François Grandjean looked over his shoulder as he knelt on the hearth. His pale blue eyes had an inscrutable gleam in their depths, as if he were amused.
“Not so brave,” he said, in his quiet and composed voice. “I knew, after an instant or two, that you would not kill little Cecile even if I had betrayed you. You would not even have killed me.”
The young man stared again, then laughed abruptly. “That is a singular conclusion. Why should you have had that opinion?”
The old man rose, rubbed his hands free from ashes. “I have lived a long time, and I have known numerous men. There is no reckless murder in you.”
The young man did not speak.
“Nevertheless,” said François, “you have killed before. Perhaps several times. Is that not so?”
Still, Arsène said nothing. His eyes were dark and intent as they studied François, and more than a little hard, and coldly haughty.
“I, too,” said François, composedly, “have killed. But, like you, I kill only upon necessity, and then with regret.”
Arsène made no comment on this. Instead, he asked with curiosity: “If, then, I would not have killed the girl, or you, why did you protect me?”
François dipped a finger into the iron kettle, to test the temperature of the water. The red flames of the fire and the yellow flame of the candlelight mingled together in the dark and fetid room. François said: “I am a Breton, and my people have, for ages, been seamen. Those who love the sea have mysteries in their heart, and they are never deceived.”
Arsène contemplated these odd words, which seemed no answer to his question. But he was very tired. He closed his eyes again.
“Neither are they dupes for liars,” added François. He approached Arsène, and touched his white and silken sleeve, torn and stained with blood. “Monsieur, if you will remove your garments—”
Arsène looked without interest at his arm. “It is nothing. I was grazed by a ball.” He tried to rise, sank back on the bench. “I must go,” he said, in a dwindled voice. “They will search for me. I am a danger to you here.”
“But more than a possible danger if you leave,” said François. “They are still outside, those paid devils of Richelieu. They will catch you, and then there will be no mercy for those who hid you.” He smiled. “I would not have even the excuse of your threat, for I would be told that for the glory of the Cardinal and Our Lady I should have betrayed you at the cost of my life.”
His tone was filled with mockery and some bitterness. Arsène scrutinized that smiling Roman face, and his interest quickened.
“You find life, then, so valuable?” and his eye passed swiftly over the room.
“I find it less fearful than death,” replied François.
Arsène’s mind was drained of coherence by his recent danger and his present suffering. The old man’s face floated, disembodied, before him. He said, childishly: “It is strange to find a student of the philosophers in such a den.”
“No stranger than to find you here,” answered François, with a significant look at the gold-hilted sword with its crust of intricate jeweling.
He unfastened the gemmed studs of the shirt with gentle hands. Arsène resisted for a moment, then fatalistically resigned himself to having the shirt removed. Resistance seemed at abeyance in him. François noted how white and silken were his shoulders and chest and body, yet how strong and well-formed. The candlelight glimmered on the face of the young men. He seemed about twenty-six years of age, with excellent and well-bred features. His eyes were large and dark, but ungentle, and there were wrinkles of cynicism, shrewdness and bold hardness about them. Nevertheless, their expression was both intelligent and quick, and humorous. He had a good broad forehead with sharp black brows under his thick long hair, the color of his eyes. His nose was long and aquiline, with curved and distended nostrils, and his cheekbones were wide and flat. His mouth, large though it was, was not soft and too sensitive, though the corners seemed more used to smiling than drooping. It was the face of a grand seigneur, but not that of a decadent nobleman, for there was no weakness in it, no languor, no daintiness nor perfumed elegance. His flesh was clean and pampered, but it was not scented, and the handkerchief which he withdrew from his doublet to wipe his sweating face had no lace edges upon it, but was clean and crisp, and of the finest linen.
He winced when the strangely gentle fingers of the old man examined his wound, but he did not cry out. There was no false bravado in this restraint, but rather an indifference. Nevertheless, he watched the old man intently and with detachment.
