Chapter II: Return to Life!

Luc de Clapiers lay on the humble bed in the back room of the gardener’s cottage; in the outer chamber his servant was packing and gossiping with the convent porter.

Luc was fully dressed. His sword, hat, and cloak, sent yesterday from Aix (since all his infected clothing had been burned), lay across a chair beneath the window.

Outside the birds were singing, and their flying shadows crossed and recrossed the white corner of the hospice wall. Presently Luc raised himself on one elbow.

“Jean!” he called.

The man came instantly.

“What time is it, Jean?”

“About half-past two, Monseigneur.”

“Thank you. I am going into the chapel for a little while. I shall be back when Monsieur, my father, comes.”

He rose stiffly and feebly, and stood leaning against the end of the bed.

“What is that which continually goes past the window, Jean?”

“Birds, Monseigneur--only little birds.”

Luc smiled.

“Indeed, I cannot see them, Jean.”

The servant waited, not looking at his master. Presently Luc gave a little nod of dismissal, and Jean returned to the outer room.

Luc decided not to go to the chapel. He had thought that the dark, cool spaces, the nuns behind their grille, the subdued singing might bring him fortitude and peace; but now he rejected that idea as weakness.

He had also wished to inquire after Carola Koklinska before he left the convent. Yet to what purpose? She was lost to the world, and her name had not passed his lips once during the brief agony of his illness and the long agony of his convalescence.

He recalled his last interview with her and his words, “If I am stricken, pray that I may die.”

And now his worst horror had been realized, and he was cast back on life to die slowly from day to day--an object of disgust and pity. He knew, though no one else had been told, that he had not very long to live. The doctor gave him a few years--five, or six, or seven.

Three days ago he had first seen himself in a mirror. Two days ago he had written to M. Amelot saying that his health did not permit him to take up the appointment at Madrid.

And to-day he had to see Clémence de Séguy.

He had gently told Jean to leave the mirror, and it hung against the wall at the foot of his bed.

He turned to it now, took it down and brought it to the full light of the window, held it between his hands, and gazed into it.

He could only see very imperfectly. Objects had lost their sharp outlines, their true colours; things beyond the radius of his own outstretched hand were dim and obscure. He peered into the mirror with the stoop and concentration of gaze of an old man.

He saw, as behind a blur, his own face, chalk-white, scarred, and seamed with a faint bluish colour; his eyes frayed, and swollen, yet sunk; his mouth strained and distorted--a face without bloom, or youth, or softness--a terrible face, from which all beauty, all expression had been swept, for in the ruins of these pale features was not one trace of the fair, mobile, spiritual countenance that had once shown to the world the soul of Luc de Clapiers.

His fine hazel hair had gone. He wore a curled white peruke, which further altered his appearance. He was so feeble he could not hold himself erect; he stooped from the shoulders and was gauntly thin. Presently he put the mirror on the bed, and two difficult tears forced themselves out of his worn eyes and ran down his disfigured cheeks.

Outside the birds were flying to and fro, and the fragrant perfumes of early spring swelled and receded on the full breeze.

The scent of earth, of flowers, of young trees came to Luc’s nostrils. He shuddered like one struck on an open wound.

He went to the window, stood with his hands on the rough sill, looking on to the little patch of herb garden and the whitewashed corner of the building.

“Come, face it,” he said to himself. “You are young, full of energy, of ardour, of ambition, of desire for glory; you can appreciate all that is good and beautiful. Yet now, at the flower of your age, you are deprived of everything that makes life desirable; you have only a few more years to live, and they will be full of pain and suffering--then--an obscure death. And all your gifts, your ardours, your hopes, your ambitions will perish with you, leaving no glimmer behind. Face that, Luc de Clapiers--face that!”

There was nothing left--nothing but the pitying love of those who would smooth his way to death, and to a proud soldier’s soul such tenderness was unendurable.

He picked up the sword he could never use again and buckled it on slowly, then left the cottage and turned, after all, towards the chapel attached to the convent. The service was nearly over. Luc seated himself near the door in the shadows. The nuns were behind their grille; in the body of the chapel were a few lay sisters.

