A rogue's tragedy

by Bernard Capes

CHAPTER III

M. Louis-Marie Saint-Peray lodged in the house of a M. Paccard, Le Prieuré’s respectable doctor, and an enthusiast in matters of geology. Everyone loved Louis-Marie, even, in a sweet, impartial way, the doctor’s only daughter, Martha, who, however, had other geese to pluck in the matrimonial market. The young man was so good and so good-looking, so pious, so enthusiastic and so sensible. Anticipating the boy-angel of “Excelsior,” he came storming the frozen heights, which, nevertheless, he was not to attain. But his failures made the true romance of his endeavours—in the eyes of women, at least, who do not admire the cocksureness which comes of success. As to the men, the rugged mountaineers, who were experienced in the natural limitations to their craft, they mingled, perhaps, a little contempt with their liking. It would be all very well to put their knowledge to school by showing it the way up Mont Blanc; but, in the meanwhile, aspirations were not deeds. They all, for the matter of that, aspired to conquer the great white peak, but their women did not applaud them for the wish. True, they had not, not one of them, M. Saint-Péray’s serene white face, and kindling blue eyes, and hair of curling sunbeams. Yet Le Prieuré was not deficient in manly beauty, however little it might derive from an exclusive ancestry of angels.

Le Prieuré, in Louis-Marie’s time, was a rude enough valley, and almost forbidden ground to the ease-loving traveller. That was one reason, perhaps, why the women so favoured this gentle stranger, who came to them on his own initiative out of the despised world of luxury. If he brought with him the traditions of tender breeding, he brought also its fearless spirit. It was something god-like in him to defy, in his frail person, that unconquerable keep of the mountains.

That was good in itself; but a closer appeal was to reach them on the occasion of his second visit. For it was then that he and Yolande met for the first time, and provided in their meeting the basis for a more poignant romance than any which had yet glorified him. Within a week, every wife in Le Prieuré thrilled in the knowledge of a secret fathomed only by herself.

One wet July morning Louis-Marie left the doctor’s door and turned his face for Le Marais, which was a little dedicatory chapel standing under pine woods on the lower slopes of the Montverd. It was there he had first come upon Yolande, the saintly loveliness, craving some boon of the sacred heart; and what better rendezvous could the two afterwards appoint than the little holy shrine which had brought them mutually acquainted with the sweetest of all boons?

As Louis-Marie walked up the village street his heart sang like a bird with joy. It was full of thankfulness to the God of orthodoxy, who was nevertheless the God of nature and of love. How easy and how profitable it was to earn approval in those great eyes! One had only to keep the faith of a little child, to ask no questions, to court no vexing heresies, and be happy. And so to be rewarded for one’s happiness, as witness himself twice blessed. He had done nothing but be good according to his orthodox lights, and for that virtue, which was instinct, here was he glorified in the affection of the loveliest lily of womanhood which had ever blossomed in a by-way of the world. He turned and breathed a laugh in the direction of the unsurmountable peak, hidden now within league-deep folds of mist. What was there to gain which seemed other than trivial in the light of his higher achievement? The mountain was shrunk to a mole-hill under that star, that altitude.

There was no wind; the wet dropped softly, caressingly; the fields were full of flowers. Louis-Marie could interpret the talk between them and the earnest rain. The patches of standing rye were stippled with poppies. He recognised why the supreme artist had touched them in here and there and nowhere else. Sacred love was the understanding love after all; he felt that he had been given the gift of tongues.

