There may have been some among them less enthusiastic than others; some more earnest in show than at heart; none, I am sure, who, on this, followed so slowly, so reluctantly, with so heavy a heart, and sure a presage of evil as I did. Already I foresaw the dilemma before me; but angry, hot-faced, and uncertain, I could discern no way out of it.
If I could have escaped, and slipped clear from the room, I would have done so without scruple; but the stairs were on the farther side of the great room which we were entering, and a dense crowd cut me off from them; moreover, I felt that St. Alais’ eye was upon me, and that, if he had not framed the ordeal to meet my case, and extort my support, he was at least determined, now that his blood was fired, that I should not evade it.
Still I would not hasten the evil day, and I lingered near the inner door, hoping; but the Marquis, on reaching the middle of the room, mounted a chair and turned round; and so contrived still to face me. The mob of gentlemen formed themselves round him, the younger and more tumultuous uttering cries of “Vive la Noblesse!” And a fringe of ladies encircled all. The lights, the brilliant dresses and jewels on which they shone, the impassioned faces, the waving kerchiefs and bright eyes, rendered the scene one to be remembered, though at the moment I was conscious only of St. Alais’ gaze.
“Messieurs,” he cried, “draw your swords, if you please!”
They flashed out at the word, with a steely glitter which the mirrors reflected; and M. de St. Alais passed his eye slowly round, while all waited for the word. He stopped; his eye was on me.
“M. de Saux,” he said politely, “we are waiting for you.”
Naturally all turned to me. I strove to mutter something, and signed to him with my hand to go on. But I was too much confused to speak clearly; my only hope was that he would comply, out of prudence.
But that was the last thing he thought of doing. “Will you take your place, Monsieur?” he said smoothly.
Then I could escape no longer. A hundred eyes, some impatient, some merely curious, rested on me. My face burned.
“I cannot do so,” I answered.
There fell a great silence from one end of the room to the other.
“Why not, Monsieur, if I may ask?” St. Alais said still smoothly.
“Because I am not — entirely at one with you,” I stammered, meeting all eyes as bravely as I could. “My opinions are known, M. de St. Alais,” I went on more steadfastly. “I cannot swear.”
He stayed with his hand a dozen who would have cried out upon me.
“Gently, Messieurs,” he said, with a gesture of dignity, “gently, if you please. This is no place for threats. M. de Saux is my guest; and I have too great a respect for him not to respect his scruples. But I think that there is another way. I shall not venture to argue with him myself. But — Madame,” he continued, smiling as he turned with an inimitable air to his mother, “I think that if you would permit Mademoiselle de St. Alais to play the recruiting-sergeant — for this one time — she could not fail to heal the breach.”
A murmur of laughter and subdued applause, a flutter of fans and women’s eyes greeted the proposal. But, for a moment, Madame la Marquise, smiling and sphinx-like, stood still, and did not speak. Then she turned to her daughter, who, at the mention of her name, had cowered back, shrinking from sight.
“Go, Denise,” she said simply. “Ask M. de Saux to honour you by becoming your recruit.”
The girl came forward slowly, and with a visible tremor; nor shall I ever forget the misery of that moment, or the shame and obstinacy that alternately surged through my brain as I awaited her. Thought, quicker than lightning, showed me the trap into which I had fallen, a trap far more horrible than the dilemma I had foreseen. Nor was the poor girl herself, as she stood before me, tortured by shyness, and stammering her little petition in words barely intelligible, the least part of my pain.
For to refuse her, in face of all those people, seemed a thing impossible. It seemed a thing as brutal as to strike her; an act as cruel, as churlish, as unworthy of a gentleman as to trample any helpless sensitive thing under foot! And I felt that; I felt it to the utmost. But I felt also that to assent was to turn my back on consistency, and my life; to consent to be a dupe, the victim of a ruse; to be a coward, though every one there might applaud me. I saw both these things, and for a moment I hesitated between rage and pity; while lights and fair faces, inquisitive or scornful, shifted mazily before my eyes. At last —
“Mademoiselle, I cannot,” I muttered. “I cannot.”