Presently Luc went on his knees and prayed from a bitterly humbled heart--prayed incoherently, passionately to the God of his forefathers--

_“God! O God! what have I done? What offence armed your wrath against me? You have filled my life with bitterness. Pleasure, health, youth are robbed from me--glory that flattered so long the dream of an ambitious soul--all is gone!_

“_I let my glance fall on the enchanting gifts of the world, and suddenly they are all taken from me. Miseries, cares, regrets overwhelm my soul!_”

The silent prayer beat in his brain. His heart swooned in his side. He felt roof and walls vanish from about him and a sensation as if he were surrounded by clear heavens and a multitude of swaying clouds. But the murmur of the service was in his ears only a human thing. The God he prayed to was foreign; he could not find help here.

“_O my soul, show thyself strong in these great trials, be patient, trust in thyself; thy ills will end. Nothing is stable; the earth itself and the skies vanish as a dream. The dawn of eternity will light the bottom of the tomb, and death shall have no dark places left!_”

The service was over; the nuns departed from behind the grille, the lay sisters moved away, but Luc remained on his knees.

Yet his thoughts had swept swiftly far from the God to whom this church was consecrated. Out of his own soul he had drawn strength and sweetness.

“_How can there be a struggle with misfortune and evil when man is stronger than either?_” he asked himself. And at one bound his heart leapt to life and energy.

He rose to his feet.

“_I dedicated my life to virtue and glory. What prevents me from using the few years left to me in the service of the best things I know? I am stronger than Fate. There is nothing mightier in creation than the soul lodged in me. I and God are one. I need not fear anything, for I am the highest tribunal and the most powerful law, and I can satisfy myself._”

His hand touched the smooth, cold pillar beside him. The feel of the stone, the sting of the incense were repugnant to him. The heat and glow in his heart warmed his frail body. He drew his thin, stooping shoulders erect and left the chapel.

The image of Carola came fiercely to his mind. He trembled to think that perhaps she had been one of those shrouded figures behind the grille. Across the black gulf of his illness he beheld her figure beneath the iron bell and the clusters of ash berries. He heard her words, and felt her sobbing lips under his kiss and her cold hands in his.

A sister was crossing the courtyard, carrying a basket filled with herbs. Luc turned on his heel and saluted her.

“I am leaving to-day, my sister. Before I go, may I ask you a question?”

“Yes, Monseigneur.”

“There was a lady came with me--Madame Koklinska.”

“Yes.”

“It was her intention to enter your order.”

“She became a novice, Monseigneur, and helped for a while in the hospice.”

“For a while?” The scent of the bruised and fainting herbs was borne on him overpoweringly.

“She took the smallpox, Monseigneur, within a few days of you. She died, I think, a month ago. We had only one other death from the plague.”

“Thank you, my sister,” answered Luc gravely.

The sister passed on, and Luc stood silent in the sunny courtyard.

Dead! In what faith, in what mood, in what repentance, remorse, or fear? Dead without consolation, or love, among strangers--young and beautiful, and, he knew, without fear.

For a moment he was shaken by a wild revulsion, a desperate revolt against his own renewed triumphant exaltation and proud freedom. In that moment he would have put on all the shackles of her creed in return for the certain hope of seeing her again; he would have embraced any faith that had promised him that they should meet once more--even for a few minutes. A little while before and he had been prepared to believe that he would never see her again--prepared even not to think of her. Now he would have paid any price just to see her tired face and listen to her low, precise voice. He went back to the gardener’s cottage, and his eyes sought the little cheap plaster image of St. Joseph in the corner. If one could _believe_. He shook off the temptation, the delusion--she was gone. When he had seen her pass the white wall of the hospice she had left him for ever--and he had known it even then.

“I--suppose--I--loved--her,” he said to himself; but he had no understanding of any emotion outside confusion and loneliness. He did not see the room or the sunshine, but a white, sparkling expanse of snow, a great silver fir, and a woman on a white horse who leant from the saddle and looked at him.

