As the last word fell from his lips, and the light above his head went suddenly out, and darkness fell on the breathless hush, the listening hundreds, an indescribable wave of emotion passed through the crowd. Men stirred their feet with a strange, stern sound, that spreading, passed in muttered thunder to the vaults; while women sobbed, and here and there shrieked and prayed aloud. From the altar a priest in a voice that shook with feeling blessed the congregation; then, even as I awoke from a trance of attention, Madame touched my arm, and signed to me to follow her, and gliding quickly from her place, led the way down the aisle. Before the preacher’s last words had ceased to ring in my ears or my heart had forgotten to be moved, we were walking under the stars with the night air cooling our faces; a moment, and we were in the house and stood again in the lighted salon where I had first found Madame Catinot.
Before I knew what she was going to do, she turned to me with a swift movement, and laid both her bare hands on my arm; and I saw that the tears were running down her face. “Who is on My side?” she cried, in a voice that thrilled me to the soul, so that I started where I stood. “Who is on My side? Oh, surely you! Surely you, Monsieur, whose fathers’ swords were drawn for God and the King! Who, born to guide, are surely on the side of light! Who, noble, will never leave the task of government to the base! O — —” and there, breaking off before I could answer, she turned from me with her hands clasped to her face. “O God!” she cried with sobs, “give me this man for Thy service.”
I stood inexpressibly troubled; moved by the sight of this woman in tears, shaken by the conflict in my own soul, somewhat unmanned, perhaps, by what I had seen. For a moment I could not speak; when I did, “Madame,” I said unsteadily, “if I had known that it was for this! You have been kind to me, and I — I can make no return.”
“Don’t say it!” she cried, turning to me and pleading with me. “Don’t say it!” And she laid her clasped hands on my arm and looked at me, and then in a moment smiled through her tears. “Forgive me,” she said humbly, “forgive me. I went about it wrongly. I feel — too much. I asked too quickly. But you will? You will, Monsieur? You will be worthy of yourself?”
I groaned. “I hold their commission,” I said.
“Return it!”
“But that will not acquit me!”
“Who is on My side?” she said softly. “Who is on My side?”
I drew a deep breath. In the silence of the room, the wood-ashes on the hearth settled down, and a clock ticked. “For God! For God and the King!” she said, looking up at me with shining eyes, with clasped hands.
I could have sworn in my pain. “To what purpose?” I cried almost rudely. “If I were to say, yes, to what purpose, Madame? What could I do that would help you? What could I do that would avail?”
“Everything! Everything! You are one man more!” she cried. “One man more for the right. Listen, Monsieur. You do not know what is afoot, or how we are pressed, or — —”
She stopped suddenly, abruptly; and looked at me, listening; listening with a new expression on her face. The door was not closed, and the voice of a man, speaking in the hall below, came up the staircase; another instant, and a quick foot crossed the hall, and sounded on the stairs. The man was coming up.
Madame, face to face with me, dumb and listening with distended eyes, stood a moment, as if taken by surprise. At the last moment, warning me by a gesture to be silent, she swept to the door and went out, closing it — not quite closing it behind her.
I judged that the man had almost reached it, for I heard him exclaim in surprise at her sudden appearance; then he said something in a tone which did not reach me. I lost her answer too, but his next words were audible enough.
“You will not open the door?” he cried.
“Not of that room,” she replied bravely. “You can see me in the other, my friend.”
Then silence. I could almost hear them breathing. I could picture them looking defiance at one another. I grew hot.
“Oh, this is intolerable!” he cried at last. “This is not to be borne. Are you to receive every stranger that comes to town? Are you to be closeted with them, and sup with them, and sit with them, while I eat my heart out outside? Am I — I will go in!”
