The Arm and the Darkness

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  He walked slowly up and down his chamber with a sense of growing excitement. He had always possessed a prophetic eye. Today, it was sharper and keener than ever, seeming to plunge far into the future. His vision of a great French Empire seemed to lie before him like a golden dream, floating in luminous mists. But it was no longer a dream to him. It was an approaching reality.

  He was no longer imbued with a passionate patriotism. That patriotism, at its best, had been an expression of his deep egotism, a fact which he had recognized but had tried to conceal even from himself. But now he did not conceal it; he rejoiced in it; he exulted in it, acknowledging it with free and untrammeled delight. This France, this dream, was his own! It was his own hand which had carved and shaped its future. It was his monument. It was the work of Armand-Jean de Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu. Working at last in a full acknowledgment of his supreme egotism, he was hampered by nothing.

  A messenger came in with a missive elaborately sealed. The Cardinal, engrossed in his visions, took it impatiently, and tossed it upon a table. He resumed his pacing, which began to take swiftness upon itself. He paused a moment, in knotty cogitation. His eye fell upon the missive, and he took it up, idly. He read it, without grasping the meaning. Only when he came to the agitated signature of Madame de Tremblant, blotted with tears, did he reread the letter with close attention.

  He paused, after reading, turning the missive over and over in his fine narrow hands. His brow contracted. He tapped the envelope against his teeth. Once he sighed a little. Then he rang for his secretary, Louis de Richepin. Louis, always close at hand, entered immediately.

  The Cardinal studied him for a long bemused moment. That calm and marble countenance had become attenuated, immobile, yet not rigid. It was as if the sharp and stony outlines had been softened by the rains of ages, so that they were less harsh. Yet, in those large blue eyes, so full of glacial tints and remote lights, there was a haunted shadow, an abstraction.

  “Ah, Louis,” said the Cardinal. He glanced at the missive in his hand, then he moved quickly to a chest near his bed, opened it, and appeared to be absorbed for a moment or two in its contents. “Ah, yes,” he murmured. For the first time in some long period he did not know what to say. He turned to the young priest, who was waiting, calm and respectful as always, and appeared to return to the trivial subject at hand. “Ah, yes,” he said, still again.

  “Your Eminence wished to see me?” asked Louis.

  “Yes, yes, of course.” The Cardinal paused. He played with his golden cross. “It is nothing of much moment. But Madame de Tremblant informs me that her daughter, Mademoiselle Marguerite, is unwell, and she requests that I send someone to Mademoiselle—a confessor.” He did not add that Madame had requested his own presence.

  Did the young priest start, or was that a passing shadow through the heavy draperies? Did he pale, or was that again the effect of the shadow? When he spoke, his voice was low, and slightly hoarse: “Mademoiselle—she is very ill?”

  The Cardinal hesitated. He touched his fingers to his frail mouth. Then he shrugged. “Who can tell? I doubt it, however. Ladies are subject to frequent humors from which we are happily more immune. Nevertheless, I should deem it a favor, Louis, if you were to go at once to the Hôtel de Tremblant.”

  Louis approached a step. There was a blue cast over his countenance, in which his eyes were alive and tormented. “Monseigneur, you are certain that Mademoiselle—”

  “Louis,” interrupted the Cardinal, stabbed by an unusual pang, “I have said I do not know. Madame has asked for a confessor for Mademoiselle. Her daughter has not been able to make her confession recently, and Madame, as you know, is a rigorous Catholic.”

  Louis did not speak. He wrung his hands. Then, with a bow, he backed away and left the chamber. Sighing, the Cardinal watched him go. Then he reread the missive from Madame:

  “I implore your Eminence, who has always been such a kind and affectionate friend to this family, to come at once to the Hôtel de Tremblant. My daughter, Marguerite Marie, is at the point of death. She suffered a hemorrhage of the lungs at midnight, and our physician has informed me that she cannot live to evening.”

  Louis, impelled by some subconscious command, returned for a moment to his chamber. He gathered up the necessary articles for administration to one in extremis. When he came out of his dark abstraction, and saw what lay in his hands, he drew a sharp groaning breath. “No!” he cried, aloud, staring about him at the bare walls.