He took no sense of depression from the drowning mist. The gloom made the lamp of his heart shine the more friendly, smiling on all things in its consciousness of the ecstatic wings which were waiting up there to flutter to it in a little. He had no doubt of himself, or of his right to hold that lure to them. Perhaps he had no reason to have. He came, for all worldly considerations, of an old and stately family, and he had his orphan’s patrimony—nothing great, but enough to bring him within the bounds of eligibility in the eyes of a poor Chevalier. If he had consented hitherto to make a secret of his suit, it was because he could not find it in his heart to materialise the first virgin rapture of that idyll—to submit it to flesh-and-blood conditions. There was no other reason; or, if one was to be suspected in M. de France’s pride and aloofness, as gossip painted them, he would not admit to himself that he had been influenced by it. But, in any case, propriety, always to him the little thing more than love, without which love itself must lack perfection, demanded its vindication the moment he realised that it was in question; and he was now actually on his way, in fact, to entreat his love’s consent to an appeal to the paternal sanctions.

Half-way down the village street he encountered a young fellow, a friend of his, and one intimately associated with some past ambitions. This was Jacques Balmat, already the most experienced of mountaineers at twenty-two. His dark eager face and bold eyes showed in significant contrast with the girlish pink and blue of the other’s. He held out a handful of pebbles.

Louis-Marie was in no hurry. “For Dr Paccard, Jacques?” he asked, with a smile. The young man nodded his head.

“Some of them are rare enough, monsieur. I risk my life in getting them. But who would win the daughter must court the father.”

There was significance as well as sympathy in his tone. To him, also, there was a peak higher than Mont Blanc’s to attain.

“Very true, Jacques,” said Saint-Péray. “I hope we may both find favour.”

The young mountaineer nodded again.

“And in the meanwhile, monsieur, there is no favour imperilled by showing what resolute fellows we are. I was even now on my way to monsieur. This mist presages a sunny morrow. Monsieur, the mountain still waits to be scaled.”

“It must wait, Jacques, for me. There are rarer heights to gain. For the moment I hold my life like the frailest vessel, which it is my duty to protect from so much as a breath of danger.”

“Well, monsieur, that sounds funny to me. But then, manliness is my only recommendation. To win a great name out of venture—there is my chance, and now more than ever.”

“Why now, Jacques?”

“Monsieur has not heard? Dr Paccard has been appointed physician to the Château. Dr Paccard will be a big man presently—too big to countenance a son-in-law chosen from the people.”

“Since when has he been appointed, Jacques?”

“Since last night, monsieur, by the talk. It tells of how the monsignore’s erst familiar, the seer Bonito, came down into the village raging over his dismissal. And there are other whispers—of a libertine reformed; of changes projected at the Château. I know little of their import, I—only this, that Jacques Balmat will lose nothing by conquering the mountain. Shall we not join hands, monsieur, in essaying once more a triumph which would make all men our debtors—monsieur, to win or perish?”

But Saint-Péray shook his head.

“Another time, Jacques,” he said. “My claim to conquest must rest on lower deserts. Bonne chance, camarade!” And he went on his way, to meet the fate of the irresolute; while young Balmat went on his, to climb to his Martha by-and-by.

Louis-Marie was grown thoughtful as he walked on. Nature somehow seemed a little further from his knowledge than before; the talk between the flowers and the rain was like a whispered conspiracy; the dank air chilled him. As he turned out of the village into the wet meadows, which sloped gently upwards towards Le Marais, he started to see a figure standing by a little freshet as if awaiting him.

“Gaston!” he cried, with an irresistible thrill of guiltiness in his note.

Mr Trix wore, making a grace of necessity, a thick dove-grey redingote. His buckish little “tops,” which came but half-way up his calves, appeared scarcely soiled by the rain and mud. The smallest of black cocked hats was placed jauntily on his black curls, of which one, and one only, was privileged to accent the whiteness of his fine forehead. Over his head he carried a small Spanish silk umbrella, an innovation of such effeminacy that his daring it at all in the teeth of fashion testified to something in his character which was at least as noteworthy as his foppishness. Like the dandy wasp, with his waist and elegance and sting, there was that suggestion in Mr Trix of an ever-ready retort upon the rashness of his critics. Some men there are who carry swords in their eyes, and no one laughed at Cartouche the macaroni unless behind his back.

