The Arm and the Darkness, Page 3

  “You would sacrifice the memory of your father, and mine—these two who fought together and gave up everything—for ambition? You would compromise with the devil, and give worship to the fiend?”

  Armand had looked about him uneasily, and had wet his jerking lips. For a moment, he had seemed ashamed, and uncertain. Then he spoke furiously, and Arsène knew that the fury was partly for himself: “You speak like a traitorous fool! Henry of Navarre has said: ‘Paris is worth a mass!’ Am I less than that great king?”

  Sabina had looked at him for a long moment, and had stood there, tall, slender and beautiful, and her eyes were blue lightnings.

  “It is not for Paris, it is not for France, that you would betray our fathers. It is for yourself, for your mean ambitions, for your pride, for your longing for favor and gaiety and a return to a corrupt court, and a smile from that foul demon, Richelieu. I have long known this. I can say nothing to dissuade you, I know. But beware the maledictions of the dead!”

  She had raised her trembling white hand then, as if to curse him, and had stood there, shaking but unafraid, and filled with proud hatred and scorn. Between the profuse and tumbling masses of her golden curls, her face quivered with a pale light.

  Armand had left her presence, infuriated. The Archbishop had come, but had delicately refused Armand’s invitation to occupy a suite at the château. He and his entourage were uncomfortably established at the mean little tavern in the village, whose proprietor, a Huguenot himself, was overwhelmed by the honor, and dusted off his plaster images and crucifixes, which he had hidden scornfully in his garret, and placed them in conspicious places throughout the house. Then he had assiduously studied old broken prayer-books, relics of his youth, and was seen to cross himself frequently and assertively on every occasion, to the bewilderment, but gratification, of his devout wife. “Only a fool,” he said, “wears the same coat in every weather.”

  The stout and elegant Archbishop, who always considered the prejudices of those he intended to seduce, did not drive up to the château in his gilded carriage the next morning. Nor did he wear his more elaborate garments. He walked to the château, climbing the dusty, stone-strewn road in solitary humility, though had any one been present to observe him, he would have seen the Archbishop stop frequently to wipe his florid brow and curse with more color than restraint. He was, to all appearances, a humble and reverent abbé, coming to call upon some recalcitrant sinner out of Christlike gentleness and sad concern. The heat and dust of the summer morning did nothing to soothe his temper, but his smile was fixed and gentle on his rotund countenance when he observed Armand du Richepin waiting for him at the gates, unable to conceal his nervous excitability.

  They had walked then, in the garden, murmuring assiduously together.

  “You can be sure, my dear Marquis, that His Eminence will not hold the sins of the fathers against their sons,” said the Archbishop. “I have already told him of your invitation, though he inquired, naturally enough, why you had not come to Paris to see me. Permission would have been granted easily, upon your application.”

  Armand muttered something unintelligible. He was miserably ill at ease. The lessons of his youth, the admonitions and warnings of his father, still influenced him, and he felt only suspicion and fear of his visitor. But more than these, in his febrile ambition, he wished to please, to conciliate. Whenever his resolution faltered he had only to glance at the white bare château, and over the burning countryside which he hated. Miserable, horrible place of exile! To a temperament like his, which could be happy only in the midst of approving fellows, which achingly longed for excitement and gaiety and the intrigues of courts and the presence of many lovely women, the quiet life of a country gentleman was obnoxious, unendurable. In his childhood and boyhood, he had lived in La Rochelle, and the memory of gaiety, lightness and laughter and bustling streets was a burning nostalgia in him.

  Arsène, though very young, dimly knew these things, for he had immense intuition of a shrewd rather than a subtle kind. He tried to be indifferent, and scornful, but he was excited, nevertheless. He had the soul of an adventurer, and the peace of quietness of his rural life had begun to gall him, and he was frequently conscious of a loneliness that the presence of his gentler brother did nothing to dispel. He knew that in a moment the Archbishop and his father would discover him, waiting there, and that again the Archbishop would pat him on the head, and sigh, smilingly, over him.