“You shall not!” she cried; but I thought that the indignation in her voice rang false; that laughter underlay it. “It is enough that you insult me,” she continued proudly. “But if you dare to touch me, or if you insult him — —”
“Him!” he cried fiercely. “Him, indeed! Madame, I tell you at once, I have borne enough. I have suffered this more than once, but — —”
But I had no longer any doubt, and before he could add the next word I was at the door — I had snatched it open, and stood before him. Madame fell back with a cry between tears and laughter, and we stood, looking at one another.
The man was Louis St. Alais.
CHAPTER XX.
THE SEARCH.
I had not seen Louis since the day of the duel at Cahors, when, parting from him at the door in the passage by the Cathedral, I had refused to take his hand. Then I had been sorely angry with him. But time and old memories and crowding events had long softened the feeling; and in the joy of meeting him again, of finding him in this unexpected stranger, nothing was further from my thoughts than to rake up old grudges. I held out my hand, therefore, with a laughing word. “Voilà l’Inconnu, Monsieur!” I said with a bow. “I am here to find you, and I find you!”
He stared at me a moment in the utmost astonishment, and then impulsively grasping my hand he held it, and stood looking at me, with the old affection in his eyes. “Adrien! Adrien!” he said, much moved. “Is it really you?”
“Even so, Monsieur.”
“And here?”
“Here,” I said.
Then, to my astonishment, he slowly dropped my hand; and his manner and his face changed — as a house changes when the shutters are closed. “I am sorry for it,” he said slowly, and after a long pause. And then, with an unmistakable flash of anger, “My God, Monsieur! Why have you come?” he cried.
“Why have I come?”
“Ay, why?” he repeated bitterly. “Why? Why have you come — to trouble us? You do not know what evil you are doing! You do not know, man!”
“I know at least what good I am seeking,” I answered, purely astounded by this sudden and inexplicable change. “I have made no secret of that, and I make no secret of it now. No man was ever worse treated than I have been by your family. Your attitude now impels me to say that. But when I see Madame la Marquise, to-morrow, I shall tell her that it will take more than this to change me. I shall tell her — —”
“You will not see her!” he answered.
“But I shall!”
“You will not!” he retorted.
Before I could answer, Madame Catinot interposed. “Oh, no more!” she cried in a voice which sufficiently evinced her distress. “I thought that you and he were friends, M. Louis? And now — now that fortune has brought you together again — —”
“Would to heaven it had not!” he cried, dropping his hand like a man in despair. And he took a turn this way and that on the floor.
She looked at him. “I do not think that you have ever spoken to me in that tone before, Monsieur,” she said in a tone of keen reproach. “If it is due — if, I mean,” she continued quietly, but with a sparkling eye, “it is because you found M. le Vicomte with me, you infer something unworthy of us. You insult me as well as your friend!”
“Heaven forbid!” he exclaimed.
But she was roused. “That is not enough,” she answered firmly and proudly. “For one week more, this is my house, M. Louis. After that it will be yours. Perhaps then — perhaps then,” she continued, with a pitiful break in her voice, “I shall think of to-night, and wonder I took no warning! Perhaps then, Monsieur, a word of kindness from you may be as rare as a rough word now!”
He was not proof against that, and the sadness in her voice. He threw
himself on his knees before her and seized her hands. “Madame! Catherine! forgive me!” he cried passionately, kissing her hands again and again, and taking no heed of me at all. “Forgive me!” he continued, “I am miserable! You are my only comfort, my only compensation. I do not know, since I saw him, what I am saying. Forgive me!”
“I do!” she said hastily. “Rise, Monsieur!” and she furtively wiped away a tear, then looked at me, blushing but happy. “I do,” she continued. “But, mon cher, I do not understand you. The other day you spoke so kindly of M. de Saux; and of — pardon me — your sister, and of other things. To-day M. de Saux is here, and you are unhappy.”
“I am!” he said, casting a haggard, miserable look at me.
I shrugged my shoulders and spoke up. “So be it,” I said proudly. “But because I have lost a friend, Monsieur, it does not follow that I need lose a mistress. I have come to Nîmes to win Mademoiselle de St. Alais’ hand. I shall not leave until I have won it.”
