Crusader's Tomb

by A. J. Cronin

  The Prior let his hand rest on Stephen’s arm, then he rose and went out.

  Stephen had to struggle to force the tears back from his eyes. He got up. His clothes, washed and neatly folded, were in the armoire with his other belongings. His money, some thirty francs, was in a precise little pile beside his watch, which was going and, he guessed, had been wound for him every day. When he was dressed he left his room and went along an unfamiliar, stone-flagged corridor which took him to the garden at the back.

  It was not a large enclosure, a few paths laid out around some straggling rose-beds leading to a grotto, with a statue at the far end. A handball wall broke the contours of the surrounding hedge. Some fields were beyond. From his conversations with Dom Arthaud, Stephen had learned that, following upon the gift of a small country house, the community, devoted to the training of twenty novices, had only recently been established and was growing solely through the efforts of the monks themselves, who had built with their own hands the small chapel adjoining the old mansion. He could see it now standing white and somewhat raw against the fleecy sky.

  After he had wandered round the paths he was obliged to rest on one of the benches that flanked the handball court. An old man, in the brown habit of a lay brother, was tethering a cow in the pasture. Presently a service began in the chapel and the low chanting, carried on the soft breeze, was more than he could bear. He got up and crawled back to his room.

  There he saw a letter, placed conspicuously for him upon the narrow window-ledge. About a week before, feeling terribly alone, he had propped himself on his pillow and had scrawled a few lines to the tenant of 15 Rue Castel, asking him to forward any mail which might have been sent to that address. This, presumably, was the result. He tore open the envelope. It was from Stillwater, a brief note dated two months previously.

  DEAR STEPHEN,

  I do not know if this will ever reach you. If it does it will inform you of the death of Lady Broughton, in October. This was not unexpected. Some weeks before, the engagement of Claire and Geoffrey was announced. They are to be married quite soon. There is no other news of consequence to give you except to say that Father continues to be most unhappy at your absence. I beg you to return and accept your responsibilities as a dutiful son.

  Yours, Caroline

  Still holding the letter, he sat down on the bed. At another time this word from home might not have so deeply affected him. He had known of Lady Broughton’s illness, and his fondness for Claire had never been more than a kind of brotherly affection. Yet here, in these strange remote surroundings, beaten down by illness, the death of the one, the impending marriage of the other – to Geoffrey of all men – seemed to increase his sense of exile, to cut him off more sharply from all that pleasant life which normally would still be his. The tone of Caroline’s letter, curt, filled with unspoken bitterness and implied reproaches for what might have been, made him more than ever feel himself a creature apart, whose very nature set him in conflict with family, home, and society.

  As the weeks passed he grew stronger. The surrounding country, covered with rocks and stone-pines, unbeautiful and without character, gave him slight incentive to leave the grounds. He made friends with the two children of Pierre, the cottager who had brought him to the monastery, gave them rides, perched high on the seat of his bicycle. He helped old Brother Ludovic in the garden, and played handball with the novices at their hour of recreation. They were a cheerful group of youths, recruited mainly from good bourgeois homes in Garonde and the neighbouring towns. Perhaps because he was a stranger, and of a different race, they went out of their way to show him many small attentions tinged with a proselytizing spirit which, while it left him otherwise unmoved, touched and amused him. Their hearts were bound up in this new little community, and when not engaged in prayer they gave themselves unsparingly to hard manual labour in their endeavours to improve it.

  One day, at the handball game, a remark, half laughing, half serious, was addressed to him.

  ‘Monsieur Desmonde… since you are an artist, why don’t you paint a fine picture for our church?’

  Stephen, his attention arrested, gazed at the speaker.

  ‘Why not?’ he answered, with a serious air.

  The idea, which had not occurred to him, struck him as an admirable way of expressing his gratitude, of making some tangible return for the kindness he had received. Besides, his enforced idleness had begun to weigh oppressively upon him.

