Arsène flushed darkly. His thoughts were all disordered and angry. He said thickly: “But that does not eliminate the fact that you are the Comte de Vitry.” And felt an inexplicable shame which only further angered him.
Paul turned aside as if he could not endure the sight of his friend.
“What can finally be the fate of a world which persists in its silly little vanities, its illusions of birth and position, of nobility and privilege? Its isolation from its fellows, all built on falseness, pride and stupidity?”
Arsène, biting his lip, and still darkly flushed, said nothing.
Paul continued: “Grandjean did not tell me this in order to set aside my desire. He believed that Cecile might look favorably upon me. He wished me to know that he came of a strong and decent family, that Cecile might, in the light of this, be no low bride for me.” He smiled drearily. “It appears that our Grandjean, himself, is not guiltless of pride.”
“You have forgotten the priest!” said Arsène, stung with overwhelming and obscure emotions, in which the desire to taunt his friend, and his own fiery jealousy, had no small portion.
Paul turned to him, with increasing sternness. “I did not forget the priest. I remembered his crime. But it might interest you to know that he was the bishop of that diocese, and the bastard son of the Duc d’Ormond.”
“The Duc d’Ormond!” exclaimed Arsène, before he could restrain himself. He colored more than ever.
A bitter smile appeared on Paul’s lips, and he said nothing.
Arsène clenched his fists. His mind was whirling. He dared not confess to himself the shameful thoughts that were stirring in him.
Then Paul seemed to lose control of himself. He whirled upon his friend, and his face was alive with his scorn and passion, and his eyes were glittering.
“Let us be done with pretenses, Arsène! Let us speak frankly, as men, and not fools or mountebanks! I have seen what there was to be seen, in the cottage of my steward. This girl loves you, and you love her. Is that not true?”
Arsène did not answer. He averted his head.
“Loving this girl, you married Mademoiselle de Tremblant. I confess that I, myself, could see no way of withdrawal from that marriage, with honor, for a man like you. Had I been in the same position, I might have been more ruthless. You are a bravo, with attitudes, and I am perhaps a sentimentalist.”
He waited, but Arsène did not speak. Paul then said, more temperately: “What will you do now?”
Arsène stirred, and asked brutally: “What would you have me do? Seduce this girl?”
Paul suddenly put his hands on his shoulders and spoke earnestly:
“This is a foul and dreadful world. What light lives in it is the light of love. You are going to La Rochelle. Take Cecile with you. For, in some mysterious way, I know that you shall not return to Paris again. When you leave this city, you leave it forever. Are you to die in La Rochelle? I do not know. But it will be farewell.”
A cold thrill of superstitious premonition passed over Arsène.
“Consider,” said Paul. “This is to be no mere skirmish. Those who fight for La Rochelle will be forever proscribed in France, if we are defeated. You will be compelled to flee —all of us will be hunted to the death. There will be no mercy. If we are defeated. And something most solemn tells me that we shall be defeated. Is that the end of the growing struggle for Protestant freedom and liberal dreams in France? I do not think so. A dream once dreamt is a dream remembered in the hearts of men. But the fulfillment may not come for many years. In the meantime, we who participated in this struggle are lost. It is exile or death for us.
“Therefore, I urge you to forget everything else, and seize happiness while you may. Why do I urge this upon you? Because you are my friend; because I love you. Because I love Cecile.”
Arsène sat down slowly in his chair. He covered his face with his hands, and said, in a muffled voice: “You would have me take this girl into such a precarious and dangerous future?”
“A moment’s happiness is better than a lifetime of unhappy security,” said Paul, with moving eagerness. “And, who knows, you may find peace at last, together, in exile.”
Arsène looked up. Paul was smiling; his gray eyes were moist and shining with tenderness, renunciation and compassion.
“In a few days, come to Chantilly. I shall be there. Arsène, you will come?”