  Now, in his dream, he was waiting there. But all at once, the dream began to darken, the hot air to chill. A great terror seized him. Some Horror was approaching through the yew walk. He could not move. He could only tremble and try to move legs paralyzed and heavy with nightmare. The Horror was coming closer. He heard the tolling of a mighty bell, slow and deathly. It was the tolling for the dead. Now a wind blew, violent and frightfully cold. It blew through his body, but aroused fire in his flesh, rather than chill. He struggled against the incubus, but he could not move. He cried out. He heard the murmuring voices, closer to him, and he shrieked aloud. And woke.

  His first consciousness was of immense pain, flaming and enveloping. He had a faint memory that his screaming voice had been hoarse and painful. His throat was swollen, choking with phlegm, transfixed with burning blades of steel. His right arm, when he tried to move it convulsively in his extremity, could not be lifted. Darkness and sparks of red lights floated before his eyes.

  So intense had been his memory, and his nightmare, that he expected to see his father’s face, and the countenance of the Archbishop when he could see clearly. But, by wavering candlelight, he saw old François’s concerned features bent over him, the shadow of a pale female face, and the faces of two strangers, one an old man, and the other young. The memory of recent events had not yet risen to the surface of his consciousness. He could only stare blindly, out of his fever, his breath struggling with agony in his tortured throat. Then, dimly, he remembered François Grandjean, and the girl, Cecile. He looked at them, speechlessly. He was still lying on the straw pallet in the miserable kitchen, and he was alternately deathly cold and flaming hot.

  “The wounds are well enough,” murmured the strange old man. “You have done excellently, François.”

  “Thank you, dear abbé,” said François. “But it is the throat that disturbs me. He woke before dawn, yesterday, delirious and fevered, unaware of his surroundings. I thought it his wounds, but when I heard his crying voice, I knew it was some disease that had seized him. He became rapidly more ill, and that is why I called you, knowing your skill in these matters.”

  Arsène heard these words as from a tremendous distance, so that they had a hollow echo in his ears. They thought him still delirious. He saw the old men, and the young one, move aside. The girl, in her poor garments, knelt beside him, and applied some unguent to his throat on a rag. It stung, and it smelled vilely. He struggled to move, to speak, and his voice was the voice of a stricken erow. He saw the girl’s young face, shrinking but compassionate, and very beautiful. She was only a child, but she understood suffering, and her expression was mature with grief.

  “We must lift him and carry him to Cecile’s bed. A poor bed, but better than this pallet,” said François. “He cannot remain here, on the cold floor, with his fever. Would you consider him dying, abbé?”

  The old abbé hesitated, looked sorrowfully at the stricken man. His face became anxious. “It is in the hands of God,” he murmured. “You say you do not know his name, or his condition?”

  “No. I have told you how he came to be here. But, it is evident that he is not of our kind. His garments, his sword, his manner of speaking. He is a great gentleman, of some sort. He told me his name is Arsène, but would say nothing else. One can understand his suspicions, and reserve.”

  The old abbé sighed. “Have you considered what might happen to you, and Cecile, if he died on your hands?”

  “I have considered,” replied François, calmly. “But I know no one to call, no one to identify him. And i
f there is danger to us, in sheltering him, in allowing him to die unknown, then we must trust to God. The Cardinal’s guard was pursuing him. Inversely, should we call the Captain of the King’s Musketeers? It is evident he is no musketeer, no soldier. He was a fugitive. How can we trust the King’s men, then? Would they be kinder to a Huguenot gentleman, though it is evident that he is one? I know nothing about him.”

  “He may be a criminal,” said the abbé, with hesitation.

  François shook his head, but he said: “And, if so, must we throw a dying man into the gutter? Suffering has call upon our compassion, no matter the sufferer.”

  “You humble me, François,” said the abbé with humility. “But I was thinking of you, my friend.”

