“He sleeps,” said the abbé, softly. “He is young. He can still sleep.”
Henri spoke, and his voice was patronizing, as though he felt indulgence for the simplicity of his uncle: “Why should he not sleep? He has been very ill, and is now recovering. What an extraordinary thing this is! I was despairing of any good thing coming to us, until Monsieur de Richepin entered this house so strangely. Now, it is a light in the darkness.”
“I do not understand, Henri,” said the abbé, anxiously, returning to his stool. “Of what significance is it, this coming, to us?”
Henri was silent a moment, then spoke with embarrassed impatience: “Surely he cannot be ungrateful!” He paused, then continued with a kind of anger in his impatience: “Only the powerful can patronize the arts. I have my hopes—”
The abbé was silent a moment, then in a tone of ashamed but deep distress, he said: “Henri, you have not considered annoying him?” He stopped abruptly, as though his shame had become too intense for speech.
Henri burst out, with wild and effeminate vehemence: “Why not? Do you think I can be content forever with this miserable existence of ours, this degradation of mind and body? My uncle, if you are content, I am not. I would rather die than to live out my life like this! If you believe I must be content, why did you teach me? Why did you open my eyes? Why did you inspire me?”
The abbé interrupted in a trembling voice: “I gave you what I could, Henri, so that you might be wise, and understanding, and humble before God. Wisdom is its own glory. Must one desire to acquire wisdom in order to be rewarded with the things of this world?”
He was silent a moment, then continued with great sadness: “It is enough for a man to know God through learning of His glory, of His being. This is the beginning, the end, the purpose, of wisdom.”
“I do not understand!” cried Henri, with febrile scorn. “But this life I can endure no longer. I must escape. I must escape!”
It was evident that this was an old subject between these two, for the abbé only sighed wearily, and was silent. Then, after a long silence, the abbé said:
“If you must concern yourself with the world, my nephew, then concern yourself with its miseries, its torments, its sufferings. Dedicate your life to the alleviation of grief and pain. Sing the songs of the people, so that the deaf ear of power may be touched, and the hard heart of majesty be moved. Sing of pity and justice and mercy. The artificial and dainty songs intended to please the decadent ears of the idle, the soft and the rich, die like tinkling notes in a hurricane.” He added, with terrible solemnity: “For the hurricane is approaching, and only a strong and fearless voice shall ride upon it.”
Arsène listened, and in spite of himself, he was stirred and amazed. Strange words in this wretched hovel, in the gutters of Paris! The dream came back to him again, and he felt a mysterious excitement. How many voices like this of the abbé’s were there abroad in the world? How many were speaking of strange and revolutionary things in the vast sewers beneath the great screaming cities? Arsène seemed to hear again the rush of feet through the storm, but now they rushed up from the sewers into the thoroughfares of the world, and now they were the feet of an army.
He must have slept in the sudden exhaustion of illness, for when he awoke again there were two candles upon the table, and there, were laughing voices. Cecile had placed bowls, plates and pewter spoons upon the table, also, and there was a great savory dish of fowl and rabbit, seasoned with wine sauces and herbs. There was also a bottle of wine, and a plate of crusty white bread. Arsène became conscious that in the laughter there was some exclaiming, and François was demurring.
“But tobacco!” said François. “It is long since I have had a pipeful. My child, you ought not to have bought tobacco for me with Monsieur de Richepin’s money.”
“Why not?” demanded Cecile, coolly. “I have also bought you a new pipe, grandfather. Were you not saving for it, until you had to spend your money for unguents for Monsieur?”
