The Arm and the Darkness

by Taylor Caldwell

  He began to speak, almost inaudibly, and so strange and hoarse was his faltering voice that she had to listen to every word, with fear and increasing bewilderment:

  “What can I say to you, ma cherie? How can I put my thoughts into comprehensible form? It is not possible, for I do not know myself, of a certainty.”

  “It is true that you have changed, Arséne,” she whimpered, clinging to him.

  “I have changed,” he repeated, looking down at her with sunken and darkened eyes. “To what have I changed? I do not know. I only know that I am tormented and unhappy. I am stung with gadflies I cannot see. Where are there words to express myself, so you can understand? There are no words, for I do not know, myself.”

  He gazed beyond her, mournfully. “I only know that there are things I must strive to understand. I am borne away on a current I resist at every moment. I only know that I must understand, that there is nothing else of substance in all the world for me.”

  She was seized with terror. She took his face in her soft and trembling hands and forced him to look at her. There was a tearing pain in her heart as love was born in her for him for the first time.

  “Arsène!” she cried, incoherently, “Arséne, return to me, my darling! Let us leave this horrible place, and go home, to Paris! If we do not, what calamity shall not fall upon us? I know this, in my soul!”

  All at once he was stricken with a hungry and despairing passion for Paris, for the Paris of his youth, for the Paris he had known, light-hearted and careless, gay and amusing, full of music and laughter and candlelight and pleasure. He gazed upon that vision with the agony of an exile. And in the frivolous and thoughtless heart of that young girl came a dark and comprehending intuition of loss and desolation. She did not understand what disease had fallen upon Arsène. She only felt its presence. She clutched him as one clutches a beloved sinking into quicksand, in a nightmare.

  He gazed at her with dull eyes, empty of all but pain and weariness.

  “I cannot return, Madame,” he said.

  He cried out, pushing her away from him: “Return to your mother! There is no hope for you in me, Clarisse!”

  He left her as she wept, and rushed through the bare and echoing château with its sullen and listless servants. He sought out his steward, Dariot, who was gloomily watching the peasants as they cut the hay with long scythes that glittered in the burning sunlight. When Dariot perceived his headlong approach, his long brown face darkened, but he saluted his master with respect enough, and then was silent.

  “I have done with arguments, Dariot,” said Arsène, abruptly, not shrinking now from the cold gray of his steward’s watchful eye. “The wattled huts of my people must be destroyed. Good small cottages of stone must be built. I have said my final word.”

  Dariot sardonically indicated the meadows of uncut hay, and the distant fields of shimmering wheat.

  “Monsieur would have the men abandon the harvests for this salubrious purpose?”

  Arsène hesitated. A dark flush rose on his cheek at his servant’s tone and calm gesture.

  “No,” he said, at last, while the nearby peasants, gaped, disbelieving. “Let the harvests be gathered. You know what I have commanded, Dariot. When the accounting is made, the revenue is to be divided, as I have instructed. Then the cottages are to be built by these men. I have said enough. That is all.”

  Dariot was silent. He gazed sternly before him, flicking his whip against his dusty boots. Then he said, slowly: “You think—these—will be grateful, Monsieur?”

  “Of what significance is gratitude?” cried Arsène, impatiently. “We have conversed about this, tediously. I say again: gratitude is nothing to me. I wish to do only what is just.”

  Dariot was silent again. But he stared at Arsène with a long and thoughtful look, in which there was a gleam of derision. Under that gaze Arsène felt embarrassment, as though caught in a childish and ridiculous act.

  He spoke stiffly: “I am delighted that you have reconsidered, Dariot, and that you will remain as my steward.”

  Dariot bowed ironically. His former respect for his master had gone forever. “Monsieur has made the conditions too tempting,” he said.

  Arsène gazed over his parched and fuming acres and thought sadly: “It is strange that men can comprehend harshness and cruelty, and adore the hand that wields the whip, but have naught but contempt for justice and mercy.”

  Perchance there was something in his dark and saddened look which touched the cynical heart of Monsieur Dariot, for the steward’s expression changed to one of curious meditation.

  “Monsieur,” he said, gloomily, “I pray that you will not regret this. I pray that this will bring you no misery.”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  A long thin shadow fell across the open doorway of the tavern, and Crequy, glowering and dozing behind his wooden counter, looked up to see the new priest, Père de Pacilli, standing before him, smiling a thin, but sweet and deprecating smile.

  Crequy’s face became ferocious with his distaste. He sat and blinked at the priest, and the long fleshly underlip became a crimson shelf as it protruded beyond his thick and enormous countenance.

  The priest wiped his damp pale brow with a white kerchief, then seated himself, still smiling at a small bare table. “Ah, Monsieur,” he murmured, “the day is exceedingly hot. May I request some of your excellent wine, for a refreshment?”

  Crequy, for several moments, appeared not to have heard. His face became more lowering. Then, muttering a curse, he produced a dusty bottle and a cup and brought them to the table. These he thumped down with an insolent whack.

  “Twenty sous,” he growled.

  The priest merely arched an eyebrow to indicate his humorous surprise.

  “It is customary for the curé to pay for his wine?” he asked, with a pleasant but humble smile.

  “I give alms to no man, whether he be priest or other beggar,” replied Crequy, with a dangerous and baleful glare in his piggish eye.

  The priest laughed lightly, as though Crequy had enunciated a clever jest. He produced his purse, which was a humble one, and slowly counted out twenty sous. “You will drink with me?” he pleaded, in his soft and musical voice, which tantalized even Crequy’s dull ear with the hint of a foreign tone.

  Crequy contemptuously ignored this amiable request, and retired behind his counter. From that point he continued to regard the priest balefully.

  The priest drank a glass of the wine, and with admirable self-control, he controlled the wry repulsion he felt as its acrid taste stung a tongue accustomed only to the most delicate bouquets and delicious aromas. “Ah, excellent,” he murmured, gratefully. Crequy did not deign, even by a flickering of his lashless lid, to acknowledge this compliment.

  The priest wiped his lips daintily after one experiment with the wine. For the life of him, he could not continue to drink. He touched the bottle gently, and glanced at Crequy. “Please give the rest of the wine to the next weary wayfarer who ventures to chance by,” he said. “It will give me a small pleasure to know that some poor man has been refreshed by it, as I have been.”

  Crequy heaved himself from behind his counter, deliberately and ponderously approached the table, seized the bottle in his great hand, approached the door, and poured the wine out into the dust of the cobbled yard. He returned to his counter, seated himself, and stared at the priest expressionlessly, like a malignant Buddha.

  The priest approved this act heartily; he thought it very sensible, and discerning in Crequy. He said, in a soft sweet tone, melodious with sadness: “I did not poison it, my friend.”

  Crequy was silent. His enormous red face glowed like a molten moon in the dusky warmth of the tavern.

  “You do not like priests?” suggested de Pacilli, with a sigh.

  Crequy ignored this. The priest began to feel uneasy at that unwinking and unhuman stare, in which no thought was reflected.

  “The good Comte de Vitry has no such aversions,” continued de Pacill
i.

  At the sound of that name, a strange change came over Crequy’s countenance.

  “The Comte is a fool,” he rumbled, and the piglike eyes flashed viciously.

  It was not to be expected that the priest be any wiser than the peasants on these estates. He had heard that Crequy had for the Comte only the greatest contempt and animosity, that he loaded the Comte with insults which would have earned him the noose from any less merciful and foolish master. In the flash of the porcine, opaque brown eye, the white of which was yellowish and veined with red, in the outburst of the huge and glistening lip, in the brutish gesture, he read hatred and scorn. Was it possible that this animal was the receptacle for some dangerous knowledge against the Comte?

  He lifted his thin white hand in pious protest, and assumed an expression of gentle shock and sorrow on his long and subtle face.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, in a reproachful and amazed voice. “How is it possible that Monsieur can so misunderstand so noble a nature as that of the Comte de Vitry? Does not Monsieur perceive that the Comte’s magnanimity is proved by Monsieur’s invulnerability to punishment for these rash words?”

  A gust of fury agitated Crequy’s eyes, so that they rolled like small fuming balls in his great face.

  “‘So noble a nature!’” he ejaculated, mimicking the priest’s controlled voice virulently. “What does Monsieur le Curé know of nobility?”

  The priest sighed, and shook his head. He covered his eyes with one hand, and appeared to fall into a melancholy revery. When he finally removed his hand, nothing could have been more humbly sweet and gentle than his look.

  “What do I know of nobility?” he murmured. “Ah, I admit I have seen little of it in this depraved and sorrowful world. But I have seen it in the Comte de Vitry. Who could observe that gracious man and not be touched to the heart, however hard that heart might be?”

  Crequy was a shrewd man, and he hated priests, for his own good reasons. However, he had reluctantly come to love Père Lovelle, in his savage and grudging soul. He had been prepared to hate and suspect the new temporary priest, being unshakably convinced that priests and goodness were natural enemies. Now, as he gazed at de Pacilli, an uncertain expression clouded his face, and he chewed his lip in sultry silence.

  “Who can observe the good works with which he surrounds himself, and not bow the knee in reverence before the Comte de Vitry?” sighed the priest, and touched his forehead as though about to cross himself. “He is a saint. Ah, what I could tell you, my friend, of the conditions upon other estates, where the lords did not possess Monsieur le Comte’s greatness of heart, sweetness of soul, and generosity of temperament!”

  “The Comte is a fool!” shouted Crequy, and smote the counter resoundingly with his meaty fist.

  The priest smiled subtly to himself. All was proceeding well.

  “In what way, my friend?” he asked, mildly.

  Crequy spat, then sat and rubbed his bristling chin with his fist. He growled: “Monsieur le Comte presumes to know more than God, and be wiser.”

  The priest puzzled over this remark uncertainly for a few moments. He approved the sentiment, however. He sighed deeply.

  “I presume you are jesting?” he said, with a meek smile.

  “Jesting!” roared Crequy, pounding the counter again.

  “Monsieur le Comte does not comprehend that some are born to crawl, some to walk on all fours, but few to stand upright! He would have the serpent and the swine stand on their tails and call themselves men!” He added viciously, his lips twisting and a glisten of saliva appearing on them: “Let Monsieur le Comte beware that the serpent and the swine do not strike him from the vantage point upon which he has placed them!”

  The priest was surprised and inordinately pleased at this remark. It convinced him that here was an ally after his own heart. He regarded Crequy with that intent and respectful attention so flattering even to the most disillusioned of men.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, fervently, “it is said that so few are so perspicacious as Monsieur. I would wager that Monsieur is the only man in this village who has arrived at this intelligent conclusion, and that he is the only one who disagrees with Monsieur le Comte de Vitry.”

  Crequy growled again, like a ferocious bear. But he was not impervious to this flattery. He came heavily from behind his counter, approached the table and sat down near the priest. His eyes bored into those of de Pacilli; his great face was swollen and scarlet with his brutish emotions.

  “There are a few who agree with me, in some manner,” he said, roughly. “There is Dubonnet, who was the former steward, and an excellent one, though not to Monsieur le Comte’s delicate taste, for he had a hard hand for the peasants. There is Brisset, the malcontent, but a man of sensibility. He was overseer in the fields. There is La Farge, who had charge of the vineyards. All these has Monsieur le Comte replaced, and reduced, and why? They were careful managers of his own property! But this Monsieur le Comte could not endure.”

  “They were stern with the peasants, then?”

  Crequy nodded with grim malevolence. “Ah, were they not!” he gloated.

  Now his face swelled and darkened even more, and his eyes shot sparks.

  “Monsieur le Comte does not know these animals! No matter what benefits he bestows upon them, their voices become louder and more discontented. Do you know why, Monsieur le Curé? It is impossible to fill the cup of human greed. Give a starving man a crust, and he will ask for two. Give him a sou, and he will return for a pistole. Dress him in a whole garment, and he will hate you if you withhold another. Sit him at your table, and he will be your enemy if you fill your own plate with more than his. Call him your friend, and he will demand to be your master. This is what has come to pass in this village, once so orderly and peaceful. Now, it is full of contention and resentment.”