  The three men, the old and the young, lifted Arsène in their arms. At this moment, he screamed again in his agony. They bore him to Cecile’s chamber, and laid him on her bed. He became faintly conscious that they had removed his garments, that he was wearing a coarse white shirt, and that his legs were bare. He must have swooned again, for when he opened his eyes he was conscious of wet hot cloths being applied to his swollen and choking throat. The old abbé was ministering to him, and the girl stood beside him, a steaming iron pot in her hands into which the abbé kept dipping his cloths.

  “I trust he has nothing contagious,” said François, who stood at the foot of the bed.

  “We must only pray,” said the abbé, sighing. “But I have seen little children die of this, strangling. He has a young man’s strength, however.”

  Arsène’s icy feet became aware that a hot comforting stone lay between them. He was shaken by chill, consumed by fire. His toes eagerly sought the comfort of the stone. They had piled blankets, tattered and dusty, upon him.

  “No one must guess at his presence in your house,” said the abbé. “I know a physician, but in this case we can trust no one. We must do what we can for him, and pray for him.”

  François was holding a candle. It was night. The candlelight flickered over the leprous ceiling with its cracked plaster, and the dripping walls. The abbé continued his ministrations. Arsène, overcome with weakness and nausea, closed his eyes, which ached abominably. He gave himself up to sole consciousness of his throat, which seemed to be closed inexorably. His breath struggled to reach his lungs, struggled to leave it. He could hear the frantic laboring of his smothered heart. There were twining ropes in his throat, and he tried to cough them loose. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  “I am dying,” he thought, with complete detachment. His mother would be overcome. Ah, no, his mother, the pretty Sabina, was dead, these ten years, of grief and loneliness. Would his father, that lying, terrified hypocrite, be grief-stricken? Or would he feel a welcome, if miserable, relief? Relief that he would be called upon for no more frenzied concealment, for hasty falsehoods, for placating and pleading and promising? Arsène smiled to himself, with scornful compassion. He had been a burden, a strain, upon his father, who still slavishly adored him. Now, his death would be a release from terror. But he would grieve. At the thought of that womanish sorrow, Arsène’s compassion lost its overtone of contempt, and became sad and regretful. He had never felt sadness for his father before. He did not think of his brother, Louis, at all.

  Now, all at once, he was alone, and there was only a peculiar grating sound in the dank chamber. It was some moments before he knew it was his own breathing. The stone was hot against his feet. The pain was a little less in his throat. He fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER IV

  He awoke to such profound weakness that he thought, for a horrible moment, that he was paralyzed. There was a nervelessness in his body, a numbness, which terrified him even before he opened his eyes. He tried to speak, but there was only a faint fluttering in his throat, from which, however, pain had blessedly departed.

  There was a milky film over his vision, not to be dispelled for several moments after consciousness. But at last the film began to lighten, to move aside, and he saw clearly.

  He was still lying on the young Cecile’s bed, in the windowless miserable chamber with its stained cracked walls and stone floor. But from the front chamber there came a shaft of brilliant yellow light, in which floated sparkling dustmotes. The shutters had been removed from the window, with its diamond-shaped little wedges of glass, and the sun streamed through it, fretted with sharp black lines. The air was warm, and very still. He heard the far and unfamiliar crying of a fishmonger in the narrow street outside, and the rumble of a cart’s wheels over the cobbled stones. The weakness was heavy upon him, and he again tried to call out. His breath left his lips in a shrill rustle.

  There was a movement in the lightless kitchen behind the bedchamber, and the young Cecile entered the room. He saw her quiet pale face, and her head, bound about with its braids of light-brown hair which were half-concealed by a white frilled cap. He saw the still nobility of her expression, sad and too mature for her age. She was tall, for a young girl, and her slenderness was almost emaciation. But she moved with dignity, and when she smiled her small teeth were bright between the rosy outlines of her soft lips. She wore a black neat bodice, tight and smooth across the high and immature outline of her pretty breasts, and a full black skirt which slipped back at the instep to show her little foot in its rough shoe. Her dress, her demureness, her soft manner of walking, were all the mark of a servant girl, a mark he recognized.

