Gentian Hill

  There was a long pause, and the Cure, waiting for the younger man to speak, still did not look up.

  "A novice," said Charles at last. "She is still only a novice.’ She had seemed to bring him the gift of joy on that first morning and he was still hanging on to it. The Cure went on speaking again, his quiet voice giving no hint that he knew he was taking away the very last hand-hold this man had left.

  "The novitiate at Carmel is a long one, and she is nearly at the end of it. It is a strict order, as you know, and it is seldom that any woman joins it who is not convinced of her vocation, Therese has only one longing now, to get back to Carmel. She comes of a distinguished family and bears a great name, but is almost as alone in the world as you are. Her only living relations now are a family of cousins with a chateau near Toulon. We both think that she should try and get to them, for down there in the south they say the Terror has not struck. Her cousins would help her to find some other Carmel where she could finish her novitiate. How she is to accomplish that journey we do not know. We are not thinking of that just now. Our duty now, hers and mine, is towards yourself. When you have your strength again, the way will open for Therese. For the moment the road runs quite straight before the three of us. When we get to the crossroads we shall know it, and receive the guidance of God."

  Charles had nothing to say. He understood her now; the dignity and reserve that stiffened her compassionate friendliness no longer puzzled him. As a sick body to be nursed and an unhappy soul to be comforted, he meant a great deal to her, but as a man, nothing at all.

  "Take your trouble to God before the altar, my son," said the Cure. "You will be alone. I am going back to the presbytery."

  Still without looking at him, he went away. But Charles did not go around into the church and kneel before the altar in prayer to God. He went to the back of it, where his bed was, and sat down on it. He stayed there for an hour or more, without moving. He was conscious of nothing at all, either around him or in him, but an illimitable emptiness. Once the Curé had lit for him in this place the light of the love of God, and he had carried it back safely through the forest. But since then it had gone out.

  4

  Someone betrayed them. Charles, for the Curé’s sake, was careful to keep hidden during the day, but as he got better and able to walk again, he would sometimes go out into the forest after dark. During the sleepless nights his wretchedness sometimes became more than he could bear, and he could not keep still. It helped then to wander about in the forest for a while. He must have been seen there.

  One warm autumn night he wandered further than usual. He wondered as he walked, whether it would be best not to go back, but simply to walk on and meet whatever doom might come. Nothing could be worse, he thought, than the life he was leading now. Living so near his home gave his grief no chance to begin to heal. The day-by-day companionship with Therese drove him nearly crazy with love and desire. Then he knew that he could not do that. His longing to get away was simply the coward’s craving to escape from a particular bit of suffering without enduring it right through

  to its appointed end, and that was a thing that a man could not do. He and Therese were not yet at the crossroads of which the Cure had spoken. He sat down under one of the pine trees, his back against its trunk, and stared into the darkness. There was a certain comfort in it. When a man’s mind and spirit are full of darkness the sunshine can seem an insult.

  He stayed there longer than he knew, and he must have wandered further than he knew, for he lost his way going back, and when he reached the church it was full daylight and he was limping and exhausted. He had expected to find the Curé saying his mass, but there was no one before the altar except Therese, kneeling upon the lowest step, straight, still, and absorbed. The sight of her praying always filled him with rage, for she knelt as though locked into prayer. He had seen that locked look before, in craftsmen and artists doing their chosen work, and mothers caring for their children; it spoke of a consecration of personality beyond the reach of change. He Hung himself down on a bench, and in his miserable anger he did not care if he disturbed her. He wanted to do more than disturb her, he wanted to go to her and seize her by her shoulders, drag her from her knees into his arms, and hold her there until he had battered down her will to his. He groaned under his breath, grinding his heel angrily on the stone flags. She had not heard the protesting creaks of the bench, but she heard his light groan, hardly more than a sigh. She got up instantly and came to him.

  "Where have you been? Why do you wander about at night like this and exhaust yourself? Now, when you need your strength, you have not got it." She spoke quickly, urgently, almost with a hint of anger this woman whom he had believed could never be anything but serene and poised. He looked at her and got up, suddenly strong, revitalized by the instinctive knowledge that they had got to the crossroads after all. The inaction was over. It would be to do now and not only to bear, and that would not be so hard.

  "Where is the Curé?" he asked her sharply.

  "They‘ have taken him. They came here to take you, but he told them you had left him long ago. Then they took him, in punishment for having sheltered you."

  "Why in the name of God did he not swear that he had never set eyes on me?"

  “He was prepared to tell a lie for you, he who probably had never told a lie in his life before, but you could scarcely expect him to make it of the type that would save his own skin also."

  In anguish for the beloved old man, they were suddenly both angry-flashing out at each other in their pain. Therese recovered first. She put her hand on his shoulder, for he looked ready to dash wildly after the Curé.

  "There is nothing you can do. They came nearly an hour ago. They had been rounding up prisoners all over the countryside. They had them standing in carts with their hands bound. It is too late now. There is nothing you can do now."

  “No," he said. "They will take him to prison and perhaps he’ll die there, like other priests who have helped and hidden worthless men like me." He looked at her. "Did they see you?"