“This is madness!” he said, with a groan. “Why?”
“Because you talk of the impossible,” he answered. “Because Madame de St. Alais is not at Nîmes — for you.”
“She is at Nîmes!”
“You will have to find her.”
“That is childishness!” I said. “Do you mean to say that at the first hotel I enter I shall not be told where Madame has her lodging?”
“Neither at the first, nor at the last.”
“She is in retreat?”
“I shall not tell you.”
With that we stood facing one another; Madame Catinot watching us a little aside. Clearly the events of the last few months, which had so changed, so hardened Madame St. Alais, had not been lost on Louis. I could fancy, as I confronted him, that it was M. le Marquis, the elder, and not the younger brother, who withstood me; only — only from under Louis’ mask of defiance, there peeped, I still fancied, the old Louis’ face, doubting and miserable.
I tried that chord. “Come,” I said, making an effort to swallow my wrath, and speak reasonably, “I think that you are not in earnest, M. le Comte, in what you say, and that we are both heated. Time was when we agreed well enough, and you were not unwilling to have me for your brother-in-law. Are we, because of these miserable differences — —”
“Differences!” he cried, interrupting me harshly. “My mother’s house in Cahors is an empty shell. My brother’s house at St. Alais is a heap of ashes. And you talk of differences!”
“Well, call them what you like!”
“Besides,” Madame Catinot interposed quickly, “pardon me, Monsieur — besides, M. St. Alais, you know our need of converts. M. le Vicomte is a gentleman, and a man of sense and religion. It needs but a little — a very little,” she continued, smiling faintly at me, “to persuade him. And if your sister’s hand would do that little, and Madame were agreeable?”
“He could not have it!” he answered sullenly, looking away from me.
“But a week ago,” Madame Catinot answered in a startled tone, “you told me — —”
“A week ago is not now,” he said. “For the rest, I have only this to say. I am sorry to see you here, M. le Vicomte, and I beg you to return. You can do no good, and you may do and suffer harm. By no possibility can you gain what you seek.”
“That remains to be seen,” I answered stubbornly, roused in my turn. “To begin with, since you say that I cannot find Mademoiselle, I shall adopt a very simple plan. I shall wait here until you leave, Monsieur, and then accompany you home.”
“You will not!” he said.
“You may depend upon it I shall!” I answered defiantly.
But Madame interposed. “No, M. de Saux,” she said with dignity. “You will not do that; I am sure that you will not; it would be an abuse of my hospitality.”
“If you forbid it?”
“I do,” she answered.
“Then, Madame, I cannot,” I replied. “But — —”
“But nothing! Let there be a truce now, if you please,” she said firmly. “If it is to be war between you, it shall not begin here. I think, too — I think that I had better ask you to retire,” she continued, with an appealing glance at me.
I looked at Louis. But he had turned away, and affected to ignore me. And on that I succumbed. It was impossible to answer Madame, when she spoke to me in that way; and equally impossible to remain in the house, against her will. I bowed, therefore, in silence; and with the best grace I could, though I was sore and angry, I took my cloak and hat, which I had laid on a chair.
“I am sorry,” Madame said kindly. And she held out her hand.
I raised it to my lips. “To-morrow — at twelve — here!” she breathed.
I started. I rather guessed than heard the words, so softly were they spoken; but her eyes made up for the lack of sound, and I understood. The next moment she turned from me, and with a last reluctant glance at Louis, who still had his back to me, I went out.
The man who had admitted me was in the hall. “You will find your horse at the Louvre, Monsieur,” he said, as he opened the door.
I rewarded him, and going out, without a thought whither I was going, walked along the street, plunged in reflection; until marching on blindly I came against a man. That awoke me, and I looked round. I had been in the house little more than three hours, and in Nîmes scarcely longer; yet so much had happened in the time that it seemed strange to me to find the streets unfamiliar, to find myself alone in them, at a loss which way to turn. Though it was hard on ten o’clock, and only a swaying lantern here and there made a ring of smoky light at the meeting of four ways, there were numbers of people still abroad; a few standing, but the majority going one way, the men with cloaks about their necks, the women with muffled heads.
