Chapter XXXII: The Cup Brims Over

“He was first always. Fortune
Shone bright in his face.
I fought for years; with no effort
He conquered the place.
We ran: my feet were all bleeding,
But he won the race.

“My home lay deep in the shadow,
His full in the sun.
Whatever service he called for
It straightway was done.
Once I staked all my heart’s treasure:
We played—and he won.

“Spite of his many successes
Men loved him the same;
My one pale ray of good fortune
Met scoffing and shame.
We sinned: and men gave him pity,
And me only blame.”

It was that very moral change so rightly diagnosed by M. des Graves in Gilbert which accounted for the bewildering subsidence of the emotions that the priest had expected him to manifest. The metamorphosis was like a river which, suddenly swerving from its course, invades a valley and makes of it a lake. A new landscape surprises the traveller, but underneath the encroaching waters lie all the time the features which were there before them, to emerge, perhaps, but little altered from their burial. So, under the new interests which flooded Gilbert’s mind, partly submerged by them in a wholly natural manner, but in part voluntarily thrust down and held down, there existed, unforgotten, the turmoil of feeling with which he had left his home in July. But he had come back full of ardour, on fire with schemes, and quite consciously he had resolved that his own affairs should wait a little. The carrying out of this resolution demanded, even in his new frame of mind, not a little carefulness and self-control. He had been at some pains, by laying stress, in his narrative, on the force of circumstances, to hide deeply from his hearers—perhaps even to obscure from himself—how much less he had snatched at the opportunity of a journey into Brittany from political desire than from the craving for a respite from his own private passions. It was true that, on the journey so undertaken, the secondary motive had at last swallowed up the primary and sharper. He knew that, but it was his concern that others should be ignorant of the double incentive.

Yet his feelings towards Lucienne, far from having paled, were infinitely fiercer. That intensification of the powers of his will, which was really the heart of the change in him, had reacted on his attitude towards her, of which it was itself in part the offspring. His love for her, since passion had flowed into it that day in the Tuileries, had suffered neither diminution nor increase, but his determination to possess her in spite of everything had immensely grown. That same feeling, at once loverlike and paternal, which had dictated the terms of the letter sent by Trenchard, still ruled his thoughts of her and the letters which he constantly wrote to her. But the natural result of his wilful exoneration of the girl was insensibly to throw heavier and heavier odium on the man who had entrapped her. In spite of his resolution the old nightmare of his wrongs began to press on him again, yet not so heavily but that he could control the expression of it. Indeed, he had slipped back so insensibly to the cold reserve of his pre-Brittany relations with Louis that neither of them had been quite aware of the reversion. Even the priest could only ask himself sometimes whether his manner to Louis was not suspicious, and could not answer his own question.

As for the Vicomte himself, he had always been accustomed to a certain occasional moodiness and lack of cordiality in his cousin, and that scene at the supper table in July was blurred by time, by his recognition of his own physical condition at the moment, and by the absence of hostility in the Marquis’ greeting when he came back in November. It was further obliterated by the shock and horror of the King’s execution, and by the very welcome, if fruitless, activity into which, with Gilbert, he had plunged. Ere February was out he had ridden some three score miles on various errands, had enjoyed two narrow escapes from arrest, and the sensation of a bullet through his hat. The personal danger, the excitement after the long months of inaction, was like wine to him, and even had there been any signs of approaching catastrophe, he might have failed to observe them.

* * * * * *

One evening at the end of February Gilbert found by his plate at supper-time a letter, dirty, worn, and looking either as if it had travelled far or had been a long time on the road. Letters were not now very frequent at Chantemerle, for though the Marquise and Lucienne wrote regularly, a good proportion of their communications never reached Vendée. This missive, however, was addressed not to the Marquis, but to Madame de Château-Foix, seeing which he pushed it aside.

The three had that evening a not altogether agreeable topic of conversation, the two-days-old decree of the Directory of Fontenay requiring all fathers of _émigrés_ to take up their residence at the _chef-lieu_ and report themselves every morning to the authorities.

“And if Gilbert is not the father of an _émigré_, he is the son of one,” observed Louis. “Where will you settle at Fontenay, mon cher? I will come and see you sometimes.”

“It is no jesting matter, Louis,” said the priest. “Not only the fathers of _émigrés_ are summoned, but their relations and other persons who, as the decree puts it, are likely to trouble the public peace by their anti-revolutionary conduct or discourse. You may find yourself there.”

“I wonder,” said the Marquis thoughtfully, scanning the letter by his plate, “if this letter to my mother can possibly have any connection with the decree—be a means of ascertaining whether she has emigrated or no? I do not know the writing. The postmark is Paris.”

“In the circumstances,” suggested the Vicomte, “had you not better open it?”

“I think I had,” said Château-Foix, and took it up. But Antoine coming in at that moment he laid it down again.

“How did this letter come here, Antoine?” he asked as he helped himself to another dish.

“By the post, Monsieur le Marquis.”

“You did not hesitate about receiving it, or say that Madame la Marquise was not here, I hope?”