  When he left the Palais Cardinal, he found the Cardinal’s own equipage waiting for him. He never remembered that devious drive through the streets to the Hôtel de Tremblant. He sat huddled forward, his clenched hands on his knees, his eyes fixed starkly before him. A strange sensation he had never experienced before had him in its grip. He felt that he was dying. Black mists swirled before him, and salt water rose continually to his mouth.

  He had no sooner seen the reddened eyes of the man who opened the massive doors for him than he knew that death was in this house. He climbed up the great gilt and marble staircase, holding to the banister with a hand as cold and numb as ice. He felt nothing beneath his feet. He was walking on endless shifting clouds.

  He was met at the door of Marguerite’s chamber by her weeping mother and sisters. He looked at them dumbly. “I have come,” he whispered.

  “Ah, Monseigneur, then his Eminence is indisposed?” asked Madame, her hoarse voice muffled and dull.

  Louis regarded her with sudden sharp concentration, and his pale lips parted soundlessly.

  But Madame saw nothing strange in the young priest’s white silence. She leaned upon his arm, as she reentered her daughter’s room. They were followed by the sobbing and tearful sisters, so pretty in their subdued gowns and fluttering curls.

  Louis had entered only one woman’s chamber in all his life, and that chamber had been his mother’s. He had an impression, confused with his suffering, of gold and silver and ivory tints, of masses of pale silk drawn across the windows, of a lovely small harp of ivory standing mute in a corner, of a prie-dieu against one wall, fluttering with dim candlelight, which blew fitfully on a large and exquisite crucifix of gilt and ivory, of a white canopied bed floating in white lace, and, upon the silken cushions, a coppery mass of curls framing a still marble face. Two distinguished physicians were bending over that slight and motionless form, which hardly lifted the gleaming white coverlet, so fragile and small was it.

  As Madame, the young ladies and the priest entered, the physicians glanced up and inclined their heads. Their faces were full of grave anxiety, and in their eyes was no encouragement, no hope. Louis approached the bed. He looked down upon the dying girl, whose golden lashes touched the dim colorless cheek, whose lips were parted on the painful and feeble breath. He did not move. He might have been made of snow, so expressionless was his countenance, so darkened and in shadow his eyes.

  “She is becoming conscious,” whispered one physician. Madame knelt beside the bed. She dropped her large head, with its great, coarse and brutal features, against her daughter’s shoulder. She did not weep. But her arms extended themselves over the poor body of this frail child, and tightened in a desperate embrace. Her daughters disposed themselves about the bed, applying wisps of lace kerchiefs to faces already swollen and blotched with tears.

  The dying girl stirred, with a faint moan. The fluttering eyelashes lifted, and the golden eyes stared out blankly, suffused with fear and pain. They touched each face briefly, restlessly, and wandered on. At last they reached Louis. As they did so, a wild and ineffable light flashed into them.

  The elder physician whispered something to Madame, and, weeping with the hard dry torment of the strong, she rose, motioned to her daughters, who, with the physicians, followed her from the chamber. Louis and the girl were alone.

  They looked at each other. The candlelight fluttered on the crucifix. A faint wind blew the pale draperies at the window. Something bright and shining seemed to fill the chamber.
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  Louis knelt down beside the girl, and, without a word, laid his head on the pillow which supported her own head. Her hand, lifted with enormous effort, came to rest against his cheek, to press it feebly. Now the cold palm warmed; the finger tips trembled. The girl turned her head, and her icy lips pressed themselves to his brow. They remained like this in a long silence. From Marguerite there flowed that sweet and powerful radiance, comforting and tender, which once before had reconciled Louis to life, had fused him into oneness with another human being.

  The sick and fainting anguish in the young priest became quieter, but, mysteriously stronger, more immense, more piercing. He took her hands, and held them to his lips. There were no tears in his eyes, no cry on his tongue. And the girl looked at him with that strong sweet smile of complete faith and love. So pure was it, so resistless, that health and vitality seemed to have returned to her, and faint rose banners fluttered in her transparent cheeks.

  “My love,” he said, “my dearest love.”

