The Arm and the Darkness

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “These are your leaders?” asked Arsène.

  The mob nodded eagerly, shouting, raising upclenched fists, pressing closer in their shameful treachery to Arsène, hoping to obtain favor in him for their delivering up of those who had led them. Dubonnet, having, in his mad strength, momentarily shaken off the hands of his captors, fell on his knees before Arsène, and lifted his hands.

  “Monsieur,” he groaned, “my good lord and master, have mercy on me! There is no priest here to shrive me. I am a good Catholic—I cannot go to my death unconfessed. I am a man with a wife. I am a poor man.”

  His voice dwindled and died in his stricken throat. He whimpered, made disordered gestures with his hands. His eyes, the glittering eyes of a terrified animal, implored the inexorable Arsène. The shrieking of the woman in the background became an unbearable sound.

  “Why did you lead your people against their lord?” asked Arsène.

  The man’s whimpering lips gibbered. He rubbed his hands against them. His voice, when it came, was a squeak:

  “Monsieur, it was the priest. I am a good Catholic. He put it into my mind that Monsieur le Comte was part of a Huguenot plot to destroy the Church—”

  Arsène turned away. Crequy seized the wretch. Arsène did not look on the final struggle. He heard the blind screaming of the plunging man, a scream which was abruptly broken off after the quick screech of the rope on the gibbet. Now even the distant woman was silent, as all but Arsène watched the death of Dubonnet.

  A sulphurous stench pervaded the air, and from the earth rose a fetid odor as of decay and corruption. Arsène looked about him. The drumming of the thunder had become a close howl. Deep within himself, Arsène heard that howl, and a numb paralysis, voluptuous in its weakness, encased him. A kind of frightful and broken-hearted joy, vicious in its whirling intensity, caused him to laugh aloud with a savage sound. Now a horrible and fateful quiet seemed to fall on every one. It was a pantomime acted by deaf mutes moving in a nightmare.

  Then Arsène fixed his eyes starkly upon the second figure of La Farge writhing against the sky. Crequy, the huge giant, stood at the flapping feet of his last victim, looking upwards, grinning. A nebulous quality floated about him, so that he seemed formed of dark fog and mist, through which an eternal malignance glowed. The villagers and their executioners stood motionless. The quickening lightning flashed over pale and bloodless faces, over staring empty eyes, over open imbecile mouths and blowing hair. Once an especially fierce blaze revealed the gutted broken walls of the château on its hill.

  Arsène felt that he could bear no more. He looked away from the gibbet. He saw the gray and misty village street beyond the crowd and the tavern. What he saw made him blink incredulously. A small horse was approaching, with exhausted bent head and limping hoof. And on that horse was seated a quiet figure in a cloak and a broad low hat. The vision moved in a heavy and melancholy preoccupation.

  No one else saw for some moments. The figure dismounted. It came forward, seeming to float in a gray dream. It was the Abbé Lovelle.

  No, said Arsène, to himself. His companions turned idly and stared at the priest. Now the villagers perceived his approach. Great broken cries broke from them. A convulsion rushed among them, like stagnant waters agitated by the dropping of an enormous stone. Over their tortured faces, torn and wild, a vivid light of joy flashed and rippled. They struggled to reach their priest through the circle of their guards, but were hurled back by violent blows. But they persisted, not feeling these blows, extending their arms to him, moaning, sobbing, groaning with joy, bubbling appeals for mercy rising in shrieks to their lips. Many fell on their knees, stretching forth stark and trembling hands, kissing the air frantically. Their eyes glowed with a phosphorescent glare.

  The priest stood for a moment and looked at all these things, at the gibbet, at the newly hanged man jerking in his agony against the sky, at Arsène and his companions, at the wolfish faces of the executioners. He did not move. He was a small black image, bent and tragic, with a quiet face. He put his hands to his eyes, after a long time. Then his hands fell away. His old and withered cheeks were running with tears.

  Then without a word, and, very slowly, he approached Arsène, looking up at him with a long and steadfast gaze. Arsène watched him come, in utter silence.

