthings, or they were possible. And there was something--somethingstill more absurd about the Church." She paused, knitting her brows;and then with a touch of her fan dismissing the subject: "But Iforget--I forget. And just when it was most horrible I awoke. It wasall absurd. So extravagant you would all be ill with laughing if Icould remember it. I fancied that a pair of red-heeled shoes were asgood as a death warrant, and powder and patches condemned you atonce."
She paused. The fan dropped from her hand, and she looked rounduneasily. "I think--I think I am not quite well yet," she said in adifferent tone, and a spasm crossed her face--it was plain that shewas in pain. "Louis!" she continued petulantly, "where is the notary?He might read the contract. Doubtless Victor and M. de Gontaut will behere before long. Where is he?" she continued sharply.
It is easy to say that we might have played our parts; but the pityand the horror of it, falling on hearts already tortured by the scenesof the day, fairly unmanned us. Denise hid her face, and trembled sothat the chair on which she sat shook; and Louis turned awayshuddering, while I stood near the foot of the bed, frozen intosilence. This time it was the surgeon, a thin young man of darkcomplexion, who put himself forward.
"The papers are in the next room, Madame," he said gravely.
"But you are not M. Pettifer?" she answered querulously.
"No, Madame, he was so unwell as to be unable to leave the house."
"He has no right to be unwell," Madame retorted severely. "Pettiferunwell, and Mademoiselle St. Alais' contract to be signed! But youhave the papers?"
"In the next room, Madame."
"Fetch them! Fetch them!" she answered, her eyes wandering uneasilyfrom one to another. And she moved in the bed and sighed as one inpain. Then, "Where is Victor? Why does he not come?" she askedimpatiently.
"I think I hear him," Louis said suddenly. It was the first time hehad spoken of his own free will, and I caught a new sound in hisvoice. "I will see," he went on, and moving to the door he gave me asign, as he passed, to follow him.
I muttered something, and did so. In the room in which I had waited,the half-shuttered room of gloom and shadows, from which Louis hadfetched me, we found the surgeon groping hastily about. "Some paper,Monsieur," he said, looking up impatiently as we entered. "Some paper!Almost anything should do."
"Stay!" Louis said, his voice harsh with pain. "We have had too muchof this--this mockery. I will have no more."
"Monsieur?"
"I say I will have no more!" Louis answered fiercely, a sob in histhroat. "Tell her the truth."
"She would not believe it."
"At any rate, anything is better than this."
"Do you mean it, Monsieur?" the surgeon asked slowly, and he looked athim.
"I do."
"Then I will have no part in it," the man answered with gravity. "Iacquit myself of all responsibility. Nor shall you do it, Monsieur,until you have heard what the inevitable result will be."
"My mother cannot recover," Louis said stubbornly.
"No, Monsieur, nor will she live, in my opinion, more than a fewhours. When the fever that now supports her begins to wane she willcollapse, and die. It depends on you whether she closes her eyes,knowing none of the evil that has happened, or her son's death; ordies----"
"It is horrible!"
"It is for you to choose," the surgeon answered inexorably.
Louis looked round. "There is paper there," he said suddenly.
I suppose that we had been absent from the room no more than a coupleof minutes, but when we returned we found Madame St. Alais callingimpatiently for us and for Victor. "Where is he? Where is he?" sherepeated feverishly. "Why is he late to-day of all days? There isno--no quarrel between you?" And she looked jealously at me.
"None, Madame," I said, with tears in my voice. "That I swear!"
"Then why is he not here? And M. de Gontaut?" Her eyes were stillbright; the red spot burned still in her cheeks; but her features hadtaken a pinch
ed look, she was changed, and her fingers were neverstill. Her voice had grown harsh and unnatural, and from time to timeshe looked round with a piteous expression as if something puzzledher. "I am not well to-day," she muttered presently, with a painfuleffort to be herself. "And I forget to be as gay as I should be.Mademoiselle, go to M. le Vicomte, and say something pretty to amuseus while we wait. And you, M. le Vicomte! In my young days it wasusual for the _fiance_ to salute his mistress on these occasions. Fieon you! For shame, Monsieur! I am afraid that you are a laggard inlove."
Denise rose, and came slowly to me before them all, but no word passedher pale lips, and she did not raise her eyes to mine. She remainedpassive when in accordance with Madame's permission I stooped andkissed her cold cheek; it grew no warmer, her eyes did not kindle. YetI was satisfied, more than satisfied; for as I leant over her I felther little hands--little hands I longed to take in mine and shelterand protect--I felt them clutch and hold the front of my coat, as thechild clings to its mother's neck. I passed my arm round her beforethem all, and so we stood at the foot of Madame's bed, and she lookedat us.
She laughed gaily. "Poor little mouse!" she said. "She is shy yet. Begood to her, _mon cher_, she is a tender morsel, and--I don't feelwell! I don't feel well," Madame repeated, abruptly breaking off, andlifting herself in bed, while one hand went with difficulty to herhead. "I don't--what is it?" she continued, the colour visibly fadingfrom her face and leaving it white and drawn, while fear leapt intoher staring eyes. "What is it? Fetch--fetch some one, will you?The--the doctor! And Victor."