  That same afternoon he spoke to his friend Dom Arthaud, who received the suggestion warmly and promised to take it to the Superior. At first the Prior hesitated. The chapel, although admittedly unfinished within, was the product of prolonged and arduous effort and dear to his heart. Would it be wise to place this prized and hard-won possession in the hands of an unknown painter whose few canvases, while strangely compelling, gave no evidence of orthodox proficiency? In the end, that faith which was the sustaining force of his existence moved him to his decision. He sent for Stephen.

  ‘Tell me, my son, what you propose to do.’

  ‘I should like to paint a fresco above the altar on the end wall of the apse.’

  ‘A religious subject?’

  ‘Naturally. I thought of the Transfiguration. It would light up the entire chapel.’

  ‘You are sure you could produce something of which we would approve?’

  ‘I would try. I have no pigments, no brushes large enough. You would have to get these for me. You would have to take me on trust. But if you do so, I promise to do my best.’

  Next morning two of the fathers departed for Garonde, returning in the evening with various brown-paper packages. Meanwhile, the novices had erected a light wooden scaffolding behind the altar. Early next day, with that excitement which he always experienced at the beginning of a work, Stephen took up his brush.

  Yet his state of mind was quite unusual. Relaxed in body, not altogether free of the lassitude of convalescence, he seemed bathed in a languid softness. His emotions were still unstable, moisture came readily to his eyes. The atmosphere of the chapel, the intoning of the monks, the sense of being detached from the world, induced in him emotions quite foreign to his nature. Although he had no models, the work came into being with an ease surprising to one accustomed to strain beyond endurance in those first creative hours. Already he had blocked in the central figure of the Lord, clad in white garments, radiant with a cloud of light, … and was beginning to outline the features of Moses and Elias.

  As he progressed with such facility he experienced odd moments of distrust wherein he wondered if, instead of projecting his own ideas, he was not unconsciously reproducing a composite of the early religious painters. Applied in tempera, his colours, usually so hard, were soft and flat, his forms seemed disturbingly conventional. Yet against these doubts was the growing approval of the community.

  In the beginning, he had been watched with anxiety, perhaps even with misgiving. But soon this gave way to open admiration. Often as he turned on the scaffold to clean his brushes he would observe in the eyes of some novice who had come in ostensibly to pray, but actually to incur the sin of distraction, a look of perfect rapture. Was not that reassurance enough? And, after all, had he not pledged himself to please?

  The fresco, occupying the entire space above the reredos, was finished within three weeks, and when the scaffolding had been removed all the community assembled, viewed it with acclamation.

  ‘My son,’ the Prior addressed Stephen, ‘now I know that your coming here was providential. You have given us a memento of your stay which will endure for good, beyond the lifetime of all of us. Now it is we who are most deeply in your debt.’ He went on: ‘ Tomorrow we shall celebrate a High Mass to consecrate your work. Although you are not a member of our faith, I hope you will please us by being present.’

  Next morning the altar was bedecked with flowers, ablaze with candles. The Superior, in white vestments, assisted by Dom Arthaud, sang the Mass while the choir chanted the responses
. To Stephen, seated in the gallery, the painting, glowing in the candlelight, made mystical by a fume of incense, seemed a splendid achievement. Never before had he had such a success.

  A special repast was served after the ceremony, with a country wine of such surpassing potency that Stephen took a walk to the village to clear his head.

  In the afternoon when he returned from the village Dom Arthaud met him at the door with a queer expression.

  ‘There is a visitor to see you. A gentleman who says he has come to take you back to Paris.’

  Stephen went to his room. There, reclining on the bed, wearing hat and coat and puffing furiously at his pipe, was Peyrat. He jumped up immediately Stephen entered, kissed him on both cheeks.

  ‘What have you been up to? Not once, but a dozen times have I tried to reach you. And now, only by chance, I got your address from the Rue Castel. Why do you bury yourself down here?’

  ‘I’ve been painting.’ Stephen smiled, still tingling at the unexpectedness of seeing Peyrat.

