They looked at each other in a momentous silence. Then Arsène said:
“Yes, it must have been poor Marguerite! Ah, then, he was happy once. He loved, and was loved! We must remember that, for our own consolation.”
CHAPTER XLIX
They continued their journey with all dispatch. Arsène rode as one possessed, as if attempting to flee from the sorrows and anxieties of the life that lay behind him. He paused long enough, the next day, to write a letter to Clarisse, full of affection, regret and grief, and imploring her to love and cherish their child with all her heart, forgetting the desertion of her husband, and remembering him with all charity. “Some day, perhaps, we shall meet again,” he wrote, “and I shall have the joy of embracing my little one.”
His heart was heavy, but he allowed himself little time in which to contemplate or regret. All his apprehension, now, was centered in the young Cecile, who never complained, nor sighed with weariness, despite her white face and the disability she must still have felt because of her recent dangerous illness. Little passed between them but silent and eloquent smiles, a touch of the hand, a courageous flash of the eye, but understanding was there and a passionate and undeviating love. Arsène marvelled at the steadfastness of this young female heart, that could face coming danger, and even death, with the single-minded fortitude of a noble man. It is the women who are the true fanatics, the truly dedicated, he would think. They lacked the prudence of the more realistic sex. They could give themselves up to martyrdom with joy and simplicity. Men who possessed this joy and simplicity had, in themselves, something of the essentially feminine nature, and, something of the hysteria and transports inherent in that nature. No man, he understood, approached martyrdom and immolation with passion and faith unless there was a femaleness in him. The complete man tended more to conservative battles and compromise.
He admitted that he, himself, did not possess this tender but invulnerable touch of femaleness, that only a supreme act of will, battling with caution and prudence, enabled him to go forward resolutely. Even in his resolution lingered doubts and hesitancies, and an enervating weariness. Finally, with some pride, he came to the conclusion that those who truly deserved the accolades were not the fanatics and the heroes, but the realists who faced death and danger without illusion, and only by the power of will and reason. They rode forward in a cold and bitter light, hearing no orisons, and harkening only to the chill and steely voice of a comfortless but necessary duty.
“Once,” the Abbé Mourion had said to him, “I tormented myself in conjecturing whether I loved God enough. Now I only torment myself with the conjecture whether I love men enough.”
In those words, to Arsène, was the very essence of true Protestantism. He knew that he had far to go, to awaken in himself a complete love for his fellows. Hampered by the traditions, hauteurs and contempts of his caste, the struggle was monumental. But he was cheered that he had at last discerned the shining shore of the far distance. Nor was he deluded that to love men it was necessary to idealize them, and believe that they were fair and noble creatures. An understanding of their rapacity, stupidity and cruelty did not, in the real lover of mankind, dim his love. It might arouse his anger, but it also aroused his pity, quickened his resolution to awaken other men to a knowledge of every man’s responsibility to his fellows.
Of all this, he could make only Cecile understand. His companions were impelled only by hatred of the religion which would limit their intelligence and their personal liberty, and would reduce them to mental serfs. The Marquis, with only dim perceptions of his own father’s passionate dedication, and vaguely tormented by conscience, accompanied his son from love and an inability to live without him.
Sometimes Arsène was depressed by all this. But slowly he realized that, in the beginning, it was only necessary that the leader understand. The followers trailed him blindly, listening to his leading footfalls. But at last the end would be accomplished, and the blind would see to what glory they had followed him.
They dared waste not even an hour, for they must not only overtake the Cardinal, travelling on the main road in slow pomp and circumstance, surrounded by banners and martial music, but must pass him and reach La Rochelle before he arrived there. They knew that at every town the Cardinal must wait impatiently for news of the vacillating King, to learn whether or not that personage had decided to follow. Half-way to La Rochelle, the welcome news arrived that Louis had finally determined to follow the Cardinal, jealous of any triumph which might come alone to that implacable man. He could not endure that the Cardinal accomplish the fall of La Rochelle, while he, Louis, lurked sulkily in Paris. So, the messenger came to Richelieu that he was to wait at Tours for him. The Cardinal, enraged and disappointed, fumed in silence, expressed his joy in public. He hoped that Madame would accompany the monarch, in his luxurious train, for then the ardors of the journey, and the campaign would be much alleviated.