  She came to his bedside, and laid her cool hand on his head. He felt its callouses and roughness, and he winced involuntarily. The girl looked down at him, without fear or respect, and fully, with her deep blue eyes. This antagonized him, and his whisper was abrupt:

  “I have been ill?”

  If she marked his tone, and the cold arrogance of his eyes, she was not disturbed. She smiled again.

  “Yes, Monsieur. Very ill. I have nursed you for fourteen days.”

  He was silent. Now he vaguely recalled nightmare nights of pain and fever, drifting with black and red shadows, and, always in them, always ministering to him in them, this quiet steadfast girl. It was her hand which had held the pewter cup brimming with cold water to his lips. It was her touch, gentle and sure, which had soothed him, and her strong young hands which had moved his body from its hot trough of pain to a cooler spot on the coarse white sheet. He thought of the sleepless nights she must have spent, after days of drudgery; he thought of the score of unpleasant tasks she must have performed for him, all full of nastiness and danger to herself. It was evident she was only a servant, but she did not know him, and had ministered to him devotedly, a stranger, a fugitive, and nameless. Why? But, ah, certainly, she and her grandfather, must have known he was no vagabond, from the evidences of his sword, the remnants of his rich clothing, and his manner and voice. His mind, only lately ridden of fever, was still preternaturally sharp.

  She looked down upon him, watching intently, and a thin beam of light lay on her cheek, and brightened her hair to braided gold. Her intensity increased. All at once she seemed to be reading his thoughts as clearly as though he had spoken them aloud. She flushed, but her face was still calm. She returned the cold hardness of his regard without flinching, but her own eyes became proud and a little angered.

  However, she said: “The fever has passed. The abbé has said you are convalescent, and need only nursing. I shall do what I can for you, Monsieur, when I return at night from my work.”

  She turned away from the bed, and from a wooden bench she lifted his britches. Under them lay his sword and his torn white shirt. He saw the studs in the shirt, jewelled and brilliant in the shaft of sunlight. She thrust her hand into the pocket of his breeches, and drew out his silken purse, which he had forgotten.

  She approached the bed again, the purse in her hand. He was surprised at the look on her face, hard and still, the sharp light in her blue eyes. She laid the purse near his nerveless hand.

  “Monsieur,” she said, calmly, “my grandfather has given you of all he had. That is almost nothing. He has depriv
ed himself, for your benefit, of the little food he can afford, the little milk and wine, the bread to soak in them. He has bought you unguents for your wounds, and salve to help rub away your fever. He is old and feeble. And good. Most excessively good.”

  For a moment her hard expression softened into one of uncontrollable sadness. Then it tightened again, and she met his eyes with a look amazingly like contempt.

  “You came to this house, unbidden and threatening. We have taken you in, hidden you, nursed you, dying with weariness though we were, and afraid of every sound. We have kept tallow candles burning at your bedside, and sat with you, controlling you with our strength while you threshed on my bed, and shouted in your delirium. What we have done for you has been done without hope of reward, and only with the wish that we be not punished for it.” She paused, looked at him with penetrating straightness, and resumed, still quietly, and with heightened contempt and impatience:

  “We owed you nothing. I have demurred with my grandfather, but he has a gentle heart, which pities even a wounded dog in the gutter. You came from the gutter into this house, did you not, Monsieur?”

  He had been listening, amazed at her effrontery and impudence. A servant girl, whom even the law hardly regarded as a human being, a creature to be enslaved and beaten when uttering an impertinent word, or when daring to lift its eyes! But she was not only impudent, she presumed to look into his own eyes without fear, and with frigid disdain.

  Then, in spite of his weakness, and his outrage, he could not refrain from smiling. But she did not answer his smile. She thrust the purse closer to his hand.

  “There are fifteen golden crowns in your purse, Monsieur. I counted them the night you came. None has been touched. But now you need good meat, much milk, and delicacies, if you are to get well as rapidly as possible. We cannot afford them. It is you, Monsieur, who must make the choice between a rapid or a painfully slow convalescence. I beg of you to make the more sensible choice, for we shall the sooner be rid of the danger of your presence, and the exertion of your care.”