  ‘Worse luck,’ said Peyrat, frowning, with an assumption of fierceness. ‘ While I was waiting they dragged me to the church. What a frightful thing you have done, cher ami. Oh, what a miserable copy of del Sarto. What a dreadful rehash of Luini. Although they love it and will go down on their knees before it for centuries, it is inexcusably shocking, and for you, especially at this moment, a disgrace.’

  ‘Why at this moment?’ Stephen asked, rather out of countenance.

  ‘Because of the announcement made last month which has caused me to chase after you all over France.’

  ‘What on earth are you driving at?’

  ‘An announcement,’ Peyrat continued, undisturbed, rolling the words over his tongue as though he enjoyed their savour, ‘which will put a medal on your breast, fifteen hundred francs in your pocket, and permit us, I trust, to take our trip together to Spain.’

  Suddenly he threw his arms round Stephen and once again embraced him.

  ‘Never mind your sickness, or that horrible Moses and Elias. Your Circe has won you the Prix de Luxembourg.’

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  On a grey afternoon early in June, 1914, Stephen came along the Faubourg St Honoré towards the Place Vendôme. It was a district he rarely frequented, especially at this hour, when the fashionable thoroughfare made him feel strangely out of place. However, he had been to the Salles des Ventes Soulat, in the Rue Heber, had decided to walk off the headache acquired in the crowded auction-room and get back to his own less elegant haunts.

  The sale had made him sad and angry. In order that he might find his share of the expenses of their Spanish expedition, Peyrat had decided upon that expedient used occasionally by artists of the quarter and had sent in ten of his paintings to the Soulat vente libre, held once a month.

  Today the feature of the sale had been a large Bouguereau, a diaphanously draped young female, with skin like coloured putty, black hair parted in the middle, and the eyes of a tame gazelle, holding a pitcher, borrowed from Greuze, from which water gushed into an ornamental, rose-embowered well. On the dais, the picture had induced a hush, then a hum of admiration from the assembly and, after brisk bidding, the hammer fell at ten thousand francs. Various lots of antique furniture followed, then some kitchenware – Peyrat’s paintings came last upon the list. The first caused a faint titter, the second a decided ripple of amusement, and by the time the final canvas was exhibited the crowd was laughing heartily, encouraged by a shower of witticisms from the back of the gallery. Not one of these imaginative and original works fetched more than sixty francs. There was no reserve – the entire ten were knocked down to the same buyer for a total of four hundred and eighty francs. Who had purchased them? Was it merely some farceur who thought to shock and entertain his friends. Curiosity caused Stephen to remain behind and question the clerk in the bureau where settlements were made. And there had come the worst moment of all – the entire ten paintings had been secured, practically for nothing, by an agent of the art dealer Tessier.

  ‘Did he buy the Bouguereau?’ asked Stephen grimly.

  ‘Mon Dieu, no, Monsieur.’

  ‘Why did he go after these others?’

  The clerk shrugged.

  ‘Surely Monsieur is aware of the tricks and trends of the art world. What one buys today for fifty francs one may sell in ten years’ time for fifty thousand… if one is Tessier.’

  Stephen left the office saying some bad words to himself. Yet it was not long before his mood lifted. Exploited though Peyrat was, and must always be, now at least Jerome had almost five hundred francs, which, added to the fifteen hundred he had himself received for his prize, would enable them to set out for Madrid and, with economy, to spend several months in Spain together. Here in Paris, spring had been cold and dismal – the wind blew sharp and dusty on street corners, and the leaves of the chestnut trees were shrivelled at their edges. The prospect of escaping to a sunnier clime warmed Stephen’s bones.