That fool, he thought, referring to his King, is making of this campaign a holiday, a festival, a Roman triumph, travelling in splendor and music, and excitement, setting up his Court in the byways and the highways, noisy with revelry. He knew that every bravo and adventurer accompanied the King, and also a number of avaricious and dangerous priests.
Now the Cardinal frowned with real anxiety and anger. He thought of the Spanish Armada, filled with its thousands of priests and all manner of torture implements, attempting its famous invasion of England. God, or the devil, had intervened, and priests and their hellish implements had disappeared in the gray and boiling waters of the Channel. What if the deity had not intervened so advantageously? What frightful things might not have taken place in England, then! Moreover, the face of the world would have been changed. The Cardinal did not delude himself that the change would have been salubrious.
He thought of the Rochellais, and he grimly resolved that the priests would not have their way among the Huguenots. A Frenchman, first and always, he thought with impatient anger and sadness of the Frenchmen beseiged at La Rochelle. He must conquer them, for the sake of France. But, for the sake of France, he must reconcile them and make them understand that their duty lay in the attainment of a complete unity in France, against the threat of the Habsburgs, and Spain. Frenchmen, against all the world, and let the priests be hanged!
He had planned this campaign at the instigation and seductions of Madame, Anne of Austria. But now he went forward upon it with the sole purpose of welding Frenchmen, Catholic and Protestant alike, in a devotion to France alone. There were no limits to the glories and the powers of France if all Frenchmen served her with single-hearted love and determination. There must be no memory of a new civil war, of victory obtained by cruelty and torture. Such memories destroyed a nation.
While he waited, idly and angrily, at Tours, the entourage of Arsène de Richepin passed him on a distant and obscure road, hardly a cattle-pass, at midnight. By dawn, Arsène and his companions were leagues away. The Cardinal lying sleepless in his bed, thought he heard the far dim thunder of hoofs, but he finally decided it was only the wind. He was filled with his musings: Why could it not be possible for men, of one blood, to live in harmony though bedevilled by different creeds? And, carrying this further, why was it not possible for men of different races, as well as creeds, to live in peace together, owing a single devotion to one ideal, one political philosophy? Individuality was necessary to create a whole man. But to the common good all men should be dedicated, individuals though they were.
It is not possible, thought the Cardinal. But a strange prescience urged him that it was possible, and that, perhaps, some day, a great nation of men might live in harmony and peace together, dedicated to common good and common humanity, though composed individually of differing creeds and races. Was this not the essence of true Christianity? Without this essence, the world would be lost in a holocaust of wars and ruin.
CHAPTER L
The flight to La Rochelle was of necessity most furtive and secret. The highways must
be avoided, travelled only fleetingly at night, and then with drawn pistols. Then it was the gloomiest, as they fled like muffled shadows under the moon or the ragged black clouds, clinging to the nebulous shapes of the trees, watchful alike of Cardinal and highwaymen. Some travelled ahead on a dangerous stretch, then whistling softly and shrilly, heartened their companions to come on. They rode through the most desolate country, wild with ravine and rock, starved, blasted and blackened under spectral moons that etched strange sharp shadows on barren cliffs, and stretched lean pale fingers over empty plain, or glistened wanly on marshland threaded with writhing lines of silver. They heard, as they rode, the dolorous thunder of heavy wind in the dark trees, felt the uneasy breath of the ponderous and giant earth. They wrapped their cloaks closely about them, and shivered, sensing their insignificance in the enormous face of nature.