  "Yes. We were together here in the church when they came. He was filling the lamp and I was sweeping the floor. He told another lie-for me this time. He said I was his servant, and they believed him." She looked pitifully at Charles. "And I let them believe him. That was all I could do for him--let him save us both. He was happy that he had done it. He looked back at me from the cart, Charles, and he looked full of fun like a small boy going to a party."

  It was the first time that she had called him Charles. And the hand that had been on his shoulder was now held in his and she did not pull it away. In spite of her steady composure, he knew that she did most desperately want his help.

  "Shall I take you to Toulon?" he asked gently. Suddenly her control broke and she began to laugh and cry together, but the laughter was uppermost. “How in the world do you propose that we should reach Toulon?" she asked, wiping her eyes on the back of her free hand as a child would have done. "Walk there?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "And what chance have we of arriving?"

  "One chance in a thousand. Yet there is that chance. We shall find those who will help us, and when a country is in a state of chaos, a couple of refugees more or less are scarcely noticed. Shall we try it, Thérese?"

  She looked at him and he saw that, fringed by their wet lashes, her eyes were dancing. He knew then what sort of a little girl she had been-gay, and loving danger. He_ had been gay too, he remembered, hundreds of years ago, and he still loved danger.

  "Do you trust me?" he asked.

  "You need not have asked that," she said.

  He was an exceptionally resolute and quick-witted man and she was a disciplined woman, trained to endurance and obedience. Where others would have been lost, they, by reason of what they were, and backed by what Charles called incredible good luck and Therese called the providence of God, survived the sufferings of that time and reached Toulon.

  5

  The journ
ey had a poignant start. Late one night they came to Chartres and made their way to a little bakery in the town kept by an old servant of the de Colbert family.

  She did not betray them. She and her son fed them, gave them their own beds, washed their clothes for them while they slept, and gave them food and a little money to take with them on their journey. But they seemed in a great hurry to get them out of the house in the morning. They woke them before dawn, called them to coffee almost before they had had time to dress, and hurried them out into the street while the light was still gray, giving them very particular instructions as to which turnings they were to take.

  Yet early in the streets though they were, they found plenty of people about, all hurrying one way with that ravening look in the eyes and that cruel sharpening of the features that takes away all humanity from a face, and is the most hateful thing that one can look on in this world. They caught scraps of talk, and knew why their kindly hostess had been so anxious to get them out of the town. The guillotine had been set up in the market square, and men and women would die this morning.

  Charles saw a deserted alley and pulled Therese down it, though that was not the quick way out of the town that he had been told to follow. They took another turn, and another, and did not quite know where they were. Then they found themselves in a narrow passage between two houses and at the other end of it they could see a lane and hear carts rumbling over its cobbles. They were market carts, Charles thought, bringing fresh provisions in from the country, and would show them which direction they ought to take. He hurried Therese down the passage and there at the end of it they saw the carts go by. But they were not market carts, they were three tumbrils full of prisoners, coming out through the gates of the prison at the end of the short lane and driving down it to the thoroughfare beyond where the wolves were waiting for them.

  The shock was so great that they stood stock still in the shadows of the passage, holding hands like two children. There were both men and women in the tumbrils, standing with their hands tied behind their backs-young and old, priests and nuns among them. A few faces were blanched with anger, a few with fear, but most of them were proudly composed. Charles felt a throb of pride. His breed died well. The last cart passed them. An old priest stood at the back of it, speaking cheerfully to a frightened woman beside him. He looked around as the tumbril passed the passage and looked straight at them. It was the Cure. The peace in his face made him look much younger than when they had seen him last. Then he saw them and smiled, and his face was so transfigured that for one extraordinary moment it seemed as though the gray street were full of sunshine. He looked like a boy in love. Therese gripped Charles’s arm with both hands,

  yet needlessly, for though, at sight of that old man giving his life for him, his whole being was one aching desire to run after the tumbril, climb in, and go with the Cure to his death, he did not even stir. He knew what he had to do accept the sacrifice and look after Therese. And for that one moment he even managed to accept it gladly. He looked at the Cure, as Therese was doing, and smiled. Their smiling faces were the last thing the Cure saw before the tumbrel reached the end of the lane and drove out into the mob beyond.

  The noise they made was detestable. Charles flung his arms around Therese and held her tightly against him. He had forgotten now that he had vowed that throughout this journey he would never touch her, never kiss her or put his arm around her. He felt only the desire of great love to pull the beloved right inside his own being, wrap himself body and soul about her to protect her from all harm.

  Presently it was quiet again, and he lifted Therese’s face in his hands in dread of what he would see there. It shocked him to see it almost as happy as the Cure’s had been. For a moment he felt chilled, almost repelled. His arms dropped to his sides and there was reproach as well as misery in his eyes. Did she not realize that the good old man had given his life for a young man of no worth whatever, a man whose life from the beginning had been distinguished by nothing but carelessness, self-indulgence, and a hard and cruel pride? Did she not know what he was? Was it not a terrible thing to her that the innocent should die for the guilty and the old for the young? Apparently not. She looked up into the agonized face above her and smiled. But she said nothing. He was in no fit state to hear anything that she might have to say. She took his hand and led him back down the passage, and it was she who found the way out of the town.