  The abbé halted before Arsène. Now silence fell once more, and there was no movement but the last dying jerks of the last hanged man, grotesque and awkward against the sky. There was only one far sound: the snarling growl of Crequy, hungry and deep.

  The lightning illumined the abbé’s face. It was stern and still, and waiting. Arsène tried to speak; then, impotently, he lifted his arm and pointed to the ruins of the château. The abbé, following that gesture, looked aside and upwards. He started so violently that his shabby black garments fluttered as though a wind had struck them.

  “Yes,” said Arsène, very softly, “these sheep of yours did that, Monsieur le Curé. They murdered their savior and their protector. They did their friend to death, as a just payment for his mercy and his justice. And to this end, to this gibbet, they were led by your dear brother in Christ, the priest de Pacilli.”

  Very slowly, the priest returned his gaze to Arsène, and then to the peasants. He uttered no cry, made no gesture. But he gazed at those haggard and distraught men and women, and his face expressed his broken sorrow, his grief, his bewilderment and agony. His lips trembled. He bent his head. He seemed as if praying.

  Then, very softly, he said, looking up at Arsène: “Seven nights ago, I had a dream. It was a most frightful dream. I dreamt that my people were in danger, that some holocaust was upon them because of a nameless guilt. A voice urged me to leave my dear niece, to arise and return to this place. In the morning, I left at dawn.”

  The peasants stared at him in heavy silence, as if fascinated. And then their own faces, which had been filled only with terror and cunning, changed, became torn and contorted. One by one, they began to weep, to sob, and the sound of their grief rose upwards like an arching wave, clamorous with anguish and despair. They cowered; they covered their faces with their hands. Their lamentations, now low and hoarse, struck on the hearts of even the hardest with unbearable force. All fear for themselves had gone from them. They mourned simply and movingly, with sorrow.

  Then, slowly, one by one, they fell on their knees, kneeling with bent heads, still weeping. A peasant nearest the priest spoke hoarsely, lifting up his hands with humble abandon:

  “Father, we do not know why we did this thing. We have killed our lord, our friend. Do not ask us why. We do not know.”

  The priest listened. Then he held up his hands over them, lifted his face to the stormy heavens and prayed in silence. His tears rolled over his face.

  Arsène, watching as if in a dream, felt a tug on his arm. Young de la Royale whispered to him with painful impatience: “Let us be done with them, and this tattered priest.”

  Arsène stared at him unseeingly, then turned again to the Abbé Lovelle. The abbé was regarding him, still weeping. He said: “Monsieur, where is your authority to execute these helpless people?”

  Arsène gave him the order in silence. By the light of the rapid lightning, the abbé read it. He handed it back. His small old face was paler than ever.

  He said, and his voice was quiet: “There was a man who died on a cross. He said: ‘Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.’”

  His words fell in the dark silence like a distant echo. He clasped his hands, and looked only at Arsène.

  When Arsène spoke his voice was a muffled croak: “Do you think I rejoice in this, Monsieur le Curé? Ten years ago, there was a similar murder of the lord of certain estates. He was cruel and depraved. Nevertheless, the law demanded that every peasant be put to death for this murder. If I do not avenge the Comte de Vitry, the law of France will do so.”

  The priest, after a long last look at him, turned his gaze to the heap of hanged men and women, to the corpses who h
ad been butchered by sword and dagger and thrown aside. He shuddered, as if struck.

  Arsène spoke again: “You may shrive them, Father, but the vengeance must take place. Do you think the law will be more merciful than I?”

  The abbé lifted his hand, and pointed slowly at Arsène. “Monsieur, you have in your possession full authority to do as you desire. If you wish to murder these poor wretches, authority is given to you. If you wish to spare them, the authority grants this also.”

  His words, trembling, but full of strength and stern accusation, filled the air. The peasants’ sobs and groans had subsided to a low lamentation, without words or prayers.

  Arsène’s face tightened, became grim and darker. “Monsieur le Curé,” he said, “I do not wish to spare them.” He added: “They killed my friend.”

  The abbé’s countenance quickened, became alive and passionate. He clasped his hands together. “Monsieur, they killed their friend, and mine, and yours! But ask yourself in your heart, if he would have wished you to do this thing!”

