Chapter XLIII: Ultima Forsan

“We brought the holy water for his brow
Who lies before the altar candles now.
. . . . . .
While overhead, with red wings interlaced,
Above the bier of cedar newly sawn
The towering angels bore the cup of dawn.
. . . . . .
But now before the altar lights he lies,
And I, set free beneath the star-strewn skies,
With breaking heart beside the water pace
And seek within its shadows Marya’s face. . . .”
—E.C., _The Young Monk_.

It was not till after noon next day that the sound of distant firing broke on the expectant ears of the occupants of the château. It was no guide to events. The afternoon wore on, and still there was nothing to tell them how Fate was balancing her scales. The peasants prayed at their idle posts, and sang the litanies of the Virgin—for it was the vigil of the Assumption—the Marquis and Louis craned their necks out of such portions of the south windows as were not barricaded, but they could see nothing in the leafy country.

“News of some kind must have got to Chantonnay by now,” said Gilbert about four o’clock. “I will send out a couple of men.”

Louis caught at his arm. “Listen . . . in the avenue! Don’t you hear?”

They ran down the stairs and emerged by a little door—the great door was barricaded—into the avenue front. The sentinels there, as eager as themselves, were staring at the two horsemen who were tearing towards them under the trees. One of the riders was swaying in the saddle, and when he got near enough they saw that blood was trickling from his open and gasping mouth. His reins were in the grasp of his companion, in whom, as he pulled up, the cousins recognised one of Forestier’s officers.

“Routed!” he cried in a high voice, and the wounded man pitched forward on to his horse’s neck.

“What!” cried Gilbert. “My God! it can’t be!”

“Utterly!” gasped the rider. “It was that accursed open plain . . . the centre gave first, then the right. All the guns are captured but two . . . we have lost thousands . . . thousands. . . .” He could say no more, but getting off his horse and staggering to the perron, sank down on it and sobbed aloud.

Beside him the sentries were laying his companion. Louis stooped over him. “Dead,” he said briefly. “Well, Gilbert?”

The Marquis raised his head. “We must hold it _now_,” he said very quietly, and their hands met for an instant.

But so thorough had been Gilbert’s dispositions from the first that there was nothing more to do except to be on the alert. At sunset came in another fugitive who reported that Charette, having covered La Rochejaquelein’s retreat, was said to be falling back on Chantonnay. Dusk was falling before a sudden little burst of musketry in the direction of the village warned the defenders. A little later the Marquis, guessing at the presence of sharpshooters on the avenue side—the light was too bad to be sure—gave the order to fire from the Marquise’s bedroom, in which, as the largest room on the first floor, he had ensconced himself. A minute or two afterwards an answering crash of glass along the front of the house showed his surmise to be correct.

“What a glazier’s bill!” ejaculated Louis, laughing. “My poor aunt—if she only knew!” He bit at a fresh cartridge, for, happening to be in the room, he was firing with the rest.

But Gilbert laid a hand on his arm. “Go up and take command of the second floor windows, as we arranged,” he said. “And don’t expose yourself: there’s no need. We shall have to make fresh dispositions if they start firing at the garden front, but I do not, somehow, think they will. I will send for you if it is necessary.”

And the duel with an unseen enemy continued.

* * * * * *

When Louis reappeared, about an hour later, in the Marquise’s bedroom, two of the shutters hung riddled from their hinges, half a dozen of the defenders lay dead or dying on the floor, and the air was full of smoke and the biting smell of gunpowder. Across the dismantled bed, his fingers tearing convulsively at the blue silken coverlet which still adorned it, lay, coughing, a peasant shot through the lungs. M. des Graves was ministering to another on the floor.

“What is it?” asked the Marquis quickly, as he caught sight of the begrimed figure in the doorway. “Nothing wrong?”

“Nothing,” returned Louis placidly, coming in. “Except that M. des Graves might come up to a couple of my fellows. But I wanted to ask whether you will spare me men for a sortie. I thought I would go out by the garden front, through the pavilion, and take the foe in flank. It would be very neat.”

The Marquis shook his head through the noise of the volley which interrupted the speaker.

“But, Gilbert,” urged the Vicomte, coming closer and dropping his voice, “have you not thought that if they are not soon dislodged they may bring up artillery? Once or twice I have heard the unmistakable report of a gun from the direction of Chantonnay. Of course it may be Charette, one can’t tell; but if the guns were all lost but two—— Anyhow, as things go now the château is useless for fugitives, and,”—he dropped his voice still further, “the Blues are thinning us down, while we don’t seem to be making much impression on them.”

As if to point his words there was a crash behind him, and a Venetian mirror fell in fragments to the floor. A second later a marksman by one of the windows threw out his arms, and twisting rapidly round, staggered half across the room and fell at their feet.

While Gilbert and M. des Graves bent over him Louis very coolly went to one of the unshuttered windows and peered out into the dusk.

“Come back, you madman!” shouted Gilbert; “I have lost two men at that window already!”

“I was only reconnoitring,” urged Louis, as he was dragged away. “But it is too dark to see anything. So much the better. . . . Now will you give me twenty men?”

“No.”

“You think I should get knocked on the head?” queried the Vicomte, laughing. “You should know my luck better than that, mon ami; I have a charmed life, you know. Besides, better a few out there than all in here. Am I not right, Father?”

“You may be right,” began the Marquis, “but——” He never finished the sentence. Across it came a sound which made an end of it and of his opposition for ever, a sound which caused every window in the house to rattle—the deep, sullen boom of a heavy gun. It might have been a couple of miles away.

“There!” exclaimed Louis almost exultantly.