“Monsieur!”
It was not the girl’s word, but Madame’s, and it rang high and sharp through the room; so that I thanked God for the intervention. It cleared in a moment the confusion from my brain. I became myself. I turned to her; I bowed.
“No, Madame, I cannot,” I said firmly, doubting no longer, but stubborn, defiant, resolute. “My opinions are known. And I will not, even for Mademoiselle’s sake, give the lie to them.”
As the last word fell from my lips, a glove, flung by an unseen hand, struck me on the cheek; and then for a moment the room seemed to go mad. Amid a storm of hisses, of “Vaurien!” and “A bas le traître!” a dozen blades were brandished in my face, a dozen challenges were flung at my head. I had not learned at that time how excitable is a crowd, how much less merciful than any member of it; and surprised and deafened by the tumult, which the shrieks of the ladies did not tend to diminish, I recoiled a pace.
M. de St. Alais took advantage of the moment. He sprang down, and thrusting aside the blades which threatened me, flung himself in front of me.
“Messieurs, listen!” he cried, above the uproar. “Listen, I beg! This gentleman is my guest. He is no longer of us, but he must go unharmed. A way! A way, if you please, for M. le Vicomte de Saux.”
They obeyed him reluctantly, and falling back to one side or the other, opened a way across the room to the door. He turned to me, and bowed low — his courtliest bow.
“This way, Monsieur le Vicomte, if you please,” he said. “Madame la Marquise will not trespass on your time any longer.”
I followed him with a burning face, down the narrow lane of shining parquet, under the chandelier, between the lines of mocking eyes; and not a man interposed. In dead silence I followed him to the door. There he stood aside, and bowed to me, and I to him; and I walked out mechanically — walked out alone.
I passed through the lobby. The crowd of peeping, grinning lackeys that filled it stared at me, all eyes; but I was scarcely conscious of their impertinence or their presence. Until I reached the street, and the cold air revived me, I went like a man stunned, and unable to think. The blow had fallen on me so suddenly, so unexpectedly.
When I did come a little to myself, my first feeling was rage. I had gone into M. de St. Alais’ house that evening, possessing everything; I came out, stripped of friends, reputation, my betrothed! I had gone in, trusting to his friendship, the friendship that was a tradition in our families; he had worsted me by a trick. I stood in the street, and groaned as I thought of it; as I pictured the sorry figure I had cut amongst them, and reflected on what was before me.
For, presently, I began to think that I had been a fool — that I should have given way. I could not, as I stood in the street there, foresee the future; nor know for certain that the old France was passing, and that even now, in Paris, its death-knell had gone forth. I had to live by the opinions of the people round me; to think, as I paced the streets, how I should face the company to-morrow, and whether I should fly, or whether I should fight. For in the meeting on the morrow ——
Ah! the Assembly. The word turned my thoughts into a new channel. I could have my revenge there. That I might not raise a jarring note there, they had cajoled me, and when cajolery failed, had insulted me. Well, I would show them that the new way would succeed no better than the old, and that where they had thought to suppress a Saux they had raised a Mirabeau. From this point I passed the night in a fever. Resentment spurred ambition; rage
against my caste, a love of the people. Every sign of misery and famine that had passed before my eyes during the day recurred now, and was garnered for use. The early daylight found me still pacing my room, still thinking, composing, reciting; when André, my old body-servant, who had been also my father’s, came at seven with a note in his hand, I was still in my clothes.
Doubtless he had heard downstairs a garbled account of what had occurred, and my cheek burned. I took no notice of his gloomy looks, however, but, without speaking, I opened the note. It was not signed, but the handwriting was Louis’.
“Go home,” it ran, “and do not show yourself at the Assembly. They will challenge you one by one; the event is certain. Leave Cahors at once, or you are a dead man.”
That was all! I smiled bitterly at the weakness of the man who could do no more for his friend than this.
“Who gave it to you?” I asked André.