  She sighed. Her lips moved; then, with a touching gesture, she turned on her side and crept into his arms. He held her against his heart. He looked over the gleaming curls at the prie-dieu and saw nothing but his own desolation.

  Marguerite stirred at last. She lifted her mouth, waiting. He kissed her gently at first, and then, with sudden agony, sudden frantic denial, his kisses became frenzied, and between them he groaned. He held her to him with increasing despair and passionate agony. He was beside himself, distraught.

  “You cannot leave me, Marguerite,” he said, his lips pressed deeply into her soft white throat. “No, you can never leave me. Did you not promise me this? On that night, Marguerite, you swore to me: ‘I shall never leave you.’ Do you remember this, Marguerite?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, clinging to him, looking into his wild eyes with her tender smile. “I shall never leave you, Louis. I shall always be with you.”

  He understood her. His expression became dark and more wild. “No, Marguerite, if you die, you shall have left me! There is nothing beyond the grave, my sweetest one! Am I not a priest? Do I not know? It is a lie, Marguerite. The priests know it. It is a delusion, a falsehood, spoken out of pity to those who are suffering and despairing! Do I not know? Do we not confess it among ourselves, some with scorn, some with pity, and some with contempt? If you leave me, Marguerite, you will be gone forever! There is nothing —nothing—”

  His voice, hoarse, distraught, frenzied, tore through his throat, inflicting pain and twisting torment upon it as though a knife had entered. His hands feverishly held the girl. Between his tortured and incoherent words his lips kissed her, over and over. He kissed her throat, her breasts, her poor emaciated arms, her hands, her forehead and her lips. As on that night of their love, he cried out: “Have pity on me, Marguerite!”

  She submitted to his caresses, to the clutching terror of his arms, and listened to his groaning. She forgot her own suffering, her own sinking and fear, in one last supreme compassion and love. When he was quieter, she held him in her arms, and his head lay upon her bosom. She could not speak aloud; her Voice came only in a whisper, and her eyes, smiling and full of poignant sweetness and faith, fastened themselves upon the distant crucifix.

  “Louis, I shall never leave you. You must not doubt this. Even if only one soul ever lived beyond death, that soul will be mine. Believe it; if you do not, I cannot come to you. I cannot wait for you.”

  She put her hands under his head and lifted it, and with one last effort of her sinking and dying strength, she forced him to look at her. Now there was no fear in that deathly young face, no sadness. It was all tender smiles and steadfast courage. She drew his head to her. She kissed him slowly and eagerly upon his mouth. Her eyes closed, and she sighed.

  He held her to him as if in his own strength, his own savage denial, his own will, he could defy and hold off the supreme enemy of mankind. She lay in his arms, still smiling. Slowly, that smile became fixed, lofty and remote. No breath stirred her breast.

  He laid her back upon her pillows. Her eyelids had half opened. A gleam shone from between them. Slowly, with fingers as stiff and rigid as stone, he closed those eyelids. He folded the cooling hands, so frail and small, upon the quiet bosom. The slight wind blew through the draperies, and stirred the copper curls.

  He stood up, and looked down upon all that he had ever purely and selflessly loved, all that had brought the world closer to him and had made him a man, all that had given him glimpses of heaven and ecstasy. He stood there, his hand against the post of the canopy, and he did not move.

  In his past, there had been no joy; in his present, there was no consolation; in his future, there was no hope. The world rolled away from him like a raveling ball of mist, vanished into eternal fogs. Now he was face to face with the last mute agony of man, confronting the nothingness, the horror, the dread and the despair of eternity. A black and frightful pain transfixed his heart, too profound for words or tears. And it was an enormous hatred that embraced God, that, in its intensity was the last accusation, the last groaning contempt and loathing of man tormented to the death, and seeing his tormentor fully for the first and last time.

  All at once, he remembered that he had not administered extreme unction to Marguerite de Tremblant. Remembering this, he began to smile, a most dreadful and contorted smile. That smile widened. He laughed aloud, hoarsely.

  A moment later, Madame de Tremblant, her daughters and the physicians entered. Louis did not hear them. His laughter was no longer audible. But it remained on his face; it shook his body.