He came up to Louis-Marie, and took his arm with an assured frankness. His smile showed an enviable regularity of teeth.

“Yes, I purposed to meet you,” he said. “Are you in a hurry?”

His self-sufficiency somehow mended Louis-Marie’s.

“My business can wait,” he answered, “for a friend.”

Nevertheless he paused meaningly, as if that business were exclusive.

Cartouche laughed.

“Louis-Marie,” said he, “you have never yet asked me for my credentials.”

“You saved my life,” said Saint-Péray, simply.

“That is true,” said Cartouche. “But supposing it was for my own ends? I am the very hawk of opportunism.”

“You must have quick eyes indeed, dear Gaston,” said Saint-Péray, with a smile, “if you saw your way to turn me to account during those few moments of my peril.”

“Eyes of the hawk, Louis-Marie. Well, I saved your life, you say. It is certainly the only thing I ever saved, and therefore perhaps, like a spendthrift, I put a particular value on it.”

“And I too, Gaston, I assure you. There was never a time when I held my life so dear as now.”

“That is as I supposed, and the very reason why I am here to warn you.”

“What! is my life in danger?”

“That is as it may hit. If someone came to me and said, ‘Gaston, there is one who has it in his power to administer to you the potion of virtue, so that you shall wish to marry and live respectable,’ I should say that my life was in peril. But one man’s food is another man’s poison, and it is possible that you might welcome such a physicking.”

“Indeed I think I should.”

“Very well. Then there is a priest at Le Marais, I believe—a professional dealer in such potions. There is also, if I am not in error, the necessary other party to such a transaction awaiting you there. I would seize the opportunity, if I were you, to be made respectable for ever.”

“What do you mean?”

Saint-Péray’s face was grown suddenly a little white and stern.

“We are blood-brothers,” answered Cartouche, quietly; “comrades of a very recent sentiment. I honour the tie, despite—I say despite—an older and, to me, more natural one. I mean no reflection upon anything but the blindness of two simplicities, living, privately as they suppose, in a little-high paradise of their own. Will you not be satisfied with a hint? Will you not believe in its sincerity, though I tell you that I should profit personally by its acceptance by you? You have chosen to take me on trust. I choose to vindicate that confidence by assuring you that my patron di Rocco has spoiled more idylls in his time than I can tell. He is in the way to ruin yet another, this time by the Church’s sanction; and his arguments, from the worldly point of view, are overwhelming.”

Saint-Péray was like a ghost now.

“Speak plain, brother,” he whispered; “or rather, answer only. Is the Marquess a suitor for the hand of Mademoiselle de France? Is that what you mean?”

Cartouche stepped back and nodded.

“He is an accepted suitor, Louis-Marie.”

The young man dropped his head with a shudder, as if he had been stabbed. But in a moment he looked up again, pale and trembling.

“So vile!” he said hoarsely. “She’s soiled in his mere thought! Gaston! My God! it must not be; it—”

He checked himself suddenly, gazed a troubled moment into the other’s face, then turned and went quickly up the hill. As soon as the mist had hidden him, Cartouche followed easily in his steps.

“I must see this folly out,” he thought. “Perhaps they will want a witness.”

The chapel of Le Marais hung in the clouds. Its stone walls streamed with rain. The sop and suck of it were the only sounds which broke the silence of the hillside. Cartouche stepped softly to the door and looked in.

It was just a dovecot, of a size for these two pious pigeons. They knelt side by side before the little gimcrack altar. The girl had been waiting there for the other to join her. A picture of the sacred heart transfixed hung on the wall above her head. It was thence she had sought to gather strength for the cruel thing she had to say.

Cartouche, standing without, looked through the crack of the door. He could not see Yolande’s face, for it was hidden in her hands. But presently, with a quivering sigh, she raised it, and, seeing her lover still bowed down in prayer, turned towards the entrance as if seeking light. So the young virgin of Nazareth might have turned, in great doubt and loveliness, following with her eyes the dimming messenger of heaven. And then she herself went to prayer again.