“A servant, Monsieur.”
“Whose?”
But he muttered that he did not know; and I did not press him. He assisted me to change my dress; when I had done, he asked me at what hour I needed the horses.
“The horses! For what?” I said, turning and staring at him.
“To return, Monsieur.”
“But I do not return to-day!” I said in cold displeasure. “Of what are you speaking? We came only yesterday.”
“True, Monsieur,” he muttered, continuing to potter over my dressing things, and keeping his back to me. “Still, it is a good day for returning.”
“You have been reading this note!” I cried wrathfully. “Who told you that — —”
“All the town knows!” he answered, shrugging his shoulders coolly. “It is, ‘André, take your master home!’ and, ‘André, you have a hot-pate for a master,’ and André this, and André that, until I am fairly muddled! Gil has a bloody nose, fighting a Harincourt lad that called Monsieur a fool; but for me, I am too old for fighting. And there is one other thing I am too old for,” he continued, with a sniff.
“What is that, impertinent?” I cried.
“To bury another master.”
I waited a minute. Then I said: “You think that I shall be killed?”
“It is the talk of the town!”
I thought a moment. Then: “You served my father, André,” I said.
“Ah! Monsieur.”
“Yet you would have me run away?”
He turned to me, and flung up his hands in despair.
“Mon Dieu!” he cried, “I don’t know what I would have! We are ruined by these canaille. As if God made them to do anything but dig and work; or we could do without poor! If you had never taken up with them, Monsieur — —”
“Silence, man!” I said sternly. “You know nothing about it. Go down now, and another time be more careful. You talk of the canaille and the poor! What are you yourself?”
“I, Monsieur?” he cried, in astonishment.
“Yes — you!”
He stared at me a moment with a face of bewilderment. Then slowly and sorrowfully he shook his head, and went out. He began to think me mad.
When he was gone I did not at once move. I fancied it likely that if I showed myself in the streets before the Assembly met, I should be challenged, and forced to fight. I waited, therefore, until the hour of meeting was past; waited in the dull upper room, feeling the bitterness of isolation, and thinking, sometimes of Louis St. Alais, who had let me go, and spoken no word in my behalf, sometimes of men’s unreasonableness; for in some of the provinces half of the nobility were of my way of thinking. I thought of Saux, too; and I will not say that I felt no temptation to adopt the course which André had suggested — to withdraw quietly thither, and then at some later time, when men’s minds were calmer, to vindicate my courage. But a certain stubbornness, which my father had before me, and which I have heard people say comes of an English strain in the race, conspired with resentment to keep me in the way I had marked out. At a quarter past ten, therefore, when I thought that the last of the Members would have preceded me to the Assembly, I went downstairs, with hot cheeks, but eyes that were stern enough; and finding André and Gil waiting at the door, bade them follow me to the Chapter House beside the Cathedral, where the meetings were held.
Afterwards I was told that, had I used my eyes, I must have noticed the excitement which prevailed in the streets; the crowd, dense, yet silent, that filled the Square and all the neighbouring ways; the air of expectancy, the closed shops, the cessation of business, the whispering groups in alleys and at doors. But I was wrapped up in myself, like one going on a forlorn hope; and of all remarked only one thing — that as I crossed the Square a man called out, “God bless you, Monsieur!” and another, “Vive Saux!” and that thereon a dozen or more took off their caps. This I did notice; but mechanically only. The next moment I was in the entry which leads alongside one wall of the Cathedral to the Chapter House, and a crowd of clerks and servants, who blocked it almost from wall to wall, were making way for me to pass; not without looks of astonishment and curiosity.
Threading my way through them, I entered the empty vestibule, kept clear by two or three ushers. Here the change from sunshine to shadow, from the life and light and stir which prevailed outside, to the silence of this vaulted chamber, was so great that it struck a chill to my heart. Here, in the greyness and stillness, the importance of the step I was about to take, the madness of the challenge I was about to fling down, in the teeth of my brethren, rose before me; and if my mind had not been braced to the utmost by resentment and obstinacy, I must have turned back. But already my feet rang noisily on the stone pavement, and forbade retreat. I could hear a monotonous voice droning in the Chamber beyond the closed door; and I crossed to that door, setting my teeth hard, and preparing myself to play the man, whatever awaited me.