  Arsène did not answer. The abbé lifted his eyes and cried out: “The soul of that good man stands in denunciation before you, Monsieur! He would have forgiven these poor people! He would have understood them. You are not worthy to be his friend, Monsieur. You dare not call him ‘friend’.”

  Arsène’s companions, wrapped shivering in their cloaks, smiled faintly. They looked down upon this weary old man with the tears upon his face, his voice ringing in the somber and hollow air. Their faces expressed their impatience and disgust. But Arsène did not see their smiles.

  The abbé, seeing Arsène’s dark silence, approached nearer. He seized a fold of his dripping cloak. He fell on his knees. His seamed face was bright with his grief and despair and pleading.

  “You have done enough, Monsieur. Will these murders bring back our poor and devoted friend, who was filled only with mercy and compassion? See how they weep! They are not afraid, not terrified. They wish for death, in extenuation for their blind and ignorant crime. If you execute them, one and all will go humbly to his death, understanding that it is a just punishment. Can further murder do more, increase their anguish and their sorrow and regret? You will take vengeance on men already punished, already prostrated and undone. Is that not enough? More violence will destroy only your own soul. It cannot inflict greater punishment on these poor people.”

  His trembling hands wound themselves feverishly in Arsène’s cloak. He tried to step back. But the priest’s despairing grip only tightened. He embraced Arsène’s knees. He wept. His face, passionate and wild with his pleading, was a moving thing to see.

  Arsène spoke brokenly: “How can I spare them? I wish them to die. I cannot command myself to wish anything else. They deserve death.” And then a madness took hold of him, and he cried out: “All mankind deserves death! I wish that I might inflict it on all the world!”

  The priest’s arms tightened about Arsène’s knees. He looked up at him, streaming with tears. But his face was sorrowful and fixed as he gazed earnestly at the young man.

  “To speak so is to speak against Almighty God, who made these poor creatures. Monsieur, reflect on the dark and nameless beginning of mankind. Reflect on its former oneness with the beasts of the forest and the wild plains. Reflect how it first looked dimly on the light and began its slow and tortuous ascent from the abyss. A thousand times has the beast’s torn foot slipped, and a thousand times has he returned to the pit from which he came. But always, he climbs again, impelled by only God knows what strange, terrible and immortal urge—Monsieur, we must remember that urge, even in our most distraught and hating moments. Who knows but that the day will come when that eternal and holy stirring which lies even in the barest soul will not burst into universal light? For the sake of that hope, we must have pity, we must have mercy, we must have prayer and hope and faith. We must have the long patience of God.”

  And now it seemed to Arsène that the old man was no longer pleading for the lives of the miserable peasants, but for his, Arsène’s, own soul. His urging, his passion, his tears and his solemnity was for the spiritual saving of this young man alone. A thousand thousand lives might be lost, and it would be nothing. But to this old priest the loss of a single soul was greater than the destruction of a whole universe.

  “I implore you to reflect, Monsieur! I implore you, in the name of God, in the name of the Comte de Vitry, who loved you, in the name of your soul, to spare these poor creatures!”

  A spasm convulsed him. His strength failed. He fell at Arsène’s feet, and laid his head helplessly and humbly on those muddied boots. His gray hairs covered them. His hands embraced them, with all the iron and convulsive grasp of a dying man. Then, moaning, he kissed those boots, crying over and over: “Spare them. In the name of God—in the name of God.”

  Arsène could not endure it. He tried to raise the old man, but the priest clung to him with superhuman strength, as if he felt that in imprisoning Arsène in his arms he could stay the executioner. Arsène gasped. He could hardly breathe. He looked about him with swimming eyes. He looked at his friends. Their eyes fell uneasily away from him, and they seemed to recoil. He looked at Crequy.

  The giant was regarding him with a strange and lowering look. But now there was no evil in it, only confusion and a coarse pity. He looked at the peasants. They were no longer sobbing and groaning. They knelt in silence, their heads bent on their breasts.