Gilbert’s and the priest’s eyes met.

“Very well, I will let you go,” said the Marquis quietly. “Will you pick your men yourself? I know they will follow you. I will spare you twenty-five; take most—say eighteen—from the second floor.”

Louis saluted, smiling.

“And remember,” went on Château-Foix in an altered voice, “that there are occasions on which it is a man’s duty to get himself killed. . . . I do—I do not think that this is one of them.” He stopped suddenly with a catch of the breath and made a gesture to M. des Graves. “Give him your blessing,” he said.

Louis dropped to his knee, while the priest commended him to the care of his Maker. When he rose he caught at the hand just uplifted in benediction and kissed it. As he raised his eyes he saw Gilbert’s face. The next instant he had his hands on his cousin’s shoulders.

“I promise you—I promise I won’t get killed,” he said between jest and earnest, and Château-Foix took his head between his hands and kissed him on the forehead.

Ten minutes later Louis with his score of men had dashed into the dusk and the wind and the singing bullets.

* * * * * *

The minute hand had made more than half the circuit of the Sèvres clock in the Marquise’s boudoir, the dusk had deepened to dark, the sound of firing had drifted away, before the tramp of feet sounded again outside the little pavilion door. Some one knocked vigorously with the hilt of a sword, and the old man waiting anxiously in the passage hastened to undo the bolts. His round of lantern light fell on a white scarf and a smiling mouth.

“God be thanked! You are safe, Monsieur le Vicomte!” he exclaimed in a grave voice, raising the lantern higher.

“As you see, Antoine. We flatter ourselves that we have had a great success, and at but small cost. They have drawn off.”

Saint-Ermay mounted the step as he spoke, bare-headed and flushed, with sparkling eyes. But for his disordered hair and his naked sword he might have been dancing. “They have drawn off,” he repeated. “Come in, men!”

But Antoine with the lantern moved between the young man and his followers, blocking the narrow doorway. “Yes, they have drawn off, M. Louis . . . too late. Monsieur le Marquis——”

“Hit?”

“Half an hour ago. It is good that you are come at last, because—because——”

“God!” said Louis. And he threw down his sword.

* * * * * *

They had laid a mattress on the polished floor of the hall, just underneath the turn of the great staircase, and on this Gilbert was lying at full length with a cloak flung across him. On the other side, facing Louis as he put aside the curtain that hung over the doorway, knelt M. des Graves, with a stole over his soutane, and after a moment Louis knew why everybody else in the hall was standing apart from the kneeling and the prostrate figure. Gilbert was making his last confession—had made it, for almost as the realisation of the scene came to him, Saint-Ermay saw the priest lift his hand in absolution. He looked on at what followed as at something happening miles away, with the sense of not being there at all himself; and while peasant and servant knelt, and M. des Graves administered Viaticum, Louis alone stood on his feet where he was, motionless and frozen.

After a while he became aware that M. des Graves was making a sign to him, and he went forward. Of the disarray of Gilbert’s clothing, of bandages, or of blood, he was at the moment hardly conscious; he saw only his face, of an unearthly pallor, accentuated to a startling degree by his scattered black hair and by the dark cushion which supported his head. As Louis knelt down by his side the Marquis looked up quite collectedly, and smiled at him.

“You have come back, Louis . . . as you promised.”

“I wish to God that I had never gone!” exclaimed the Vicomte passionately.

Gilbert slipped his right hand into his. “My dear boy, don’t you know . . . that you saved us? Now you can hold the place . . . till Charette comes up. . . .” His voice failed suddenly, and he shut his eyes with a little sigh as though he were tired, and the last word said.

But Louis was clutching the cold hand to his breast as he bent over him. “O Gilbert—don’t go! For God’s sake, don’t go! . . . I want you . . . I can’t let you go now. . . .”

A gust of wind swept into the hall, and the candle flames bent before it. The priest, kneeling motionless on the other side, with a hand on Château-Foix’ left wrist, began to take his crucifix from his sash.

Louis saw it, and stretched out a barring arm. “No—you shall not put it there!” he said fiercely. “He is not dead—he is not going to die!” His look at M. des Graves was defiance.

For all answer the priest put the little crucifix, not on Gilbert’s breast, but into Louis’ own hand. “Lay it there yourself, my dear child, when it is time,” he said, and in the inexorable tenderness of his gaze the young man saw that the end was indeed come.

Suddenly Gilbert reopened his eyes, and looked slowly from one to the other. Louis felt the hand between his own contract a little, and heard a whisper of his name. He stooped and kissed the Marquis on the mouth. The tears were running down his face like rain. “Good-bye, Gilbert, good-bye!” he whispered brokenly. “Good-bye . . . good-bye. . . .”

“Lift him up a little,” came the priest’s voice, quiet and unshaken, and Louis raised his dying cousin in his arms till his head rested on his own shoulder. Everybody in the hall was kneeling round, and many were sobbing unrestrainedly. M. des Graves began the commendatory prayer; and in the middle of it Gilbert moved his head a little on Louis’ breast, looked at the priest, smiled very faintly, and died without a struggle.

In the low murmur of prayers rising round them Louis knelt on, holding Gilbert’s body in his arms. At last, kissing him again, he laid him gently down. Still looking at him as he lay there, he groped with one hand for the little crucifix which he had put on the floor beside him, and, finding it, laid it on his cousin’s wounded breast and folded his hands over it. Then he got rather suddenly to his feet, saying aloud (though he did not know it): “Is that all?”

And then he saw, standing by the curtained doorway, grim and blood-stained, his drawn sword in his hand, the Chevalier de Charette, and behind him other faces.

“You have come too late,” he said.