Another moment, and I should have been inside. My hand was already on the latch, when some one, who had been sitting on the stone bench in the shadow under the window, sprang up, and hurried to stop me. It was Louis de St. Alais. He reached me before I could open the door, and, thrusting himself in front of me, set his back against the panels.
“Stop, man! for God’s sake, stop!” he cried passionately, yet kept his voice low. “What can one do against two hundred? Go back, man, go back, and I will — —”
“You will!” I answered with fierce contempt, yet in the same low tone — the ushers were staring curiously at us from the door by which I had entered. “You will? You will do, I suppose, as much as you did last night, Monsieur.”
“Never mind that now!” he answered earnestly; though he winced, and the colour rose to his brow. “Only go! Go to Saux, and — —”
“Keep out of the way!”
“Yes,” he said, “and keep out of the way. If you will do that — —”
“Keep out of the way?” I repeated savagely.
“Yes, yes; then everything will blow over.”
“Thank you!” I said slowly; and I trembled with rage. “And how much, may I ask, are you to have, M. le Comte, for ridding the Assembly of me?”
He stared at me. “Adrien!” he cried.
But I was ruthless. “No, Monsieur le Comte — not Adrien!” I said proudly; “I am that only to my friends.”
“And I am no longer one?”
I raised my eyebrows contemptuously. “After last night?” I said. “After last night? Is it possible, Monsieur, that you fancy you played a friendly part? I came into your house, your guest, your friend, your all but relative; and you laid a trap for me, you held me up to ridicule and odium, you — —”
“I did?” he exclaimed.
“Perhaps not with your own voice. But you stood by and saw it done! You stood by and said no word for me! You stood by and raised no finger for me! If you call that friendship — —”
He stopped me with a gesture full of dignity. “You forget one thing, M. le Vicomte,” he said, in a tone of proud reticence.
“Name it!” I answered disdainfully.
/>
“That Mademoiselle de St. Alais is my sister!”
“Ah!”
“And that, whether the fault was yours or not, you last evening treated her lightly — before two hundred people! You forget that, M. le Vicomte.”
“I treated her lightly?” I replied, in a fresh excess of rage. We had moved, as if by common consent, a little from the door, and by this time were glaring into one another’s eyes. “And with whom lay the fault if I did? With whom lay the fault, Monsieur? You gave me the choice — nay, you forced me to make choice between slighting her and giving up opinions and convictions which I hold, in which I have been bred, in which — —”
“Opinions!” he said more harshly than he had yet spoken. “And what are, after all, opinions? Pardon me, I see that I annoy you, Monsieur. But I am not philosophic; I have not been to England; and I cannot understand a man — —”
“Giving up anything for his opinions!” I cried, with a savage sneer. “No, Monsieur, I daresay you cannot. If a man will not stand by his friends he will not stand by his opinions. To do either the one or the other, M. le Comte, a man must not be a coward.”
He grew pale, and looked at me strangely. “Hush, Monsieur!” he said — involuntarily, it seemed to me. And a spasm crossed his face, as if a sharp pain shot through him.
But I was beside myself with passion. “A coward!” I repeated. “Do you understand me, M. le Comte? Or do you wish me to go inside and repeat the word before the Assembly?”
“There is no need,” he said, growing as red as he had before been pale.
“There should be none,” I answered, with a sneer. “May I conclude that you will meet me after the Assembly rises?”
He bowed without speaking; and then, and not till then, something in his silence and his looks pierced the armour of my rage; and on a sudden I grew sick at heart, and cold. It was too late, however; I had said that which could never be unsaid. The memory of his patience, of his goodness, of his forbearance, came after the event. I saluted him formally; he replied; and I turned grimly to the door again.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 207