“Certainly not, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied his retainer fervently, and as he left the room there were signs that he was hurt at the question.

“By the way, Gilbert,” remarked M. des Graves, “I suppose you know that there was rioting at La Caillère on Sunday, over the recruiting for the National Guard?”

“Yes, I know,” answered Gilbert, taking up the letter again. “And Chevallier the commissioner was stoned, so I hear.”

“There was,” observed Louis, “a much more amusing affair on Sunday at Fontenay, at the meeting of the Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality. It seems that Laparra, the president of that precious club, has met with a great dressing-down from one Pranger, a professor who writes poetry and has called Laparra an artisan of discord. That was in print, but on Sunday——”

And since Gilbert was reading his letter he continued his recital to the priest.

“This can’t be meant for my mother,” said the Marquis suddenly, and apparently to himself. Then he folded up the letter and put it rather quickly into his pocket. “What were you saying about Laparra, Louis?”

But to his cousin’s account of the feud which was rending society at the _chef-lieu_ he seemed to pay only a divided attention, and when the meal was ended he disappeared.

M. des Graves looked after him. “I fear there was some cause for anxiety in that letter,” he said. “Are you coming with me to the library, Louis? That’s right.” And he smiled at the Vicomte, as the latter held open the door for him with his usual politeness.

* * * * * *

In his own room, standing by the two candles he had lighted on the mantel-piece, Gilbert was re-reading the letter addressed to Madame de Château-Foix.

“I have never forgotten you in my prayers; and now that death is coming very near to us I wish to send you a line of farewell, though I fear that it will never reach you. I make no doubt that you are married now, and finding, perhaps, the happiness that comes from doing right. But my heart bled for you, my child, in September, for I cannot hope that he escaped the fate of the other prisoners. Yet he died, I like to think, a noble gentleman; let this be the reward of the sacrifice that you both made. God bless you and give you strength. Pray for me.—ELISABETH.”

These words, when he had made acquaintance with them downstairs, had seemed to the Marquis simple nonsense; they had conveyed to him nothing whatever, except a conviction that they could not be meant for his mother—unless she maintained some very cryptic correspondence of which he was ignorant. Yet during the short remainder of the meal a desire had burnt in him to read them again; for, after all, they must mean something. Now he had his wish.

The characters of the single word of the signature, clear and pointed, as large again as the others, were beginning to dance before his eyes. In them lay naturally the key to the rest. But it was impossible! The Princess was a prisoner, closely watched; how could she conceivably have got a letter out of the Temple? But argument on that score was futile, since here was such a letter. And to whom of the name of Château-Foix could she have desired to send a farewell message save to the girl who was soon to bear that name? “I make no doubt that you are married now . . . and finding, perhaps, the happiness that comes from doing right.” What did that mean?

And this reference to some one killed in September, a prisoner, who had “died a noble gentleman”? Gilbert’s hand shook. He was beginning to be unable to think. What, in God’s name, was this mystery? Feeling that he was on the brink of something unimaginable, he laid the letter down and lit yet another candle, as if that would make it easier to read between the lines. What was the sacrifice? Who was the dead man? It could not be himself . . . nor Louis . . .

God! had Lucienne then yet a third lover!

Horrible ideas began to flash before him. . . . He caught hold of the mantel-piece to steady himself. . . . Then all at once, with a rushing illumination, his brain cleared, and he saw everything.

Madame Elisabeth had been Lucienne’s confidante; had known, had sympathised with Louis. She had heard of the arrest of the young Royalist plotters; she had heard, in her prison, of their fate in the September massacres; she had never known that he, the dupe, had saved his cousin. And Louis was the “noble gentleman,” who had evidently died, to the Princess’ thinking, in a sort of odour of sanctity—Louis, the thief, the traitor! He laughed; the situation was full of humour. Louis as a martyr to honour!

But his brief contemptuous mirth was whirled away like a leaf in the blazing wind of fury which descended on him. What stung him beyond endurance was the thought that this meddlesome saint was praying that Lucienne might have strength to bear her married life with him. To be the subject of such a petition! . . . And his secret was common property, then; no doubt there were others who knew of his cousin’s perfidy, of his own disgrace. . . . For what woman had Louis fought De Bercy? Do not ask, had said the courtesan from whom he had stooped to beg the life of the betrayer. Why, even she knew!

He tore the letter in two, and flinging it blindly into the fire, watched it shrivel, and began to stride up and down the room sick with rage, and with one word of the expiring handwriting a-dance before his eyes. _Sacrifice!_

_Sacrifice!_ That meant—the Princess meant—that they had parted. _Sacrifice!_ What did the fatuous woman know? Evidently, from the whole tone of the letter, it had been no light thing with either of them, no passing fancy such as he had insisted on believing it on Lucienne’s part. Well, Madame Elisabeth might have been duped too. Since there had been so much between them, there might have been more. How should the Princess know? And that terrible thought, which had hitherto spared him, raised its snake-like head and looked him every moment a little nearer in the face. What exactly had been Louis’ relations with Lucienne?