“You are quite right,” said François. “The ball grazed, deeply, but is not in the wound. You have lost much blood. But you are young, and the young replace their blood with new, rapidly, just as they replace their dreams with reality.”
His voice had a queer note in it, touched with bitterness.
“You prefer the dreams to reality, then?” asked Arsène.
“There is no reality without dreams,” murmured François, abstractedly. He dipped a clean rag in the hot water, sponged the wound, bent over it. The young man winced again, stiffened. The wound was very deep, and bubbled with blood. François drew the edges together and held them tightly with his fingers. With his other hand he pressed firmly an area near the wound. He smiled down at Arsène with his deep blue eyes.
“I learned this in caring for the animals on my mother’s farm,” he said. “In a few moments, the blood will clot, and there will be less bleeding.”
There was silence in the kitchen. The firelight and candlelight danced together. The old man’s fingers were strong and steady. The pain lessened. Long moments passed. Arsène felt his flesh grow numb under the pressure of François’s fingers. The wound slowly ceased to drip.
“Dreams, and mysticism,” said Arsène, “should be left to priests and other liars. They are not for honest men.”
“On the contrary,” murmured François, studying the wound. “They are only for honest men. Liars and mountebanks use them only for oppression and for manipulation of the defenseless and the ignorant. Until honest men take them for their own there can be no justice in the world, no faith, no enlightenment. Without a dream, honesty, mercy, indignation and courage must remain impotent.”
He took a strip of cloth and wound it tightly above the wound. Then he washed away the blood from Arsène’s cheek with touches as gentle as a woman’s. And again, he smiled down at the young man, and his smile was a little sad. But he said: “The cut on your cheek will leave a scar, unfortunately, monsieur. However, your mistress will not find it disfiguring. To the ladies, an unscarred man seems wanting in virility.”
Arsène began to smile, but his weakness had returned. He panted again. The old man put a smaller vessel on the fire, removed a bottle from the cupboard, and a pewter cup, and set them on the table.
“In a moment, there will be good hot broth. In the meantime, drink this wine. It is not of a good vintage, or excellent bouquet, but it has strength in it.”
He poured a cupful of the acrid wine, and held it to Arsène’s lips. The young man obediently drank, made an excruciating face, choked, and pushed aside the cup.
“It is vile,” he said, frankly.
François was not offended. He held the cup again to Arsène’s mouth, and Arsène drank again, and groaned.
“I have drunk poison,” he spluttered, wiping his mouth with his kerchief.
François lifted the bottle, and regarded it with regret. “Worse, you have lessened my own ration.”
“I am sorry for that,” said Arsène, ironically. However, he felt the strong and acrid wine flowing through his body, and giving it strength again.
“The poor have need of strength, and violence,” remarked François. “Especially in these days. But they have always needed them. Strong wine for the oppressed, sweet wine for the oppressors. In the end, this will have significance.”
He pointed to the pallet. “Now, after you have had your broth, you will rest th
ere for the night. Tomorrow, we will find some escape for you.”
“That is impossible, my good friend. I must leave immediately.”
François shook his head. “As my guest, you endanger me. But you endanger me more by leaving. You would not go far, after this night’s work. Either they would discover you, or you would drop in some gutter.”
He dipped a cup in the hot soup and gave it to Arsène. The young man found it hardly less obnoxious than the wine, but he drank it. “It is strange,” he murmured, glancing about the chamber again. “I have always espoused the cause of the wretched, but purely from an intellectual platform. I never knew you lived like this.”
François studied him piercingly, but did not answer. Then, after a moment, he said: “There is no reality, or dream, without knowledge.”
Arsène protested when he was led towards the pallet, which he regarded with open disfavor. He privately thought the gutter less undesirable than this. But François forced him down upon it, and threw the odorous rags over his legs. “Rest,” he said. “Tomorrow is another day.”
“But where will you sleep, mon ami?”
“On the hearth. I have slept in worse places.”