She stood in the candlelight, and Arsène, as he awakened, saw her only. She was very pale, this tired child, and even her lips had no color in their soft fullness. But she held her head erect, and the light broke in golden shadows on her braids, which were coiled about her small head. The nobility which Arsène had first marked was stern and high upon her beautiful features, and her blue eyes, though ringed with mauve shadows, were deep, wide, and set nobly in patrician sockets. Her breasts were young and pointed under the tight black bodice, and he noticed the slender strength of her shoulders and her arms, the sure quiet movements of her calloused fingers, and the flexibility of her wrists. She was only fifteen years old, but a stern maturity was already upon her, a coldness and firmness, and, in the quick flash of her eyes, a peculiar recklessness. Arsène’s interest quickened as it always did at the sight of a beautiful or unusual woman, and he felt a sudden compassion for this child.
She felt his regard, and paused abruptly in the midst of cutting bread to glance down at him. She had been smiling a little, but now, as her eyes met his the smile disappeared, and her fair brows drew together.
“You are awake, Monsieur,” she said, and her voice was reserved and indifferent, for all its rich sweetness.
François came to him from around the table, and stood, smiling down at him. “We waited for you to awaken, Monsieur, so you could join in the feast. Bought with your money,” he added, with a tilt of an eyebrow.
“Bought with the money we earned, grandfather,” said Cecile, tartly, resuming the cutting of the bread.
“I thank you for the tobacco, and the consideration which prompted it,” said François, gravely.
Arsène laughed. His teeth glittered white and youthful in the candlelight. His dark eyes danced, and he raised himself upon his elbow. Henri Chalon, murmuring with solicitous reproach, and glancing reprovingly at Cecile, rose from his stool and thrust the musty pillows behind Arsène, to support him. Cecile watched this, and a flicker of amusement sparkled deeply in her eyes. The abbé, on his stool, beamed sweetly. All at once, Arsène remembered the peasants on his father’s estates, and the seething mobs in the streets of Paris, and he wondered at his simplicity. These people in this wretched room were no more a part of the peasants and the viperfaced mobs than he, himself, was. For some reason which he did not care to examine too minutely, his spirits lifted, his manner became genial and courteous, and he regarded even that vain poor creature, Henri Chalon, with interested and sympathetic eyes.
He looked at François, and said with mock gravity: “I specifically charged Mademoiselle this morning to purchase for you, Monsieur, the finest in tobacco and pipes. I hope you will accept both as a very small token of my regard and gratitude.”
François smiled deeply, Cecile’s lips curved irrepressibly, and Henri Chalon was bewildered. He stared from one face to another. When he encountered his uncle’s face, he was more perplexed than ever. For the abbé was regarding Arsène with sudden consternation and somber distress. Smiling about the board at his elbow, Arsène, too, saw this peculiar long look, so grave, and so wise, and a blush seemed to start irritably at his heart and rise to his face. Damn the old priest! Was it possible he could actually read the thoughts of men?
“We are poor and miserable people,” said the abbé, slowly. “We are grateful for small gifts, and the condescension of those who have power to oppress us.”
François thought this a very odd remark, and Cecile tossed her head, her eyes flashing, and Henri gaped. But Arsène looked away, and the flush was deeper on his cheeks. His lower lip thrust out sullenly, and with hauteur.
Henri recovered himself, and he bent towards Arsène with a revolting mixture of eager servility, grovelling respect, and conciliation.
“It is true, Monsieur,” he said, in his quick light voice which seemed to have no resonance. “You must not think us ungrateful—”
“Ungrateful!” exclaimed Cecile, outraged. She held the long shining knife in her hand. She appeared genuinely shoc
ked. “It is Monsieur who must not be ungrateful to us, he who is so indebted to us!”
Arsène smiled again. He inclined his head in Cecile’s direction, but he looked at Henri with a disdainful twitch of his lips.
“I am indeed indebted to all of you,” he said, graciously. “And do not think that I shall forget it.” He added: “Mademoiselle is entirely right. A young lady of discernment.” And now he flashed his dark laughing glance at her.