  6

  But in the weeks to come, when they walked together through the fields in the sunshine, were sheltered in barns or behind haystacks from storms of rain, or sat in the woods at evening building their campfire and cooking the eggs and vegetables they had begged or bought and sometimes stolen during the day, she said a good deal. She tried to make him see the Curé’s death as she saw it, not as a revolting execution, but as a death suffered joyously for another, just such a death as he would have chosen if he could. It had been a gift to him from the good God, and it had been a gift to them, too, not a hideous mischance, that they should have seen him going to it. If they had not seen what they had, they might never have known what had happened to him; now they knew that he was safe in paradise.

  But paradise was no more than a word to Charles. Try as she would she could not make real to him those realities that were so gloriously real to her. What was real to him in these days was remorse for all that he had done and been, and his love for her and the misery it caused him. For the more she struggled to make the Catholic faith mean much to him, the more he realized how much it meant to her, and how it claimed her whole allegiance. But through the days and nights, he did carry one comfort with him, and that was his memory of the look on the Curé’s face-that look of a boy in love. In the meaning of that, whatever it was, there did seem some hope, both for himself and for the world.

  Their journey continued and they found themselves just two among many refugees, all fleeing south from the Terror. It was said that the English held Toulon and that there was safety there. Safety for so many, wondered Thérese and Charles? For a few perhaps, but what of the rest? This thing that was happening now had happened so often before, and would happen so often again in the history of the world. The evil, like a volcano, broke through the crust of things, and the foul lava flooded the earth, while over the roads of the world the refugees fled from the known to the unknown horror, from darkness into darkness again, with always the unconquerable hope in their souls that in the night ahead would be some star.

  "That is why men go on living," said Therese. "They go on believing that somehow, somewhere, there will be something for them."

  And it was her faith that they believed rightly. Charles had no such faith. But he had Therese, and his memory of the Cure’s face.

  They did not go straight to Toulon, but turned aside to find the chateau where Therese’s cousins lived. They found it empty and deserted.

  "They must have been afraid," said Therese with a touch of scorn. "Perhaps they went to Toulon. We’ll follow them there." They reached Toulon in Christmas week, together with many other refugees, and heard the ominous news that the English had evacuated the town. With some money that Charles had kept all this while in a bag hanging round his neck, he managed to rent an attic for Therese in a filthy tavern near the harbor. She got one night’s peaceful sleep there, while he lay in the passage outside her door so that no one could reach her without trampling on him. But the next day the Terror also reached Toulon. Nothing that Charles had seen in Paris had equaled the horror that broke now in that Christmas week of 1793. It finished Charles and Therese. They were more exhausted than they knew, and Therese had been more shaken than she realized by the sight of her cousin’s empty chateau. Suddenly, unexpectedly, her courage and control broke. At night in the tiny attic room high above the dreadful street, and lit by the flames of the burning town, she broke down and wept uncontrollably. She lay in Charles’s arms that night, and sobbed herself into peace. It seemed no sin to them then. It seemed to be all there was.

  I
n the morning there began that stampede for the boats in which so many lives were lost. That was the only way of escape now, by boat to Leghorn where the English fleet was. Charles and Therese joined in the fight for life that began at dawn and continued for so many terrible hours, and which Napoleon Bonaparte, who witnessed it, could never forget. Therese was past caring what happened so long as she and Charles could die together, but Charles would not give up fighting for her while he lived, and to him it seemed that death by drowning in a capsized boat, or even being trampled to death by the crowd on the quay, was to be chosen for her rather than the Terror. And, once embarked on the last hazard, all his old resolution and quick wittedness returned to him. Somehow, he got them into a boat, and it was chiefly owing to his skill and courage and the last ounce of his strength, that the boat finally reached Leghorn. The scenes there were as terrible as at Toulon, and Nelson on board the Agamemnon was haunted by them for the rest of his life. But Charles and Therese had good luck, or, as Therese insisted, the mercy of God was still with them. Charles collapsed as the boat reached the quay, and the man who helped Therese lift him ashore was an Englishman to whom he had once been of service in Paris. This friend possessed a retentive memory and commanded an English ship, and he took them to England.

  CHAPTER V

  1

  In London the French colony made them welcome, for they bore great names and had endured much suffering, and even in their desperate plight there was a royalty about them both that made it seem natural to care for them almost with reverence. Charles, tough as whipcord, recovered completely, but Thérese was never again the strong woman that she had been. Yet she revived enough to lead a normal life again and to marry Charles. To her now there was no doubt that she must do that. She knew she would do him irreparable harm if she were to leave him. What it cost her to make that choice she was careful that no one should know least of all Charles. lf she could not love him quite as he loved her, yet in gratitude she would do him honor. Resolutely she vowed that she would be happy, without regrets and with no backward glances. She was not Sister Therese now, by her own decision and choice she was the Comtesse de Colbert, and she would play her part in the world that she had wanted to renounce as well and as happily as she could.