He laid his old emaciated body on the stones before the fire. The young man watched him from the straw pallet. His wounds no longer pained him. He was conscious of drowsiness and great weariness.
“But you have also slept in better,” he murmured.
François did not reply. He curled himself towards the fire, and closed his eyes.
Arsène closed his eyes, also. He heard the dripping and the wind of the renewed storm outside. But he could not sleep for a while. The night’s events rose up vividly before him. He did not like to kill, not from any squeamishness, but because murder was a violation of human dignity. The faces of the two men he had killed that night painted themselves on his closed eyelids. One had been young and very ardent, and full of laughter. He had been very adventurous, and Arsène doubted his passionate adherence to the Cardinal. He sighed. He had plunged his sword deeply into the youth’s side, and the youth had fallen, still faintly smiling, and had died only with a regretful moan for the ending of adventure. The older man had been fanatical, full of fierceness and hatred, and had tried to kill Arsène out of some mystical compulsion. Arsène did not regret killing him. Such men were dangerous.
Still sighing for the youth, he fell asleep, into a maze of troubled and uneasy dreams. Toward dawn, the dreams had become nightmares, filled with pain and fever.
CHAPTER III
One of the dreams of Arsène was not really a dream, but a recollection, strangely mingled, at the last, with nightmare.
It seemed to him that he was a child again, and that he was standing before an enormous rosebush, covered with large dark-red roses. He must have been very young, for he was only vaguely conscious of intense white sunlight, grass, arbors, a swan-filled pool, rose walks and great trees. Somewhere, there was a white old wall, the back of his father’s house. Even in the dream, now, he felt a deep pang of sadness and nostalgia. He felt the silence, as he had not felt it as a child, and saw the long blue shadows of the trees, and heard the thin sweet callings of birds. He did not know why the rosebush, with its large red flowers, fascinated him so. It was not that he liked these particular roses, for their darkness and secretive thickness of petal revolted him. Moreover, they had no scent, and he had always had a peculiar love for perfumes.
It was very hot, in that country garden, and the sun was too whitely brilliant. It burned on his head and shoulders. But for some reason, he did not return to the purple cool of the house. He had seen his young mother weeping that morning. He could not bear to see her in tears, so he had run out here, and remained, though his nurse had called him several times. He felt sullen and full of inexplicable hatred.
He heard the murmuring of voices, and glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, to the left, there was a long yew walk, and the voices came from the passageway. One of the speakers, he knew, was his father. The other was both strange and a stranger. Arsène felt his childish rage and aversion rising at the thought of that stout and elegant man, Monsieur the Archbishop of Paris. His black garments, the white ruffles at his neck and wrist, his round red face with its syrupy wet sly smile, and his little fiery blue eyes, were all repulsive to the child. The archbishop had patted him on the head only an hour ago, had studied him shrewdly, had shaken his head with a fond but sorrowful sigh. “Ah, sad, sad,” he had muttered. “But not too late, Monsieur le Marquis du Vaubon.” He rolled the title unctuously on his tongue, and with a certain significance.
“I trust not,” Arsène’s father had replied, with a furtive and uneasy smile on his dark, fox-like face. He was a nervous and very thin man, restless, capricious and distrustful. He did not look directly at Arsène when he spoke. But he rarely looked directly at anyone with his glittering, ball-like black eyes. His nervousness manifested itself in his almost constant dry sniffing, his jerking head, his crooked meaningless smile, his manner of rubbing his right ear with one sallow forefinger, his twitching shoulders, and his rapid, disjointed walk. He dressed with almost too fastidious an elegance, but his legs were stringy, with knobbed knees, and his wrists were bony. There was a febrile quality about him, a certain incoherence of attitude, which aroused suspicion in others. His voice was high, and sometimes broke ignominiously, his features were long and unprepossessing, with a thin wide mouth and receding chin. His tempers were unpredictable, hysterical and womanish, and so he was both feared and despised by his household. When he laughed, his laughter had a note of shrill hysteria in it, and a meaninglessness. It was also very unexpected, and was aroused by the most inexplicable things which did not cause laughter in others. Moreover, he was abnormally suspicious. He suspected everyone of falseness, hypocrisy, knavery, plottings and meannesses, or, in the matter of servants, of thievery and slyness. He suspected his young wife less than he suspected anyone else, but even she, poor pretty creature, was not exempt from his accusations at times.