Henri’s pale narrow cheek brightened with sudden hope. He looked about at his friends in delicate jubilation. But Cecile, frowning darkly, filled her betrothed’s plate, and thrust it towards him with a gesture containing some viciousness. She filled the other plates, and Arsène observed that the best morsels were for the abbé and her grandfather. Then, casting Arsène a glance under her long lashes, she hesitated, and unwillingly removed some of the whitest meat from the others’ plates, and put it upon his own. He watched her closely. He was delighted with her beauty, and his eye roved over her face and figure with open speculation and pleasure.
To his surprise, he discovered that Cecile was an excellent and subtle cook. Even his father’s beloved Anton could do no better than this with the finest wine and most fastidious herbs. The wine was not too bad. The bread was sweet and fresh. His returning strength and health and youth took sustenance from the food. He felt an unfamiliar twinge at the sight of the ravenous appetites of the others. Even the abbé ate enormously. François drank copiously. The grave majesty of his expression lightened. His head was no longer the head of a weary and beaten old man, but a Roman Senator’s head. He needed only a toga. Only Cecile preserved some aloofness, and ate with critical care, smiling just a little at the praises of her friends. Henri, soothed and flushed, regarded her with an open if diffident amorousness, which seemed hardly less to surprise Cecile than it did himself, for the girl flashed her eyes at him as if puzzled and vaguely affronted.
A heavy spring rain had begun to fall outside. It drummed on the roof, on the shuttered windows. The candlelight wavered, brightened, cast long shadows on the cracked wet walls. But there was warmth here, kindness, smiles and laughter about the board heaped with its food, and Arsène forgot that he was in a hovel. He felt that he was in the midst of old and delightful friends, and his heart was filled with good will towards them for the pleasure of their company.
CHAPTER VIII
Arsène thought that he had slept but a moment, for the sound of conversation was still in his ears when he awoke. But when he came to full consciousness he saw that the two great candles were burned almost to their sockets, and their light was dim and yellow. Moreover, every vestige of the meal was gone, and the board scrubbed white and patched with dampness. Long thin shadows crawled over the walls and ceilings. The beating rain hummed outside, and the gutters rushed with water.
The voices he had heard upon awakening were hushed and grave. Arsène peered under his eyelids and saw that only the Abbé Mourion and François Grandjean were in the chamber, and they had removed themselves to a distance from the bed in order not to disturb the sleeper. Their heads were bent together. They were only two old men, beggarly and haggard and gray with years, but their faces were lofty with thought, and austere with wisdom. But the abbé’s face was sorrowful and tender, and the face of François, though sad, was also possessed of a latent sternness and bitter patient calm. The candlelight flickered over their features, carving their cheekbones, sharply in the withered flesh, lying in eye-socket and over wrinkled forehead.
There had come a pause in their conversation, which the abbé broke with a sigh.
“My friend, it is getting very late. I assure you again, that Monsieur is almost recovered, and within a few days there will be no sign of his illness but a certain emaciation, and that scar upon his cheek. He will cherish that!” And the abbé smiled tenderly, as he always smiled at the braggadocio of the young, and their vehemence. “So, you will please go to bed, for you are very weary.”
François shook his head abstractedly. “There was a slight fever, when he first slept. Moreover, there are certain things which must be done for him. I shall not awaken him, for I have discovered that sleep does more than any unguent. But you, dear abbé—there is no reason for you to remain with me.”
The abbé sighed again. “Have I not always remained with you, when I could? Too, there is some heaviness in me tonight, some malaise. In your presence, my friend, I find some alleviation—”
François was silent for a moment, then spoke with visible difficulty.
“I have told you nothing about me, though I have known it was only just. Perhaps, if you knew, you would not wish your nephew to marry Cecile, though Henri might find the story of pleasurable interest—”
The abbé laid his hand gently on his friend’s arm. “I am not a priest with you, dear François! I am only your friend. You must tell me nothing. The opening of old wounds does no good. I know your soul. That is enough for me.”
Arsène listened with intense interest and surprise, obscurely pleased at the significance of these revelations. He thought, with anticipation, that François would now unburden himself, but instead of that the old man sighed, again and again, as though his heart were overburdened.