These hours were the worst. They dared not sing to lift their spirits, nor were they able to while away the black hours with jests or laughter, for fear of enemy ears. Like phantoms, like exiles, they drifted by little hamlets and villages, seeing the night fires, the squat chimneys, blooming like agitated red towers against the darkening purple skies, seeing the dark steeples and towers outlined with the first stars, or the last, hearing the chiming of pious bells sweet against the rising fragrance of wood and harvest-land and vineyards, or the distant call of a child and the laughter of a woman, frail and musical in the evening. Often, crouched in a thicket, they saw the peasant girls bringing in the cattle, heard the lowing of the beasts and the echoing tinkle of their bells and the munching of their jaws, and sometimes the joyous bark of rollicking dogs. They heard the Angelus over fields like beaten and serried gold, and saw how the peasants humbly bent their heads and clasped their hands, their figures heavy and dim and earthy against the burning sunsets. They watched the dawns rise like an army with blue and scarlet banners over the formless horizon of the night, heralding the approach of the sun, which, like a young warrior carrying a shield of blazing gold, stepped on the highest hill with a waking shout. They passed these lovely and simple and majestic things, feeling their exile, feeling their hearts grow heavier and sadder, knowing that they had no part in all this, might never again have part. Even the rivers beside which they paused, to lave weary eyes and sick pale faces, seemed to be alien rivers in an alien land. This was France, but they felt no longer like Frenchmen, and many were the secret tears hastily wiped away unseen on the back of trembling hands. They felt in themselves the separation of all that was flesh of their hearts and substance of their souls. They were like souls forced violently from their bodies and wandering disconsolately over the earth they had so greatly loved, shut away forever from the warmth of loving and living and the voices of kinfolk. Long before they had indeed become exiles, their spirits had felt the crushing weight of exilehood, beyond which there is no greater agony.
Many there were like Cecile, accepting the exile with stern fortitude, but feeling that this exile was in itself a sacrifice to greater things. There were times that Arsène felt this also, but many more times when his anguish of mind seemed more than he could endure.
He rode through the countryside at sunset, all through the night, until the passionate dawns made further travel too dangerous, and he looked about him and his heart said to him with a solemn conviction which he could not deny: I shall not pass this way again. It is done with me, and I am done with it. Then his sorrow became like a sword in his breast and he longed to lie down in the soil of France and never rise again. All his sleeping love for his native land rose up in him, and he looked about him with wild and streaming eyes, and sometimes thought that nothing in heaven or earth or hell should dare come between the heart of a man and his country. A man could lose all else, even his soul, but so long as his feet stood upon his native earth and his eyes dwelt on familiar and beloved things, his fortitude could not be shaken, his spirit never crushed.
He thought to himself that he could not speak of these things, and then suffering became endurable. The shapes of his companions became unreal in the moon-steeped darkness, and they had no faces, no forms, no blood and no flesh, not even Cecile. And it would seem to him that he was accompanied by ghosts riding thinly by his side over the rim of the earth, out into the everlasting night of exile and homelessness. How could he know that so many thought these things also, and that to them, he, too, was a ghost?
Adventure was no new thing to him, and he had always loved it. But it was a different thing, this real exile, to night adventures that led inevitably in the morning to a warm sweet bed within familiar and beloved walls, and the sound of kinsmen. Adventure of that kind was a play, a spectacle, the sport of young men, heedless and gay. But this was the hard dark road travelled by grim men, without hope, without consolation. And Arsène found the process of maturity a painful one, and sometimes he revolted with passionate despair, and felt himself surrounded by dour and menacing strangers.
He grew to hate the night, which once he had loved. Now it took on itself the substance of all his anguish, his desolation, and his abandonment. Never had he known that the night could be so long, so silent, so empty, and so cold! And when the morning came, and they hid in thickets, woods and copses, and in ravines, and in caves, he would fling himself unspeaking upon the earth and give himself up to oblivion.
But there was one morning that he never forgot as long as he lived, for it was the kind of morning which comes once in a lifetime to all men, when things became lucid and filled with a strange and solemn light.