Even when he was very young, Arsène knew that his father lived in a chronic condition of universal hatred and terror and suspicion. Because of this, he had few visitors. The family was immured behind the white walls. Sometimes, Armand went to Paris, secretly, but always alone. His wife, Sabina, never accompanied him, though Arsène knew she was Paris-born. Arsène wondered, as a child, what caused his father’s constant and active fear. Later, he knew that some were born this way, and lived their lives like rats watching, glittering-eyed, from a hole. From the first, he smiled at his father, and despised him for his causeless terror. He hated his elegance, his simpering mannerisms, his capricious and violent tempers, so feminine in their unreason, his sickly sentimentality which rose from his self-pity and self-adoration. Even when he was hardly more than a babe, Arsène knew that his father felt himself a victim of all mankind, a martyr both to imagined physical delicacy and the viciousness and plottings of other men. Every man was either a rascal or a fool, and he, Armand, had to be eternally on his guard lest he be betrayed. Arsène could not recall that he had ever shown true kindness or compassion to a single soul, except his wife, and even then it was tempered with watchful falseness and amorous exigencies.
Undeceived by his father, and never forbearing to show his childish aversion on every occasion, though tempering this aversion with the respect of a child for its sire, Arsène was yet his father’s favorite, and his great pet. Perhaps it was because in coloring and in a certain vehemence of manner on occasion, the child resembled him. For his younger son, Louis, who was fair, blue-eyed and nervously silent, like his mother, he had only indifference, and a sharp irascibility. It was Armand’s opinion that Louis lacked spirit and fire, two attributes which he considered he, himself, possessed in large quantity. Arsène’s fits of temper and violence pleased him, assured him that the child was of a valorous and aristocratic temper. And, like many men of his kidney, Armand was given to capricious spasms of demonstrative affection, when
in less nervous moods. Louis and his mother, Sabina, shrank from them with uncontrollable fear and timidity, whenever they were infrequently offered, but Arsène, who was less sensitive of temperament, and possessed, even in childhood, by a certain cynicism, endured them with composure. This further endeared him to his father, who showed his maudlin gratitude by spoiling and lavish gifts. As a result of copious neglect of discipline, Arsène developed his naturally haughty, selfish and overbearing faults to a prodigious degree, and with them, his increasing contempt for his father. Had he not also possessed a strange sense of justice, a humorous disposition, an odd independence and cold logic of mind, he would have become insufferable, and one of those pampered young wretches who make life untenable for more gentle folk.
He had only a vague suspicion of the meaning of the presence of the Archbishop de Paris this morning, in this Huguenot household. He had heard his mother cry only last night, on one of the rare occasions of her revolt against his father: “I shall not have the monster in this house of my father’s, my father who died at La Rochelle! I shall not have his memory defamed, or his ghost uneasy in its grave!”
“You forget, Madame, that I am your husband,” Armand had replied coldly, yet with the ominous note of hysteria in his voice which never failed to cow the gentle Sabina. “You forget that men have reasons for what they do, which women cannot comprehend.”
“I comprehend that you are ambitious,” Sabina answered, with stern tears.
Armand had been silent a moment, and she thought he would say nothing, in contemptuous indifference to her. And then all at once he had burst out into incoherent cries, and had gestured violently.
“Madame, have you thought how much longer I can endure life in your accursed Gascony, among your peasants?”
Then Arsène had seen terror in his mother’s large blue eyes. She had risen, putting her hand to her cheek, as though consumed with incredulous fright. But her whisper had been low, unbelieving: