The Arm and the Darkness

by Taylor Caldwell

  The night had passed. Earth and heaven stood in clear crystal light, in which there was no color. Their footsteps echoed on the flagged path. They walked alone into the morning. On and on Cecile led him, opening a rustic creaking gate, descending a steep pathway, brushing by shrubbery and trees that showered down drops of diamonds upon them. The air was permeated with the sweetest and most poignant smells, and birds were whistling in the trees, and darting from bough to bough with soft rustlings and flashes of wan light upon their glistening wings.

  They found themselves in a tiny glade. The grass under their feet sparkled; warm breaths floated in gentle breezes into their faces. The far trees stood in luminous mist. Now there was only profound silence about them. The sun had not yet risen. There was no color on the earth, only that mist, only that radiant half-shadow sweeping over the pale and distant hills beyond the trees like the ghostly heralds of the sun. The peace that fell on them was like the whisper of an angelic host, and Arsène felt the hot fire smoldering in his heart, then disintegrating.

  Cecile stood at his side and they looked together at all this silence, this crystal motionless, this fleeting bright shadow. She still held his hand. Then, very slowly, she turned and faced him.

  How clear was that young and exhausted face, those steadfast blue eyes, and how stern yet understanding were those pale young lips! Her cloak was heavy on her firm shoulders. Her loosened light hair tumbled against her neck and over her weary brow. She was bedraggled and soiled. But she had majesty and pride and Arsène gazed at her with a little fear and a new adoration.

  “I have heard your thoughts, all these long dark nights, Arsène,” she said quietly. “I have understood all your thoughts. Monsieur your father is right: you did not speak to him, you spoke to yourself.”

  She turned a little and looked into the far distance. The rims of the spectral hills were outlined with bands of blowing gold.

  “Do you think I do not love this, too?” she whispered. “This is my land, as it is your land. We leave it, for a strange city, for strange people. We shall hang precariously on the battlements that overlook a strange sea. Where shall we go from that place? What is our end to be—?”

  “I have brought you to this exile, to this hopelessness, to this death!” cried Arsène, hoarsely. He tried to put his arm about her, but she stepped aside. Now the blue light was so intense in her eyes as she gazed at him that he was taken aback.

  “This is your hour of decision, Arsène! You must decide in this hour whether personal life, and personal safety, are more than greater things! You must decide whether there is not something more sacred than life, or, you must return to Paris. There is time no longer for any further hypocrisy.”

  As he stared at her, dumbly, he was overwhelmed with her sternness, her beauty, her steadfastness, and her extreme and piteous youth. There was no contempt in her eyes, only a bright waiting and calm aloofness. He thought, incoherently: Shall I return, and take her with me, back to peace and quietness and security? And then he knew that if he returned, he returned alone.

  He said, in a shaking voice: “You are hard, my poor little one.”

  She smiled then, and her smile was less gentle than it was swift and flashing. But she said nothing, and only waited.

  He cried out: “What can I say to you about my thoughts, and my pain? My longing for peace and cleanness, my hatred for flight and exile and this misery which shall never end? I have thought so much! Do you not understand, you child, my dearest one, that we cannot win, that we must fail? That we can only fight, and die, or flee ignominiously, again and again, until we fall, exhausted? This is a lost cause!” He could not speak again, and fell silent, with a groan.

  Cecile drew a deep breath. She approached closer, and gazed steadfastly into his eyes.

  “My grandfather,” she said, in low and thrilling tones, “once told me there are no lost causes. There are only lost men.”

  Her voice, clear and penetrating, echoed back from the clear and colorless air. And now Arsène wished only to escape her eyes. He turned aside.

  “I am a lost man, then, perhaps,” he said, so deeply that the tones were like a moan.

  When he could control himself once more, he began to speak discordantly, his words tumbling with incoherence over each other.

  “‘There are no lost causes!’ That is the stupidest of all things. The world is heaped with dead and ruined causes. The graves of martyrs are piled so full that their bones can be seen bleaching in the earth. I have no love for martyrdom—I have no true idealism. In the beginning of this journey, I had delusions to sustain me. But now they are gone. I have nothing left but fear and weariness, and hopelessness. Noble words are only noble words. They are no substitute for fires and peace, for security and quietness, for cleanness and the smell of unthreatened vineyards—”

  His voice choked in his throat, and no sound could come from it.

  This strange and unshaken girl, this girl so very young and unbroken in spite of weariness and desolation, looked at him deeply and said:

  “And you believe these things still exist in France, in Europe? Once my grandfather said to me that Europe was rotten with history, that its centuries were too heavy and crushing upon it, that its cellars were gutted with filth and rats, that its beams were broken and bending. It has too long a memory. He said that if all men could forget history there might be hope.” She paused, then said: “If one could only go to a land where history did not yet exist, where life was new—. But there is no such land. We must live in our ruined city, and rebuild its broken walls.”

  There was a long silence between them now. Arsène bent his head. His face became more haggard, more distraught. Then he flung out his hands. “I find no strength in myself to rebuild, to live, in this desolate place.”

  He turned to her, as if imploring her: “My darling, how can I labor and fight in dust? I know this cause is lost from the beginning. I know that we have no hope that we shall overcome the Cardinal. We can do nothing to destroy the growing Catholic reaction in Europe. There is nothing but death—”

  She clasped her hands convulsively together, but this was the only sign of her desperate agitation. Her face was still calm and cold, and her tone quiet, when she said: “You would wish to go to England, perhaps?”

  “No! Not to England! The old men are there, also! The old men are everywhere, in their mouldering grave cloths, and their voices echoing in their dead bony skulls like ancient doom. They have no new books to open, but only the hoary lying ones, full of sickness and disillusion and decay. Can I not tell you, Cecile,” and now his voice rose higher, became more full of agony, “how I long for a land where the old men have not yet come, have not yet filled the graves, and where there is no history? Where there is no hatred, no lies, no cities of filthy intrigues, and no tombs of tales and rotten bones? All these things are here. We can build nothing clean and living upon them. Whatever new is built must fall into broken sewers and reeking kennels.”

  Now his anguish was so extreme that the girl could not endure it. She put her warm arms about his neck. The wet and bedraggled sleeves fell back from them, exposing their white and tender flesh. He pressed his cheeks against them, holding them closely with his hands against his face. She lifted her lips to his, and they clung together like two alone in a rocking world.

  When they finally released each other, her eyes were wet, and more gentle than he had ever seen them. He saw her lips, moved and trembling. It was some moments before she could speak.

  “Arsène, my love,” she said, with more than a little humility in her voice, “this only do I know in truth. That one must have faith. One must believe that the individual is nothing in the long tasks of the future, but only men. The work at hand may appear hopeless, doomed to failure. But assuredly, it has not failed, in the end! Let us do what we can. When that single task has been accomplished, we will look further, to see what has to be done.”

  She paused, and now the blueness of her eyes had intensifie
d, become a deep glow, as though she contemplated something still unseen by him. She smiled a little.

  “‘A new world!’” she said, very softly. “Who knows, there may be a new world for us!”

  Her words seemed mysterious and inconclusive to him, but Arsène suddenly felt a strange uplifting of his spirit as though he had heard an exciting and heroic promise. He was comforted. His heart rose. He pressed her hands to his lips. They returned to the inn together, and when the others saw his face they smiled as if some unbearable pressure, some fear, had been lifted from them.

  CHAPTER LI

  Now they rode with more spirit, and more fleetness, for their leader had taken heart, and though he did not know for what he hoped, he was hopeful. The nights grew more dark, and much colder, but now they sang a little, and jested in low voices. When they arrived at obscure and wretched inns, far from the main roads, the hosts exerted themselves to put before them the best their poor larders afforded. For these travellers seemed no furtive fugitives, as they had done before, but a gay company travelling on honorable business, and seeking modest lodgings and tables because of modest purses. Heretofore, they had crept into taverns, hats pulled far over feverish eyes, cloaks tightly wrapped about them, and betraying every indication of pursuit. This had inspired uneasiness in the hosts, and wary truculence. But now, this was changed. The gaiety came with spontaneous light-heartedness, for the leader was no longer beset by his own fears, but revealed fortitude and firmness and a new faith.

  Cecile, with her new wisdom, understood how volatile was Arsène’s nature, and did not extravagantly expect too much. She knew that he would demonstrate new depths of despair, new morbidities, new distractions. This, then, was her task: to watch for these moods, then offer consolation, faith, courage, and gentleness. When the dark shadow appeared in his eyes, and his lips became heavy and somber, she would reach from her saddle, press his hand, smile humorously, and in a short time the vehement pendulum had swung back again on its too-large arc.

  The Marquis knew all this, also. Though his old frame creaked and ached agonizingly, he was mute. But he complained lavishly about the minor and more intimate discomforts of the journey, and kept the company in bursts of ribald laughter. Cecile, with her needle, maintained his decency. Her industry was endless. Torn cloaks and breeches and hose passed regularly through her busy fingers. The company was soon reduced to adoration for her. They marvelled at her endurance, her steadfast smiles when her face was drawn and white with exhaustion. They picked wayside fruits and berries for her, helped her tenderly over stones, literally carried her into inns. She was “Madame la Duchesse” to them, and she pretended, in the spirit of the thing, to wield haughty court over them.

  He thought to himself: There is nothing she could not face with fortitude and faith, no hardship, no pain, no weariness, no hopelessness. Ah, this was a woman for a new world!

  A new world. The words became familiar to his thoughts. And then, with amazement, he thought: I have been seeking a new world, and it has already been discovered, and is waiting for us!

  It was a world of wilderness, of wild places, of unexplored forests, of unbelievable vastnesses. But his own people, and the English, and the Spanish, had already gone to that world, and it was even rumored that in many places respectable cities had already risen, and commerce had taken root.

  America! But his heart shrank from it, for it was still engaged with France, with his home, and his kinsmen. The largeness, the immensity, of the new world terrified his insular spirit. But even as it terrified him, his heart began to beat with passion.

  Each time his thoughts fearfully approached the idea, they came with more confidence, more hope, more fortitude. Once, riding beside Cecile, he looked at her, and she was startled by the dark glow of his haggard face, the contemplative and dilated expression of his eyes. And then she thought: he has thought of it also! And she smiled deeply upon him.

  And now, as they approached closer and closer to La Rochelle, they increased their speed, for they must reach the city before the Cardinal. Once he had arrived, the city would indeed be besieged, and it would be almost impossible to gain entry.

  Arsène thought much of the Cardinal these days, and he no longer seemed a malignant plotter, but a tired old man, fit to arouse pity and compassion. Surely, he, too, felt the pressure of the centuries of history upon him. Surely, he too, was sick in the midst of the pestilence. Why, then, did he labor so enormously? Was it because he had no hope, that he knew himself a prisoner? But then, intrigues were for sick men; they were the unnatural stimulants necessary to the alleviation of the pangs of disease.

  Once, as they travelled, they saw the lights of distant campfires, and knew that yonder lay the cohorts of the Cardinal. They passed in the night, fleet and swift as shadows. But Arsène looked back, smiling. What did the Cardinal know of the hopes of a new world which so dazzled and intoxicated him? What could he dream of such a world, of such a radiant and giant land?

  Arsène could not know that at that very instant the Cardinal was thinking these things, and staring sleeplessly into the dark about his bed. He did not know that the Cardinal heard the distant hoofbeats, and that the sound of them had awakened these strange and mysterious thoughts. Across the black chasms of the night, the hands of the old man and the young man met, unknowingly, feeling only the momentary thrill which passes between the dying and the living at the instant of dissolution, and farewell.

  Arsène began to think of Paul de Vitry, of the Abbé Mourion, of the Duc de Tremblant, and he wondered if they, too, had thought of the new world with passion and longing. And then he knew that if they had not actually thought of it, it had lain strangely in their souls, and they had given up their lives for it. Their faith, their hope, their invincible belief in the future, had been the wind in the indomitable sails that had set forth for the new and living land.

  He knew that the spirits of these noble men, and the spirits of countless thousands of others like them, were present on the ships that sailed courageously to the west, and that the cargo these ships carried were not only the bodies of the exiled and the hopeful, but the hearts and faiths and passions of those who had died that other men might live in peace.

  With such a cargo, with such light in the sails, with such illuminated figure-heads, how else could it be but that the world ahead would be a justification of all their dreams and their faiths? Who would dare to betray them?

  Who would dare to allow the coming of the old men, the old lies, the old bloody religions, the old pestilences, and the old diseases, the old hatreds and the old cruelties?

  Ah, said Arsène to himself, with passionate dedication, let it be in my hands, and the hands of my children, and my children’s children, to keep that world inviolate and beautiful, faithful and indomitable, a new hope and a new joy for a world of men still unborn, so that they might dwell in freedom and peace forever.

  The extravagance of his nature seized upon the new thoughts. Before his mind’s eye rose the visions of dazzling cities, of vehement and passionate men living in peace, exhilaration and hope, of new governments of justice and freshness and peace, of mountains incandescent with light, of vast seas sparkling beneath endless white sails of commerce and adventure. He was overwhelmed. The wilderness fell away, the valleys, chaotic and strewn with boulders, became green and filled with multitudes of fat and peaceful cattle. The bright and glittering air rang with the sound of new cities rising where only silence and eagles lived before. He saw great roads, and heard the turmoil of a new empire. He saw the strange but shining faces of a new people, in which his own blood was mingled with countless other bloods, forming this race of hopeful and vigorous men. Winds, not of close and teeming France, but of fresh and limitless spaces, blew in his face, and he smelled strange and vital odors. Ah, this sweet great land of no torturous history, of no vile persecutions and rotten books, of no memories of dark hatreds and furies, of no hoary churches built by bloody hands, of no mercenary armies engaged in vic
ious quarrels and treachery! Of no kings and statesmen, gray with ancient lore and ancient disease!

  Thinking these things, he became dizzy, had to clutch his pommel to keep himself from falling. Tears filled his eyes; he heard the wild beating of his heart. Here was a solemn adventure set in motion by God, Himself! Here the wilderness waited the happy firm tread of men who believed in the future!

  And now he knew that in his heart he had not believed in the future of France, that hag-ridden land in a hag-ridden continent. Men were too heavy with history; their memories were too long. They could not forget, surrounded and choked with the past as they were. Tradition was a labyrinth in which Europe was forever caught. Hatred was a perpetual miasma. He must have done with it. He must leave it, if he was to live.

  Now his intoxication grew. The difficulties, the shrinkings of his spirit, the gloominess, fell away from him. So many of his own kind, the Huguenots, had gone to that new world. What they had done, he could do. Surely they were not greater men than he! Dimly, he remembered the tales of the Englishmen who had sailed the terrible seas to the young world, to escape the vengeful hatred of the old men of Europe. He had learned this, with the indifference with which one listens to an unbelievable legend. Now he recalled, very faintly, the stories of the cities they had founded in the wilderness, of the strange things they had encountered, strange races, fruits, trees, birds and animals. He had shuddered with amused delicacy, upon hearing them. Now, they became close and vital to him. He felt new and excited blood in his veins. The last ragged shreds of satin, the last costume of the courtier, fell from his spiritual body.