We have likened Yolande once before to Dorothea the Martyr, she who, when condemned to death for loving Christ, promised that she would send to Theophilus, the young advocate who had bantered her, a posy from the garden of her desires. Now, like that Theophilus, when a child-angel stood before him offering to his hand a spray of unearthly roses, Cartouche felt his heart suddenly constrict and, rallying, choke his veins with fire. Stepping softly back, he tiptoed round the end of the chapel, and gained the tiny presbytery which stood in a clearing above. The little house was deserted, it seemed, both of father and sacristan. No one answered to his low tapping. As he stood undecided, the voices of the lovers approaching from the chapel reached him. The door of the presbytery was on the latch. He opened it, entered, and stood hidden just within. He had no wish to eavesdrop; his heart was in a strange panic, that was all. He felt as Actaeon must have felt as he backed into the thickets.

The two came close up to his hiding-place; and then they stopped, and uttered for his shameful ears the tragedy of their lives. In the first of their meeting, amazed as yet, and unrealising the abyss which was fast gaping between them, they spoke in the soft romance, the old love-language of Savoy; but soon a woefuller cry wrung itself from the torture of their hearts.

“Garden of my soul! as the rose clings to the wall, so art thou mine.”

“I have clung to thee, Louis.”

“The sun hath welded us into one. Thy perfume is in me, as my strength upholds thy beauty. We cannot be torn apart but we perish.”

“I have climbed heavenwards resting on thy heart. My cheek hath glowed to thee by day, and at night, when thou sleptst, I have put my lips to the moon kisses on thy face.”

“Who is this thief that comes into my garden to steal my rose? A beast whom they liken to Gilles de Rais; a thing so foul that I would rather my rose were scentless than that he should boast to have shared in the tiniest largesse of her perfume.”

“Hush! he is the husband whom my father has chosen for me.”

At that Louis-Marie threw poetry to the winds, and seized Yolande’s hands, and looked with madness into her eyes.

“He may choose, but let me gather no submission from your tone. Yolande, we will go down together, and claim our older pledge and win his heart by tears. I had meant this very morning to urge you to that course. Why didn’t I before! O, why didn’t I before! I curse my own delay! I—”

“Louis!”

“Yes, I was wrong. ’Tis love’s, it seems, to damn. Come down, Yolande, before it is too late.”

“Listen, dear love; it is too late. It was a conditional promise, and the condition has been observed. What should my father know of you? His word is his bond, and he will hold to it.”

“He cannot know the reputation of this man. His breath’s a blight upon the earth. Why, even now—”

He broke off with a cry, and clasped his arms convulsively about her.

She was like a ghost, holding up her white hands to him piteously. Cartouche saw what perfect things they were, frail and slender, yet of a beauty to cradle all love. Her face, in its milky pallour, grey-eyed and scarlet-lipped, was like the face of some spirit tragedy flowering from the mists.

“Ask me nothing,” she whispered. “Tell me what to do.”

“I tell you?” he said, releasing and stepping back from her. He forced his trembling lips to resolution. “What does your heart say, Yolande? your stainless womanhood? your duty to yourself?”

“My duty to my father, Louis.”

“Now, God help me! Is that a note of wavering in your voice? This man’s rich and powerful, and I’m neither.”

“Louis, I’ll not upbraid you.”

“For duty’s sake to tie yourself to a leper! What abuse of authority will not women plead to justify their treacheries!”

“Will you break my heart? If I married him from duty, I should kill myself from love.”

“Hush, dearest! hush, my lily! I was a brute and coward. Forgive me. Yolande, Yolande! have I offended you beyond recall?”

“I forgive you, indeed. But, Louis, were it not better just now to think than kiss?”

“Yes, to think, Yolande. I would carry you by force if driven to it.”

“Would you? O, I am helpless!”