Denise slipped from my arm, and flew to her side. I stood a moment,then the surgeon touched my arm. "Go!" he muttered. "Go. Leave her tothe women. It will be quickly over."
And so Madame St. Alais gave Mademoiselle to me at last; and thecompact for our marriage, into which she had entered so many yearsbefore with my dead father, was fulfilled.
* * * * *
Madame died next morning, being taken not only from the evil to come,but from that which was then present, and roared and eddied throughthe streets of Nimes round the unburied body of her son; for she diedwithout awaking from the delirium which followed her hurt. I went into see her lying dead and little changed; and in the quiet decorum ofthe lighted chamber I thought reverently of the change which oneyear--one brief year had made, coming at the end of fifty years ofprosperity. It seemed pitiful to me then, as I stooped and kissed thewaxen hand--very pitiful; now, knowing what the future had in store,remembering the twenty years of exile and poverty and tedium and hopedeferred, that were to be the lot of so many of her friends, of somany of those who had graced her _salons_ at St. Alais and Cahors, Ithink her happy. Possessed of energy as well as pride, a rarecombination in our order, she and hers dared greatly and greatly lost;staked all and lost all. Yet better that, than the prison or theguillotine; or growing old and decrepit in a strange land, to returnto a _patrie_ that had long forgotten them; that stood in the roadsand jeered at the old berlins and petticoats and headgear that werethe fashion in the days of the Polignacs.
I have said that the riots in Nimes lasted three days. On the lastButon came to me and told us we must go; that to avoid worse things wemust leave the city without delay, or he and the more moderate partywho had saved us would no longer be responsible. On this, Louis wasfor retiring to Montpellier, and thence to the _emigres_ at Turin; andfor a few hours I was of the same mind, desiring most of all to placethe women in safety.
I owe it to Buton that I did not take a step hard to recall, and ofwhich I am sure that I should have repented later. He asked me bluntlywhither I was going, and when I told him, set his back against thedoor. "God forbid!" he said. "Who go, go. Few will return."
I answered him with heat. "Nonsense!" I cried. "I tell you, within ayear you will be on your knees to us to come back."
"Why?" he said.
"You cannot keep order without us!"
"With ease," he answered coolly.
"Look at the state of things here!"
"It will pass."
"But who will govern?"
"The fittest," he replied doggedly. "For do you still think, M. leVicomte--after all that has happened--that a man to make laws musthave a title--saving your presence? Do you still think that the wheatwill not grow, nor the hens lay eggs, unless the Seigneur's shadowfalls on them? Do you think that to fight, a man must have powder onhis head as well as in his musket?"
"I think," I retorted, "that when a man who does not know the seaturns pilot it is time to leave the vessel!"
"The pilot will learn," he answered. "And for quitting the vessel, letthose go who have no business on board. Be guided, Monseigneur," hecontinued in a different tone. "Be guided. They have killed in Nimesthree hundred in three days."
"And you say, stay?"
"Ay, for there is blood between us," he answered grimly. "That hasbeen done now which will not easily be forgiven; that has been donewhich will abide. Go abroad after this--and stay abroad! Or rather donot--do not, but be guided," he continued, with rough emotion in hisvoice. "Go home to the Chateau, and be quiet, Monsieur, and no onewill harm you."
There was much in what he said. At any rate, I thought the advice sogood that, after some hesitation, I not only determined to follow it,but I gave it to the others. But Louis would not change his mind. Ahorror of the country had seized him since his escape; and he wouldgo. He raised no opposition, however, when I asked him to give meDenise; and within twenty-four hours of her mother's death she becamemy wife, in that dark-shuttered house by the Capuchins' alley, FatherBenoit performing the service. Louis was at the same time married toMadame Catinot, who was to share his exile. Needless to say there wereno rejoicings at these weddings; no _fete_ and no joy-bells, and nobride-clothes, but sobs and wailings, and cold lips and passive hands.
But a bright day has sometimes a weeping dawn, and though for threeyears or more our life knew perils enough and some sorrows--the storyof which I may one day tell--and we shared the lot of all Frenchmen inthose times of shame and stress, I had never, no, not for a day or anhour, cause to repent the deed done so hurriedly at Nimes. Clinginghands and warm lips, eyes that shone as brightly in a prison as apalace, cheered me, when things were worst; and when better days came,and with them grey hairs and a new France, my wife found means stillto grace, and ever more and more to share my life.
One word of the man to whom under God I owe it that I won her. Hesurvived, but I never saw Froment of Nimes again. On the third day ofthe riots cannon were brought to bear on his tower, it was stormed,and the garrison were put to the sword, one man only, I believe,escaping with his life. That man was Froment, the indomitable, themost capable leader that the Royalists of France ever boasted. He gotsafely to the frontier and thence to Turin, where he was received withhonour by those whose aid might a little earlier have saved all. Whofails must expect buffets, however; the cold shoulder was presentlyturned to him; he was slighted, and as the years went on hiscomplaints grew louder. Once I sought to find and assist him, but hewas then engaged in some enterprise on the African coast, and mycircumstances were such that I could have done little had I found him.Soon afterwards, I believe, he died, though certain information neverreached me. But dead or alive I owe him gratitude, respect, and otherthings, among which I count the greatest happiness of my life.
THE END.
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