The night had been unusually cold and long. After midnight, a cold rain, accompanied by icy lightning and tearing wind, made the torments of the travellers unendurable. Only the beat of their horses’ hoofs on the dusty or stony paths could be heard above the sound of the wind and the roaring of the wild trees. They had had to seek shelter in a lonely inn, and spent the rest of the night in the dirty drinking room, where the host yawned and eyed them with apathy. The man built a fire for them. Its red and wavering light glimmered over their haggard faces and sunken eyes, their disordered dress, their streaming cloaks and sodden hats. The wine was abominable, but its fiery warmth penetrated their numbed bodies at last. They ate the tough rabbits and fowl the host set before them, and broke the dry stale bread. Now they were slowly becoming men again, and could look at each other with faint smiles. The Marquis, who found the intimate inconveniences of the travel the most insupportable, had persuaded the inn-keeper to heat water for him, and, behind the high back of a settle he had taken off his crumpled clothing and was luxuriously bathing. Once or twice he lifted up his voice and bewailed the condition of his hands, and a certain other portion of his body much in contact with the saddle, and did this in such rich and lusty language that the others burst into laughter, and even Cecile joined in the general merriment. But to Arsène, his father’s uncomplaining endurance over the miseries of the flight seemed the most moving and saddest thing of all.
To what have I brought him? he asked himself, with hatred. He was inspired not even by the spurious gallantry and impulsiveness which animated myself. He had not even the consolation of a woman, as I have. He is an old man to whom music and candlelight and a soft bed must be more than any firing of the heart. Thinking this, he said aloud, his voice grating and hoarse and strange against the laughter which still rang through the room:
“My father, you ought not to have come with me!”
The others became suddenly silent, and their faces turned on Arsène darkly and alertly, for they had heard a breaking sound in his voice. Cecile paled; she reached out to touch Arsène’s hand, but, with a distraught gesture, he repudiated her, and addressed himself to the settle above which, like a decapitated head, the staring face of the Marquis could be seen. How old and tired was that wizened and narrow countenance, and how exhausted those red-rimmed eyes! Arsène did not see the sudden gleam in the latter.
He repeated: “You ought not to have come with me!”
The Marquis continued to stare at his s
on, and they saw no one else but each other. Then the Marquis said: “So, you would deprive me of the illusion that I have become significant?”
There was an ominous silence in the room, in spite of the lightness of the Marquis’ tones. Arsène rose abruptly. He looked at the fire, at the faces of his companions, and his own face worked. He struck his hands together. Now he could hardly control himself.
“What is all this to you?” he cried out, and his voice broke even mote.
“In truth,” replied the Marquis, “it has taught me one thing: the ineffable luxury of a bath and clean towels.”
He then emerged from behind the settle, the towel wrapped about his middle. His body showed every rib, every sunken bone. It was the body of an old man. The face that confronted Arsène was an old man’s wrinkled face, unshaven and haggard, webbed with years. No one smiled at this apparition, grotesque, shrunken and creased though it was. There was a sudden dignity about the Marquis now, such as he had never possessed in the days of richest velvet and finest lace and perfume. Clad only in his nakedness, with the towel as a mere concession to Cecile, he stood before Arsène with a strange and unfamiliar majesty, and he spoke only to him:
“Is it to yourself you speak, my son, or to me?”
Arsène’s pale lips parted in his unshaven beard, then closed again.
“If it is to me,” continued the Marquis, “then you have offered me an insult. If it is to yourself, then I can only despair.”
Cecile stood up, disheveled and white as death, her wet hair streaming about her face, her colorless lips trembling and proud. She stretched out her hand to Arsène, and said with stern imploring: “Come with me.”
Arsène did not move. He looked at the others, who sat like streaming and haggard statues, then at his father, and finally at Cecile. Her eyes, sunken and feverish with exhaustion though they were, yet sparkled with an intense blue light. The power of her soul was stronger than his own rebellion and despair. Moreover, something was cracking within him, and he felt the weight of weeping in his chest. He took her hand, and, like a blind child, she led him out of the inn.