But he only said, in a muffled voice: “There is no dowry, as you know, for Cecile.”
“There is her heart; there is herself,” said the abbé, his voice shaking a little.
“I have worried over the girl,” said François, as if to himself. “What has life for these two? Nothing. I have given up everything, in one wild and passionate gesture. Now I am old, and I wonder. I have not feared hunger and terror, and now I ask myself: ‘Would I wish Cecile to face this all her life?’ What seemed heroic to me seems terrible for this child. We endure everything for ourselves; we cannot bear that our children shall endure this also.”
“But Cecile has part of your own soul in her, François. She is brave and strong, far braver and stronger than Henri.”
François burst into sudden virulent laughter, heavy with despair. He shook his head violently in his mirth, but he said nothing. His laughter seemed to be directed against himself. He passed his hands over his bearded face, and shook his head again. The abbé watched him, alarmed and moved.
Then François began to speak, at first in a low voice, then with increasing passion accompanied by the beating of his fists upon his tattered knees. He stared into space as he did so, and seemed to see nothing but of what he spoke:
“I have not feared men, or the things that men do. But now I see them in their full terror, revealed. I have felt myself equal to fate, even in the hours of the most frightful events. There was an illusion, a delirium in me. Now I see that my dream was sordidness, and folly. I am amazed at my earlier effrontery, that I thought I might set myself against the evil of the world. How could I have been so mad? Now I see that my life is nothing. Nothing, set against all other men who are evil and cruel and malignant. Only they are strong. Evil is stronger than good, mightier than God. At times I think that I would be young again, in these portentous days. I tell myself that never before in the world was there more need for a strong voice and a strong hand, when wickedness is more powerful than virtue.”
He paused. There was silence in the chamber, with its guttering candles. Then François resumed, and his voice was hoarse as he tried to restrain its passion.
“This momentous hour, of war and intrigue, of dark and subterranean movements! This terrific day, when malefactors move in the huge darkness! Where is there good, or mercy? This is what I think, and I am old, and I have done nothing. And at times, I know it is all futile, even the longing.”
His voice sank into a hopeless but echoing whisper, and his head fell on his breast. The abbé regarded him with deep compassion and sorrow.
“Only a noble soul can feel this,” he said, gently. “Forgive me if I offend you, but this I must say: There are some who cry: ‘Never were wicked men so ascendent as in this generation.’ But I say this o
bservation comes from an ignorance of history, and an unawareness of the perennial evil of a certain kind of human being. Every generation has its malefactors, its lusters, its soulless creatures and villains. We must deal with them as they eternally arise, as we deal with other violent natural phenomena of nature like plagues and pestilences, supplicating God.”
François did not speak. His staring eyes regarded the floor in a kind of rigid horror.
“One must have faith, not in humanity,” said the abbé mournfully, “but in what humanity may or can become.”
Still François was silent. Now he was laughing silently to himself, and there was something more terrible than sound in that silent mirth.
The abbé spoke again, more loudly, and with urgency: “Time, and the long topography of history shift, but man, and the eternal verities, which are the nature of man, remain forever the same. Man is the undying potential in the midst of chaotic flux. Even in the most despairing moments, I remember this. Even when I see the wallowing of men, and the ruin they create about them, I believe, I must believe, that in them are all potentialities of the angels, and that these potentialities, through the dark ages, must finally emerge.”
Arsène thought he must be dreaming, that fever must be evoking these words out of the dreary silence of this hovel. He listened as a man listens to a language of which he does not know much, and strains his ears to catch a meaning. And then, faintly catching it, becomes dumbly incredulous. Surely such a meaning was not meant by the speaker! He must be mad with fever, still, and not truly hearing these strangenesses spoken at midnight by two old broken men clad in rags!
Yet, even while he told himself this, he felt a mysterious beating of his heart. He was like a blind man who feels the warmth of the sun on his shut eyelids. He has never seen nor known the orb of light, but he is conscious of its power and its hidden glory, and its enormous life.