  De Pacilli recorded these remarks in the cold Jesuit brain that lay behind that long and narrow skull. He tapped the table thoughtfully with his pale and transparent fingers.

  “There are none, who are grateful to Monsieur le Comte de Vitry?” he asked, with a sigh.

  Crequy grunted, shifted his mighty weight on the stool.

  “A few there are, who profess to adore him. But even these are being contaminated by that noisy rascal, Dumont, who would demand the Comte’s last sou at the bottom of his purse and then insist upon examining the Comte’s pockets. Should he then discover that the Comte had no further revenue, he would kick him violently. Such is Dumont, who believes he argues learnedly to the other peasants from the ill-advised books which the Comte has distributed to these thieves and murderers. They read, now, these pigs!”

  The priest rose. He appeared to be weighted down with his sorrow over human bestiality and ingratitude. He shook his head mournfully.

  “Ah, how sad this is, Monsieur! But still, one dares not censure Monsieur le Comte de Vitry for presuming to walk, however, humbly, in the footsteps of Our Lord. If there is an error, it is not his. It lies in those who do not understand.” He smiled at Crequy with a humble pleading: “Do not despise me too much, Monsieur, for discovering in Monsieur le Comte virtues beyond our more sinful comprehension.”

  Crequy grunted again. He watched, in silence, as the priest soundlessly glided across the stone floor, casting a black and writhing shadow in his passage through the sunlight.

  He is a priest, thought the tavern-keeper surlily, but with some uncertainty now. And all priests are serpents, with the possible exception of the Abbé Lovelle.

  Nevertheless, he experienced a sullen relief. He could not understand, however, why some deep nagging uneasiness remained in his scarred heart.

  Monseigneur Antoine de Pacilli pursued his thoughtful way through the cobbled street of the little village, walking without a sound, his long thin body in its black garments swaying a little with the grace of his artistocratic movements.

  He had felt some cold affront when the Cardinal had informed him of this new mission to Chantilly. He, the Bar
on Antoine de Pacilli, to be sent to suborn brutish peasants in an obscure village! For this had he spent long bitter years in the great universities of Italy, Spain and France! However, he was a man of brilliant and subtle intellect. The Cardinal had hardly begun to explain the character of Paul de Vitry and the conditions upon his estates, than he comprehended the larger implications. He had bowed respectfully to the Cardinal.

  “One plague spot in a nation may become endemic, nay, even pandemic,” he had said.

  A gleaming look had appeared on his countenance, which was reflected in those narrow almond eyes. The Cardinal had regarded him with distaste. For he had recognized that look, with humiliation and haughty egotism. It did not please him that another human being might be impelled by the same degree of emotion as himself. He had recognized that look, indeed, and he knew it for hatred of all other men. He, himself, hated mankind, but that was because once he had loved it. He knew that the Baron de Pacilli had never loved it, that he hated it from the beginning, without passion or the virulence which comes from an abscessed and wounded heart. He had hated it because there was in him no virtue, no humanity.

  Though the Cardinal was now almost forty-two, there had lingered in him a naïveté which he sometimes acknowledged with frustrated and angry mortification. He still had not been able to rid himself of a secret belief that men were what the world had made them, that the world was a catalyst operating on the varied chemicals which composed each man in differing degrees. How, then, had the world affected the Baron de Pacilli? By discreet and kind questioning, de Pacilli had divulged to him that always he had lived a quiet and scholarly life, especially dedicated to Greek and Latin and the classics, that he was much attached to the colder and more abstract of the philosophies, that he was a mathematician of astounding ability. Discreet probing by the Cardinal elicitated the fact that the baron’s father had died in his childhood, that his mother was a gracious aristocrat with great pride in her son. Nothing but the most amiable relationships had ever existed between them. He had had no frustrations, no struggles, no humiliations, no disillusions.