Feeling the necessity, since I must get myself a lodging, of putting away for the moment my one absorbing thought — the question of Louis’ behaviour — I stopped a man who was not going with the stream, and asked him the way to the Hôtel de Louvre. I learned not only that but the cause of the concourse.
“There has been a procession,” he answered gruffly. “I should have thought that you would know that!” he added, with a glance at my hat. And he turned on his heel.
I remembered the red cockade I wore, and before I went farther paused to take it out. As I moved on again, a man came quickly up behind me, and as he passed thrust a paper into my hand. Before I could speak he was gone; but the incident and the bustle of the streets, strange at this late hour, helped to divert my thoughts; and I was not surprised when, on reaching the inn, I was told that every room was full.
“My horse is here,” I said, thinking that the landlord, seeing me walk in on foot, might distrust the weight of my purse.
“Yes, Monsieur; and if you like you can lie in the eating-room,” he answered very civilly. “You are welcome, and you will do no better elsewhere. It is as if the fair were being held at Beaucaire. The city is full of strangers. Almost as full as it is of those things!” he continued querulously, and he pointed to the paper in my hand.
I looked at it, and saw that it was a manifesto headed “Sacrilege! Mary Weeps!” “It was thrust into my hand a minute ago,” I said.
“To be sure,” he answered. “One morning we got up and found the walls white with them. Another day they were flying loose about the streets.”
“Do you know,” I asked, seeing that he had been supping, and was inclined to talk, “where the Marquis de St. Alais is living?”
“No, Monsieur,” he said. “I do not know the gentleman.”
“But he is here with his family.”
“Who is not here,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then in a lower tone, “Is he red, or — or the other thing, Monsieur?”
“Red,” I said boldly.
“Ah! Well, there have been two or three gentlemen going to and fro between our M. Froment, and Turin and Montpellier. It is said that our Mayor would have arrested them long ago if he had done his duty. But he is re
d too, and most of the councillors. And I don’t know, for I take no side. Perhaps the gentleman you want is one of these?”
“Very likely,” I said. “So M. Froment is here?”
“Monsieur knows him?”
“Yes,” I said drily, “a little.”
“Well, he is here, or he is not,” the landlord answered, shaking his head. “It is impossible to say.”
“Why?” I asked. “Does he not live here?”
“Yes, he lives here; at the Port d’Auguste on the old wall near the Capuchins. But — —” he looked round and then continued mysteriously, “he goes out, where he has never gone in, Monsieur! And he has a house in the Amphitheatre, and it is the same there. And some say that the Capuchins is only another house of his. And if you go to the Cabaret de la Vierge, and give his name — you pay nothing.”
He said this with many nods, and then seemed on a sudden to think that he had said too much, and hurried away. Asking for them, I learned that M. de Géol and Buton, failing to get a room there, had gone to the Ecu de France; but I was not very sorry to be rid of them for the time, and accepting the host’s offer, I went to the eating-room, and there made myself as comfortable as two hard chairs and the excitement of my thoughts permitted.
The one thing, the one subject that absorbed me was Louis’ behaviour, and the strange and abrupt change I had marked in it. He had been glad to see me, his hand had leaped to meet mine, I had read the old affection in his eyes; and then — then on a sudden, in a moment he had frozen into surly, churlish antagonism, an antagonism that had taken Madame Catinot by surprise, and was not without a touch of remorse, almost of horror. It could not be that she was dead? It could not be that Denise — no, my mind failed to entertain it. But I rose, trembling at the thought, and paced the room until daylight; listening to the watchman’s cry, and the mournful hours, and the occasional rush of hurrying feet, that spoke of the perturbed city. What to me were Froment, or the red or the white or the tricolour, veto or no veto, endowment or disendowment, in comparison to that?
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 229