“I will come,” answered the young man. And he breathed deeply. After a moment his dark face was suffused with joy and exhilaration.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
But the mood passed, after Arsène had bidden farewell to his friend. Reality inexorably invaded his thoughts, as he remembered Paul’s solemn words of prophecy. Arsène had never given much reflection to the possibility that doom might lower over him. He had assaulted the fortresses of danger in moods of exaltation, vigor and joy in the act of combat. If he had been motivated by anything, it had been personal hatred or disgust or the sheer pleasure in opposition. When others had prophesied that he was inserting his neck in the hangman’s noose, he had laughed, not with bravado, but with humorous incredulity. Such a possibility could never occur to the ebullient Arsène de Richepin, who had no real personal enemies, and whose wit, charm and audacity caused smiles of welcome and appreciation to appear on the faces of even remote acquaintances and potential enemies. He had mouthed such words as “danger,” “ruin” and “death,” but never for a lucid instant had he truly connected them with himself. The darling of his father and the Court was removed from such uncomfortable and disagreeable contingencies.
Part of the confusion which had assaulted him after his wound and his illness was due to the struggle between his inner conviction of his natural invulnerability, and reality, and the realization that for the first time he had been catapulted into the tempestuous world of adult men and adult problems. He had clung to boyhood in the manner of all men who naturally hate responsibility and the necessity to think. Consequently he had played at all things. In that, in a measure, had been the secret of his invulnerability, though he did not know this. Serious men of consequence had simply not taken his disaffections with any solemnity. They had not believed that one such as Arsène de Richepin could have the true sternness and fortitude to engage in anything of a formidable nature. And deep in his reckless and vehement heart, Arsène had agreed with them.
But now, to his secret dismay, Arsène discovered that he stood in the raw and blinding lightning of a dangerous country, into which he had strayed out of sheer light-heartedness and restless exuberance. Until Paul had spoken to him the night before, in those words of doom and prophecy, he had still felt himself invulnerable, a player in an exciting melodrama. But now he saw death, exile or ruin before him, in ruthless and violent colors. His father had spoken of them to him, on innumerable occasions, but he had listened impatiently, as to the drivelings of senility and stupidity, loftily declaiming that such contingencies could never induce him to turn back. Now, in horror, he saw that Arsène de Richepin was not invulnerable.
It was not that he was afraid. But all his life he had revolted from anything disagreeable, or final. He was confronted by both.
He went to his bed-chamber and locked the door, and sat and thought fully and deeply for the first time in his life. It was a painful process. He blinked as the inexorable light dawned blindingly before him. He was dismayed at the realization that he could not withdraw. All noble reflections vanished, as they always do in the final awakening of a man to maturity. Only grim resolve and duty remained. He could not withdraw because, in his twenty-eighth year, he had at last become a man. He had broken through the bright and vari-colored brittle crust of delusion, and stood at last on the black and iron ground of reality. It was a dreary awakening, and the wind was chill. His life of gaiety and irresponsibility was forever behind him. He had often dallied with the thought of returning. Now he knew he could never return.
He stood up. He looked about him. Everything had changed, because he ha
d changed. He sat down at his commode and made a long list of the things he must do before leaving Paris. He wrote a letter to his father, and it was a moving and simple one, not sentimental. It was full of consolation and gentleness. He wrote a letter to Clarisse. Beginning this letter, he started. He had actually forgotten the existence of his young and bewitching wife! Now he wrote her passionately, imploring her forgiveness, leaving to her the greater part of his riches and his treasures.
Now he felt a strange emotion as he suddenly remembered Louis. His hatred was gone. He felt nothing but compassion. He implored Louis’ forgiveness for any heartlessness or mockery or callousness he had displayed. He left their father in his brother’s care.
When he had done, he felt like a man who is about to embark upon a journey from which he will never return, or like one who is stricken by a fatal illness. He was a little sick. He discovered that he was shaking. But his courage and determination were like a rock in him. He locked the letters in his commode, and held the key in his hand for a long and motionless time.
He heard a timid knock on the door of the chamber, and he opened the door. Clarisse, dazzling attired, smiled at him with uncertainty. He drew her within the chamber and embraced her with much sad ardor and sincerity. She clung to him, smiling through grateful tears. Then he put her from him, but held her hands tightly.
“My love,” he said, gravely, gazing down into those large blue eyes which regarded him adoringly, “I shall soon be compelled to go upon a journey. In my commode yonder are certain papers. Three weeks after my departure, you will open that commode and give those letters to those to whom they are addressed.”
Terror blanched her pretty face. She flung herself into his arms and clung to him for all his gentle efforts to disengage himself.
“No!” she cried. “You must not go, Arsène! Or, if you go, you must take me with you!”
He could not help smiling drearily to himself at these words. The frivolous and selfish Clarisse, absorbed only in her toilettes and silly artificial intrigues and fripperies, in the embattled La Rochelle, with its shadow of death and destruction! Yet, when he looked down into her face, he was truly startled. For he saw there self-abnegation, love and stern resolution. She did not know where he was going, but her loving heart warned her that he would not return.
He was freshly dismayed. He had not at any time believed that she loved him, or was capable of love. It had been a betrothal of convenience on her part, a betrothal begun in lust on his. Both of them had been superficial dancers and pleasure-lovers, contemplating marriage with light indifference, knowing themselves strangers. But intense and boundless love had had nothing to do with it. Arsène was profoundly moved, but also exasperated. This girl must not love him, who did not love her! It was no part of his plan that she love him. She was interfering, shaking his heart when he could least endure it. From his inherent egotism and impatience rose his vehement denial and annoyance.
Yet, he could not summon his old ruthlessness, which had served him well when dealing with irritating and unexpected contingencies. He could feel sorrow, as well as exasperation.
He drew her again into his arms, faintly wondering why he felt no response but sadness. He spoke soothingly:
“These letters of which I speak, my dearest, are only certain directions. I cannot take you with me, for you have already evinced an unflattering opinion of our estates.”
He thought to distract her with this implied lie, but she answered eagerly: “Ah, but I have changed, Arsène! No matter the spot, or its dreariness, it will be delightful if only I am with you!”
He was incredulous. He took her face in his hands and stared down piercingly into her eyes. But their luminous and swimming light at length convinced him, much to his wretchedness. When, in their brief and turbulent married life, so ludicrous and disastrous, had love come to this shallow-hearted and pretty child? God knew that he had done nothing to arouse it!
How he had complicated his life! Again, he felt resentment and exasperation, but now, for the first time in his selfish existence, these were directed against himself. Paul had spoken contemptuously of “a man, with honor,” but now he realized that he ought to have withdrawn from this marriage before it had taken place. He had lacked ruthlessness, when ruthlessness would have been justice. He despised himself.
He spoke urgently: “Clarisse, believe me when I tell you it is impossible to take you. You must be patient. I leave you as mistress of this house, and I leave you the care of my father. Surely you must have perceived how distrait he is, since our return, and how a certain mysterious malaise has overtaken him. Would you willingly desert him, you who are now his daughter? I leave you this responsibility. Am I to be disappointed in you?”
He spoke with inspired artfulness. He had appealed to this girl’s own egotism and desire for authority and importance. The tears dried in her eyes. She listened earnestly. Then she said with much formality: “You will need never reproach me again, Monsieur, with neglecting my duties as a wife.”
She said this, with such pretty dignity, smoothing her disheveled gown and touching her disordered flaxen curls. She looked straightly in his eyes, and lifted her head. He admired her, much touched. He lifted her hand to his lips, and she endured this with wifely majesty.
“Too,” she continued, “my poor sister, Marguerite, is ill. She was to have left for the convent of our aunt, the abbess, but now the journey is indefinitely delayed. My mother is distracted. She has need of my comfort.”