  An iron band tightened about Arsène’s heart. He lifted his hands; they fell impotently to his side. He looked down at the groveling priest who still embraced him so desperately. The wind, returning with increased ferocity, struck every figure, lifted every garment like a misshapen and batlike wing. The thunder rolled closer. Now everything was lit continually in lightning.

  Something seemed to open wide in Arsène, to bleed and throb and ache with an intolerable anguish. He gently disengaged the priest’s arms. Those arms fell away, like the arms of the dead. He lifted the priest to his feet and held him against his breast. The gray head dropped on his shoulder, as if the old man had expired.

  “I spare them, Father,” he said. “Let them go in peace.”

  Now the rain came in gray and battering cataracts, sweeping over the kneeling peasants. The wind caused the last hanged man to dance grotesquely from his rope. Arsène lifted the priest in his arms and carried him into the tavern.

  In his will, Paul de Vitry had left to his friend Arsène the whole of his fortunes and his estates, to do with them as he wished.

  Before he left Chantilly, Arsène appointed Crequy and the priest as administrators of the estates.

  “On the one hand will be sweetness and mercy, on the other hand will be suspicious justice and sternness,” he said, out of his new and aching wisdom. “This will be good.” He added: “Men must earn and understand liberty. If it is given to them before they understand, it will be despised.”

  He had sent to Paris for a carriage. In this, he carried away Cecile Grandjean, with the young Roselle.

  CHAPTER XLV

  There was always a quiet hour, just after sunset, when the Cardinal sat in his chair in his chamber and drowsed, or read, or meditated, his eyes closed, his delicate and aristocratic hands lying palm upwards on his knees in a drained and impotent attitude. Near the windows would sit Louis de Richepin, writing busily, frowning coldly over tomorrow’s appointments, composing the formal letters of his Eminence, and reading the missives that had come that evening. Then there would be utter silence in that room, except for the whisper of paper, the slide of Louis’s quill pen, the sifting of sand over the wet characters.

  Even in quiescence, the Cardinal loved the sound of activity near him, and the potentialities of all those letters read and written by his secretary gave him a sense of dynamic continuity even as he rested. He could sit aside, meditate or drowse, but the vast wheels he had set in motion continued to revolve with increasing acceleration. His was the kind of character that cannot utterly rest, and allow rest
to pervade the atmosphere about him. He could relax completely only when the enormous thunder of activity resounded in the air that encased him; he could breathe easily only when that air was charged with the echoing thunder of his own past activities. His weary eyes were soothed by the flash of lightnings he had evoked. Tranquillity descended upon him when he could hear the distant reverberations of events. But if those about him rested and meditated or drowsed also, he was filled with feverish restlessness and a sense of horrible waste, a fury against the impotence of apathy. It was then that his tormented body would rise again as on the arch of a cry, and create tumult about it.

  But he could not rest tonight, for some mysterious reason. The torture in his flesh was like a febrile pain, but nameless. Supersubtle and supersensitive as he was, he felt that in that chamber was an agony greater than his own, however much, in his selfishness, he had struggled, for hours to ignore it. (He had one unfailing conviction: that to sympathize, to identify oneself with the pains of others was to disperse a large measure of one’s own strength, with disastrous consequences. The wise man lived in his own fortressed universe, into which no cry, no despairing hand, could enter.)

  He obstinately forced his eyelids to remain closed over his strange and brilliant eyes. But they jerked uneasily. The slack hands lifted, and twitched, as if in a spasm. He moved against the back of his chair, as an animal, incensed by an unscratchable itch, rubs his spine. He was annoyed with himself; he fumed that the soundless groan that emanated from his miserable secretary should echo in his own austere and aloof ears. What was the misery of such as Louis de Richepin, that obscure and glacial priest, that bewildered and voiceless little soul, to Armand-Jean de Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the most powerful man in Europe? He had seen such misery, such majestic and illimitable misery in his life, beside which the anguish of this frozen-lipped young man was nothing, nothing at all! He had seen the despair in the faces of great and powerful men; he had seen the death of friends and momentous enemies, and if he had felt regret, it had been the regret of an academic man who found something of the artistic in such despair and such deaths, something of dignity. He had been pleased at the perfection of these, for there lived in him the love for that which had grandeur and operatic gestures.