“But not unless all else failed. To prevent one outrage by another! God would not love us any longer, Yolande. We must try all juster means first.”

Cartouche, wincing, ground his heel softly into the boards where he stood. The girl was weeping very hopelessly.

“You wring my heart,” said Saint-Péray, sobbing himself. “What am I to do? What think? I would pray for light before I act—pray for fortitude and reason. Precipitancy makes self-martyrs, Yolande. Our cause is better won by moderation.”

She turned from him. “Yolande!” he cried in agony. “You love me best?”

Cartouche uttered a very wicked oath under his breath. But the white lily was in her lover’s arms.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “You are always right, dear Louis. Only tell me what I am to do.”

“Supposing you went now to your father, Yolande, and confessed the whole truth to him?”

“Alone, Louis?”

“Only for a little, dearest. I will follow when I have prayed for guidance. Would he know my name even?”

“I have done very wrong.”

“Hush! the blame is mine. But we will mend it—start afresh. He must be broken to my idea—learn my deserts before he sees me. I’ll trust to you to speak them, sweetheart, better than myself. We must not descend upon him with flags flying, daring his enmity.”

“You’ll not be long?”

“Yolande! do you doubt me?”

“I only doubt myself, Louis. If he appeals to me by all I owe to him!”

“You owe God your soul, Yolande.”

“Yes, yes. Pray to Him for me, Louis. I am so weak alone. Good-bye, Louis.”

“Au revoir, Yolande.”

She did not mend her term, however, and they parted. Cartouche turned his face away. When he looked again they were both gone—Yolande down the hill, Louis-Marie to the chapel.

“I have seen an angel,” thought the watcher. “Henceforth I am in love with chastity.”

He lingered long in his eyrie, waiting for Saint-Péray to go. At length, restless beyond endurance, he decided to take the lead in the descent. As he went down the hillside, the mist was already retreating before the onset of the sun. It was the dawn of mid-day. Cartouche looked over his shoulder towards Le Marais.

“Will that bring him out?” he thought, “or will he always put off making his hay until to-morrow?”

Coming out into the road below, he ran suddenly upon Bonito. The physician sprang back and stood breathing at him, grinning horribly.

“Ha!” he cried. “Well met, fellow-disinherited!”

He champed like a rabid dog. He was woefully unclean and disordered. Cartouche fell severely calm.

“What is the matter?” he asked.

“The matter!” cried Bonito. “Enough and to spare for us. Go and hear it in the village. Thou hast sped, if thou hast sped, to great purpose indeed. Le Marais was already bespoke, it seems. They are man and wife this hour.”

Cartouche did not move.

“Who are man and wife?” he said.

The other raved.

“Who but the dog that hath disowned us, and the—woman that hath replaced!”

“The woman! she of the white hands? Why, she was up yonder not twice as long ago!”

“I cannot help that. You should have kept her there. If you let her go, you were the fool.”

“I had nothing to do with it. She went down to plead for her lover.”

“A pretty pleading! I don’t doubt she’s like them all—caught by a title. Anyhow springed she was and is, and held at this moment as fast as Church can bind her.”

Cartouche laughed recklessly.

“Well,” said he, “man proposes, but woman disposes. Our best-laid plans are nothing without the collusion of the party planned against. We must carry our wits to a fresh market.”

Bonito, with a fearful blasphemy, hit out into the air.

“I know my market!” he screamed, “I know my market!” and ran raging up the road. Cartouche turned his face to the hill once more.

A little way up he met Saint-Péray, pale and exalted, descending at last. He stood in his path.

“Louis-Marie,” said he, “you have delayed too long. It does not do to give the devil tether while you pray. Mademoiselle de France is at this moment the Marchesa di Rocco.”

He owed the young man no mercy, he thought. His own heart, for all his cynic exterior, was burning between contempt and anger. But he was hardly prepared for the blighting effect of his own words. Louis-Marie fell at his feet as if a thunderbolt had struck him.