  CHAPTER XLIV

  Fear has a living and visible reality, like a gray and steaming fog, like a coiling miasma, like a cloud blotting out the light. It lay over the huddled village, over the vineyards and the dun hills, over the river, pitted and scarred by the cataracts of rain. The very aspect of the heavens, filled with boiling gray and black clouds, the mist which twisted over the fields and meadows, the pools of water which formed in the cobbled streets, the glistening roofs and walls of the low houses, the wind which bent the tall poplars and turned them white as driven ghosts, all seemed of the substance of fear, its very emanation. Everything seemed to shudder, to cower, to writhe, in the storm of fear. Occasionally a serpent of pale and livid lightning leapt over the hills, parted the tempestuous skies, followed by a dull hoarse roaring like the distant tumult of giants.

  Not a soul stirred in the streets. Not a faint yellow light glimmered behind the shuttered windows. The small gardens were torn and flattened, petals rising like battered butterflies on the wind, leaves whirling down from the trees. The cross on the church caught wild and brilliant reflection from the lightning, so that it flashed balefully. The river was rising; its heavy and uneasy voice could be heard in the intervals of the wind and the thunder. The desolation was complete. Fear, and its follower, the storm, ruled over the earth.

  It was slightly past dawn. For days, now, the villagers had lived in terror. Cooled of their unreasoning, their monstrous madness, they knew that the ferocious law of France would soon beset them. They had killed a great noble, a magnate; they had destroyed his château, the evidence of his power. They had assaulted the power, the law, of France. Punishment would soon be upon them in the shape of the gallows. The priest they had expected to uphold, to exonerate them, was dead. No argument would be allowed, no justification. The walls of France had heard their blows and their imprecations. It would be enough that they had lifted their hands against established power. Now, for the first time, they realized the enormous force arrayed against them. They, the canaille, the disinherited, the helpless, the nameless, had dared to assail authority and privilege. They would die for it.

  They huddled together in their fright. Some of the most desperate talked of presenting a formidable front to the coming avengers, but even the most sanguine smiled drearily at this. Some wished to flee with their wives and children. But, where? So long had they been free to think as men, to plan as men, that they evolved a
ll manner of wild plans, with desperate strength. Now, they realized that they had no strength. With the death of their defender, their protector, they were open once again to the savagery of established power.

  They still felt no remorse, no sorrow, no grief, for Paul de Vitry. They dared not feel these things. They knew if once they did, they would completely disintegrate. So, they invented among themselves a sustaining thought: he was part of the power which now menaced them, which would destroy them. So, they hated him still. In such fashion does the craven and devious human mind defend itself.

  Few slept in these awful days. They waited, and listened, for the avengers. But the storm had been furious that morning. So it was that they did not hear the pounding and rumble of scores of horsemen riding into the village. They did not see or hear the forty young and resolute nobles with their grim countenances, wrapped in their cloaks against the rain, and their two hundred anonymous followers, with coarser faces and more ferocious eyes. These two hundred and forty men drifted like violent hushed shadows into the village, armed, spurred and dripping. The forty crowded into the tavern and the house of Crequy. The two hundred huddled under the eaves of outbuildings, or under the lashing shelter of straining trees.

  Crequy had been expecting them. On the pommel of Arsène’s horse the young Roselle had ridden. She rushed into her uncle’s arms, sobbing. He kissed her, put her from him, and commanded her to go to Cecile Grandjean, who was still in a grave condition. Then the bald and sinister giant turned to Arsène and saluted him respectfully, but with a malignant grin. “You have come, Monsieur,” he said.

  A great red fire blazed on the hearth. There was another fire in the kitchen. The young nobles crowded about these fires, shaking their wet cloaks pettishly and vigorously, so that the fire hissed at the touch of the flying drops of water. The firelight rose and fell on their young hard faces, on their quick eager eyes, on their white teeth. They talked briefly, questioning Crequy with remote condescension. They filled the tavern and the house with orderly violence and harsh purpose. As they warmed their hands, the firelight caught the flash of jewels on narrow fingers, the glare of an alert eyeball, the dull gleam of the hilts of swords, the shine of wet and streaming hair on young shoulders.