Arsène was saddened at this news of Marguerite, but relieved that his own problem was solved. He embraced his wife again, an act she suffered without her previous distraught passion, but only with that new and imperious dignity.
He gave her the keys of the commode, assured that she would not trespass upon his secrets until the prescribed period had passed. She held the keys in her hand, with a cool expression, and listened intently to his final instructions. When she left him, he looked after her, smiling sadly to himself. Would he ever see this lovely child again? He could not know. He felt regret, as one always feels regret at this last appearance of anything that is gracious and desirable.
He remembered that he had one last commission, and it annoyed him. But he had given his word. Dressing himself as inconspicuously as possible, he left on foot for the Rue du Vieux-Columbier, in which obscure and miserable quarter the Abbé Mourion lived.
The warm sun lay on the dark and red chaotic roofs of Paris. The Seine glittered in blue and distracting brilliance. As he made his way through progressively meaner streets, filled with the stench of the cobbled gutters and alleys, Arsène could partially forget the wretchedness and noise which increasingly surrounded him, and feel a mournful regret that he was soon to leave this congested and turbulent city, and that he might never return to it. In his mind, he was already an exile. He stepped in putrid muck and filth; he was jostled by impudent mendicants, beggars, peddlers and vagabonds. He side-stepped brawling, half-naked children, carts, gossiping women, the edges of market-places, and he found all this infinitely lovable and nostalgic. Even when a woman hurled the contents of an unmentionable receptacle through a leaning upper window into the gutter below, and they splashed foully not five paces ahead of him, he could laugh a little, as he paused. The woman, hearing that laughter, peered down impudently at him, and grinned. She was a comely, if a dirty wench, with wild black curls and dancing black eyes. She shouted some indecency down at him, but with high good-humor, and he replied in kind, to her delighted and pretended horror.
For the first time in his life, he felt a whole-hearted brotherhood for these anonymous and teeming masses of humanity. They were his own; he was of them. He loved them, knowing he might never see them again.
The miasma of stench and heat and dust enfolded him. He passed through narrow alleys, whose opposite walls he could touch with both hands. He stumbled in gutters, running with foul water, and crowded with filthy children. He saw the dull blank faces of half-starved women staring a
t him blindly from thresholds and little windows. Now there was a feeling of evil in the sickening air, a destitution and hopelessness, of hidden violence, crime, hunger and bestiality. It was no longer amusing. Under his cloak, his hand held itself close to his sword. He could hardly breathe. He drew in his nostrils, and inhaled as little as possible, for the stench was becoming overpowering. Now he was conscious of hidden and wicked eyes, in which there was no humanity left, and only awareness of ferocity, pain and starvation. The fog of oppression and hopelessness closed more deeply about him. There was a spiritual roaring in the atmosphere, unheard by indifferent ears, but clearly heard by Arsène. His spine began to prickle. He glanced about him warily.
The alleys became more littered with refuse. The children here no longer played. They sat like grimy animals in the gutters, fishing hopelessly and mechanically in the trickles of black water for morsels of food. When one found such a morsel, his companions, electrified, fell upon him with hoarse screams of savage hunger, and tried to wrest it from him. They rolled together in the unspeakable filth. Arsène shuddered. He turned away his eyes. His heart was beating in a suffocating manner.
The Abbé Mourion lived in one of the worst of such quarters. Arsène had difficulty in finding his house, which he had never entered. He had to question, to shout, at the sullen faces which peered at him, before one man pointed silently to a mean little house set in a starving garden. When he approached this house, he was alarmed to discover that nearly a score of wretched, sore-laden and half-naked men was following him, their dirty faces lowering, their red-rimmed eyes glittering. There was something ominous in their silent pertinency, their closing-in about him. About him were the leaning and crowded walls, the gutters, the stench and the heat. He looked at the eyes approaching him, and they were not the eyes of human beings, but the eyes of ferocious animals, wary, hating, suspicious and murderous. Though he was so shabbily dressed, his manner, his walk, his glance, had marked him.