He found his father standing where she had stood when he had seen her for the last time.

“I have come for you, Luc.”

The old Marquis stood erect and proud, handsomely dressed, composed.

“Clémence is waiting for you,” he continued. “She would have accompanied me, but I thought you would rather meet her at home.”

The name hurt and startled Luc. He made an effort to think coherently. He forced his thoughts on to the coming moments.

“Monseigneur,” he asked, “Mademoiselle de Séguy--knows?”

“Knows what?” demanded the Marquis in a still voice.

Luc’s dim eyes filled with tenderness. He answered very gently--

“Knows that she is free, my father.”

The old man gallantly kept his pose, his calm.

“You must not speak like that, Luc. Mademoiselle de Séguy loves you--nothing makes any difference to her. She is eager----”

“Ah, hush!” said Luc sadly, yet serenely. “Look at me, Monseigneur--look at me--think of her--of any woman. I have known a long while that it could never be. Surely neither you nor she think I would ask this sacrifice?”

“This is not the language of love,” said the Marquis firmly. “Do you not recall how she wished to prove herself? how she wished to show what her affection meant?”

Luc did remember, with a swift, sharp sense of longing and regret, the brief days he had spent with his promised wife--her vows--her devotion.

“God bless her for her brave loyalty,” he said unsteadily; “but my life is too broken now ever to be joined to another. She is a sweet woman. I hope she will find great happiness.”

“With you, Luc, with you,” cried the Marquis vehemently. “She is waiting for you; she is constant to you. Do not cast away the best thing left to you.”

“My father,” cried Luc, “do not you tempt me! I have faced it all. I counted the cost that night I rode here. I knew then I had lost her. Do not speak of it.”

Something in his quivering tone quelled the old man.

“You will at least see her?” he asked humbly, in the wild hope that Clémence’s pity and generous tenderness might overcome his son’s resolution. “She looks upon you as her future husband.”

“I will see her,” answered Luc, and his scarred face flushed dully. “I fear I have given her some pain--and you, and my mother, Monseigneur. I must adjust it all as best I may.”

And while he spoke he was thinking, “She left no message. I wonder if she spoke of me, or thought of me at all?”

“Our home is at Aix,” said the old Marquis, “and you are my eldest son. I, as you know, was never eager for you to go to Paris--but you had then--ambitions--and I acceded to them. Now I shall be glad to have you at home, and after a little while you also, Luc, will be glad to be with your own people.”

Through Luc’s brain ran the weary question, “If I had known it was for the last time, would it have made any difference? Yet I did know.”

Aloud he said--

“Mademoiselle must be free, my father. It was never in my mind that she believed herself bound.”

“But you have promised me that you will see her.”

“Yes,” answered Luc sadly. “Poor child!”

The Marquis hesitated, looked on the ground, then raised his head suddenly.

“Luc,” he said, “this alliance is an honour to M. de Séguy and to his daughter.”

The bowed young man turned his disfigured eyes on his father with another kind of pride.

“My God, look at me!” he said.

M. de Vauvenargues shivered, but the haughty expression of his face did not relax.

“You are Luc de Clapiers, and my eldest son,” he answered.

“And for that reason I shall not marry Mademoiselle de Séguy,” said Luc gently, “because it would be so--unworthy.”

A dark flush came over the Marquis’s face. He turned abruptly and left the room. His heavy, proud tread echoed with a sound of authority through the confined, silent spaces of the convent.

Luc remained for a moment with his dim gaze resting on the door through which _she_ had passed for the last time. He could recall every fold of her brocade gown, every line and shade in her face, every curl and twist in the long, loose knot of her dark hair.

He wondered where her grave was, and how she had looked in her shroud. His vivid fancy pictured her the thing of loathing into which the hideous disease she died of had turned her--and shuddered back from that image, and saw her again standing against the whitewashed walls saying, “Good-bye.”

“Clémence,” he said under his breath, and saw two women--one forgone and lost, one to forgo and lose.