IX. The Gorgon's Head
It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis,with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps ofstaircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stonybusiness altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, andstone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, inall directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it wasfinished, two centuries ago.
Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeaupreceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darknessto elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pileof stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that theflambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the greatdoor, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of beingin the open night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there was none,save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one ofthose dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and thenheave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis crossed ahall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase;grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many apeasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lordwas angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night,Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went upthe staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted himto his own private apartment of three rooms: his bed-chamber and twoothers. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs uponthe hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuriesbefitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country.The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never tobreak--the fourteenth Louis--was conspicuous in their rich furniture;but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of oldpages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a roundroom, in one of the chateau's four extinguisher-topped towers. A smalllofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blindsclosed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines ofblack, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour.
"My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper preparation; "theysaid he was not arrived."
Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur.
"Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless, leave thetable as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour."
In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to hissumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, andhe had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to hislips, when he put it down.
"What is that?" he calmly asked, looking with attention at thehorizontal lines of black and stone colour.
"Monseigneur? That?"
"Outside the blinds. Open the blinds."
It was done.
"Well?"
"Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that arehere."
The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out intothe vacant darkness, and stood with that blank behind him, looking roundfor instructions.
"Good," said the imperturbable master. "Close them again."
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He washalf way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand,hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to thefront of the chateau.
"Ask who is arrived."
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behindMonseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the distancerapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road.He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being before him.
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then andthere, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came.He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shakehands.
"You left Paris yesterday, sir?" he said to Monseigneur, as he took hisseat at table.
"Yesterday. And you?"
"I come direct."
"From London?"
"Yes."
"You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with a smile.
"On the contrary; I come direct."
"Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long timeintending the journey."
"I have been detained by"--the nephew stopped a moment in hisanswer--"various business."
"Without doubt," said the polished uncle.
So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them.When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew,looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like afine mask, opened a conversation.
"I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object thattook me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril; but it isa sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would havesustained me."
"Not to death," said the uncle; "it is not necessary to say, to death."
"I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, "whether, if it had carried me tothe utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there."
The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine straightlines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the uncle made agraceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of goodbreeding that it was not reassuring.
"Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I know, you may haveexpressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to the suspiciouscircumstances that surrounded me."
"No, no, no," said the uncle, pleasantly.
"But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glancing at him withdeep distrust, "I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means,and would know no scruple as to means."
"My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in thetwo marks. "Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long ago."
"I recall it."
"Thank you," said the Marquis--very sweetly indeed.
His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musicalinstrument.
"In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, "I believe it to be at once yourbad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison inFrance here."
"I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping his coffee."Dare I ask you to explain?"
"I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had notbeen overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet wouldhave sent me to some fortress indefinitely."
"It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. "For the honourof the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent.Pray excuse me!"
"I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day beforeyesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the nephew.
"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle, with refinedpoliteness; "I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity forconsideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influenceyour destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it foryourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say,at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentleaids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours thatmight so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interestand importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted(comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all suchthings is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the rightof life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many suchdogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom),one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for profe
ssingsome insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--_his_ daughter? We havelost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and theassertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far asto say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, verybad!"
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head;as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country stillcontaining himself, that great means of regeneration.
"We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the moderntime also," said the nephew, gloomily, "that I believe our name to bemore detested than any name in France."
"Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the high is theinvoluntary homage of the low."
"There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, "a face I canlook at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with anydeference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery."
"A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of the family,merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur.Hah!" And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightlycrossed his legs.
But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyesthoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked athim sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness,and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption ofindifference.
"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fearand slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogsobedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shutsout the sky."
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of thechateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it asthey too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown tohim that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own fromthe ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roofhe vaunted, he might have found _that_ shutting out the sky in a newway--to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its leadwas fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.
"Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the honour and reposeof the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall weterminate our conference for the night?"
"A moment more."
"An hour, if you please."
"Sir," said the nephew, "we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruitsof wrong."
"_We_ have done wrong?" repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile,and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.
"Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much accountto both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's time, we dida world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us andour pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father's time,when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, jointinheritor, and next successor, from himself?"
"Death has done that!" said the Marquis.
"And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a system that isfrightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking toexecute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the lastlook of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and toredress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain."
"Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, touching him on thebreast with his forefinger--they were now standing by the hearth--"youwill for ever seek them in vain, be assured."
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, wascruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood lookingquietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again hetouched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point ofa small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through thebody, and said,
"My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I havelived."
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put hisbox in his pocket.
"Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ringing a smallbell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost,Monsieur Charles, I see."
"This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew, sadly; "Irenounce them."
"Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? Itis scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?"
"I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passedto me from you, to-morrow--"
"Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable."
"--or twenty years hence--"
"You do me too much honour," said the Marquis; "still, I prefer thatsupposition."
"--I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little torelinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin!"
"Hah!" said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.
"To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity,under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste,mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness,and suffering."
"Hah!" said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.
"If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands betterqualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from theweight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leaveit and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, inanother generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curseon it, and on all this land."
"And you?" said the uncle. "Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your newphilosophy, graciously intend to live?"
"I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility attheir backs, may have to do some day--work."
"In England, for example?"
"Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. Thefamily name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other."
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-chamber to belighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. TheMarquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of hisvalet.
"England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you haveprospered there," he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephewwith a smile.
"I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I maybe indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge."
"They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. Youknow a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Doctor?"
"Yes."
"With a daughter?"
"Yes."
"Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good night!"
As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecyin his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words,which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the sametime, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thinstraight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm thatlooked handsomely diabolic.
"Yes," repeated the Marquis. "A Doctor with a daughter. Yes. Socommences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!"
It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone faceoutside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephewlooked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.
"Good night!" said the uncle. "I look to the pleasure of seeing youagain in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to hischamber there!--And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will," headded to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned hisvalet to his own bedroom.
The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro in hisloose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot stillnight. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making nonoise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:--looked like someenchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whoseperiodical change into tiger form
was either just going off, or justcoming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at thescraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slowtoil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, theprison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants atthe fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out thechain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain,the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and thetall man with his arms up, crying, "Dead!"
"I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may go to bed."
So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thingauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silencewith a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black nightfor three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stablesrattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise withvery little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned tothe owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatureshardly ever to say what is set down for them.
For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human,stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape,dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads.The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grasswere undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross mighthave come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village,taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, asthe starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave andthe yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed andfreed.
The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountainat the chateau dropped unseen and unheard--both melting away, like theminutes that were falling from the spring of Time--through three darkhours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light,and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.
Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the stilltrees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the waterof the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone facescrimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on theweather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieurthe Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might.At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with openmouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.
Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village. Casementwindows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forthshivering--chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarelylightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to thefountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; menand women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cowsout, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the churchand at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latterprayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at itsfoot.
The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually andsurely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had beenreddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine;now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables lookedround over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in atdoorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogspulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.
All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and thereturn of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of thechateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurriedfigures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there andeverywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, alreadyat work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (notmuch to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while topeck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of itto a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether orno, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life,down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to thefountain.
All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing aboutin their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no otheremotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily broughtin and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidlyon, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying theirtrouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some ofthe people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, andall the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowdedon the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that washighly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetratedinto the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smitinghimself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend,and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behinda servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle(double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version ofthe German ballad of Leonora?
It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had addedthe one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waitedthrough about two hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a finemask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into theheart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hiltwas a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:
"Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques."
A Tale of Two Cities Page 15