  At this point he passed the creamery which he had patronised when first he came to Paris, just opposite the Clifton Hotel, and he reflected with a shadowy smile on the changes wrought in him since he had driven up, timid yet entranced, to its stuffy portals. Suddenly, while the thought was in his mind, his expression altered. Advancing directly towards him, accompanied by two men – an elderly French officer wearing a kepi and a much-beribboned uniform, and a younger man, deeply bronzed, also with a military bearing – was his Uncle Hubert. It would have been possible for Stephen, by feigning interest in a shop window, to avoid the encounter. Instead, with features already set, convinced that General Desmonde would cut him, he went on.

  However, he was wrong – with a barely perceptible flicker of his grey eye Hubert recognised him, halted slightly, continued for a few paces, then, with a word to his companions, turned back.

  ‘Stephen.’ Though his voice was quite controlled, he did not extend his hand. ‘ I’m fortunate to have run into you. I thought I might have to reach you at the Rue Castel.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I very much want to see you. Will you come to my hotel later? I can’t stop now – I’m with these people.’

  Across his shoulder Stephen was conscious of the two officers, pretending, with perfect politeness, to be unaware of his existence.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘The Clifton, as usual.’ The General glanced across the street. ‘Look here, come to breakfast tomorrow. Nine o’clock.’

  Stephen hesitated, but only for an instant.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Good. I haven’t a deal of time, so make it nine sharp.’

  With a brief nod, Hubert swung round, strode off with his firends.

  With less military precision, Stephen resumed his way towards the Left Bank. This unexpected encounter, awakening memories both poignant and bitter which he wished to forget, had disconcerted him. There had never been much understanding between General Desmonde and himself – their natures were antipathetic – yet Hubert had always treated him with condescending amiability. And the impersonal coldness which he had just now displayed seemed to presage that the interview tomorrow would not be agreeable. Nevertheless, Stephen’s pride, and that ironic humour which had lately reinforced his character, above all, a fixed determination not to be intimidated, made him firmly resolve not to evade the issue. On the following morning at nine o’clock precisely he entered the gloomily respectable, dark maroon lobby of the Clifton.

  General Desmonde was already in the dining-room, its solitary occupant, and having acknowledged Stephen’s punctuality with a slightly less frigid greeting, he remarked:

  ‘I’ve ordered bacon and eggs, tea, toast and marmalade for both of us. One thing about this place, you can get a decent English breakfast.’

  A waiter brought the admirable British food. Buttering his toast Hubert bit into it crisply.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, munching, ‘ you’d like news of home.’

  �
�If you care to give it me. How is my father?’

  ‘Fairly well, on the whole. They all seem to be. Your mother’s been away again. Davie’s grown – quite a tall chap now.’

  Stephen, with an effort, maintained his expression of polite interest. His uncle went on:

  ‘My lot are pretty fit, too. Geoffrey and Claire nicely settled in.’ He shot a glance under his brow. ‘Claire is expecting a child in the summer.’

  ‘You hope for a boy, of course.’ Again, politely.

  ‘Oh, either kind… I daresay Geoff wants a son to follow on at Sandhurst.’

  There was a silence. The questions which Stephen wished to ask remained unuttered. In this atmosphere of chill constraint he could not speak with feeling of Davie or his father, but if only to protect himself must maintain, with equal stiffness, this attitude of seeming indifference.

  At last the General finished, touched up his cropped moustache, folded his napkin with the calm precision which marked all his actions, looked steadily across the table at Stephen. ‘How has your… your sketching been progressing?’

  ‘Oh, very much as usual. We have our good days and our bad, you know.’

  ‘Hm. You’ve been away almost two years now.’

  ‘Art is long,’ with an indifferent smile. ‘ Time is fleeting.’

  ‘Indeed! I suppose … you have … no success … to show for your efforts?’

  ‘Very little,’ Stephen maintained his tone of irony.

  ‘Ah, nothing destined for immortality?’

  ‘Not yet, perhaps … but who can tell?’

  Hubert made a disdainful gesture.

  ‘Why do you go on … leading this kind of life?’

  ‘It is impossible for me to explain it to you – though I daresay I could to a sympathetic ear.’

  ‘Is it some kind of idiotic notoriety you are after… or mere slackness?’