CHAPTER VI
If all the rest of feminine Le Prieuré was agreed in accepting Louis-Marie’s discomfiture with regretful resignation, Martha Paccard was certainly not going to number herself of that complacent sisterhood. She was hot with pity and indignation, and, because vexed, illogical of course.
“What did the man seek?” she asked sharply of Jacques Balmat, referring to the Chevalier de France. “Honour, renown, riches, through this connection with a débauché? Our monsieur had provided them all, and with a better savour, if only you had spurred him timely to achieve the ambition of his life. But how was the poor boy to accomplish that ascent, with you and your wisdom for ever at his elbow persuading him from it? You men are all alike—great promises, and little reasons for not performing them.”
“No later than the day of the marriage, Martha, I urged him to come and try once more.”
“Then you did very wrong. What title had you to demand that risk of him, when all his happiness was at stake in Le Prieuré?”
“To increase the odds in his favour, to be sure.”
“Favour and odds! Has he not his patrimony, enough to frank a presence less angelic than his?”
“I do not see how to ascend the mountain could have added to it, certainly.”
“Don’t you? But there is money in fame, let me tell you, even if it is achieved ultimately through a book. As for you, you may ascend Mont Blanc, and nobody will believe it, because they will have to take your word, which is nothing.”
“They will take my word, nevertheless.”
“They will be more credulous, then, than I. I have long lost faith in it. And if I still doubted, there is that poor sick boy at home to confirm me. By this time, if you had done as you promised, not fifty di Roccos could have equalled him in reputation.”
“Is he very ill, Martha?”
“He wrings my heart. Why are you so strong, Jacques, and so honest and so resolute? I cannot conceive my father parting us at a blow. And yet I am a dutiful daughter too. I think we love weak men like mothers. I am glad you are not weak, Jacques.”
“So am I. So shall your father be some day.”
“You must learn modesty, Jacques. Poor M. Saint-Péray is a model of it.”
“And he has been jilted.”
“So he has; that is the truth. He still sits as if stunned. I don’t know what will happen when he recovers himself. Jacques, for pity’s sake watch him when that happens—for pity’s sake, Jacques.”
“I will be his shadow, Martha.”
“But not for him to know. I dread the time terribly. I think there is often no such fiend as a good man wronged through his goodness. And there has been an evil one whispering in his ear, I am sure.”
“An evil one?”
“M. Gaston, the old lord’s black whelp. He brought him home that day—straight from hearing the disastrous news. He has been with him once or twice since. Jacques, I should not be surprised—I should not be surprised, I say, if that devil were urging him to dare all and abduct—her up there.”
“Would you not? I think I wish I could believe it.”
“O, hush! are you all fiends? This Cartouche, they say, is ruined in the marriage. He may have his reasons—but you!”
“Well, good-bye, Martha. I will watch him.”
“That is right; to save him from himself—such a self, my God, as he may come to be! Good-bye, Jacques.”
She went on her way home. It was a chill, oppressive day for the season, with threat of cold storm in the air. Few people were abroad. As she neared her door, she noticed that a man was keeping pace with her. He reached the house as she did, and accosted her as she was lifting the latch. She recognised him for the Dr Bonito whom her father had supplanted at the Château, and her heart gave a little heave.
“Whom do you seek, monsieur?” she said, standing with her back to the door as if to bar his passage. She had not in her heart approved her father’s promotion to that distinction; but to any outer criticism of it she was ready to ruffle like a mother hen at a cat.
The doctor, it appeared, however, was to disarm her with a show of the most ingenuous urbanity.
“M. Saint-Péray lodges here?” he said, with a smile like a spasm of stomach-ache. “I should like to have a word with him.”
She looked at him with her honest eyes. It was at least a relief to find that his visit was not connected with his replacement by her father.
“He is not at all himself, monsieur,” she said. “Will not a message suffice?”
“Doubtless,” he answered. “Only I must deliver it myself.”
“A message?”
She questioned his face searchingly. Whose possible delegate could he be? Certainly he and M. Louis were at one in the question of their discomfiture by di Rocco. There was that much of sympathy between them. Besides, it was known that this man dealt in the occult—could cast nativities and foretell deaths. His message might be one of comfort and reassurance. Things were already at such a pass that no conceivable evil could congest them further. A certain awe awoke in her eyes. The neighbourhood of mountains engenders superstition.
“Is your—your message, monsieur,” she said, with a little choke, “from someone—somewhere that only such as you can understand?”
He chafed his bony hands together, leering at her wintrily.
“Yes,” he said. “I think it may interest him.”
“Wait, then,” she answered, deciding in a moment, “while I ask him if he is willing to receive it.”
She had intended to leave him on the doorstep while she went, but he followed her in closely, lingering only at the foot of the stairs while she ascended.
Louis-Marie sat in a little room which overlooked the hills. His ambitions and their unfulfilment were eternally symbolised before his vision. He was not much changed outwardly; only his eyes appeared physically to have shallowed. A cloud had come between them and the sun, and the transparency of their blue was grown chalky, as if a blind had been pulled down over his soul. And as yet no lights were lit behind, to show the shadows of what moved there. He was as quiet and courteous as ever in seeming; but women are as sensitive as deer to atmosphere, and Martha never saw him now but she quaked in anticipation of a storm to come.
He was reading, or feigning to. He looked over to her kindly.
“What is it, Martha?” he asked.
“There is one come to see you, monsieur, with a message from the stars.”
She trembled a little. He laughed.
“That is kind of him, whoever he is. Is it a fallen star, Martha? It can have no message for me otherwise.”
“It is fallen, monsieur, and therefore, maybe, in sympathy with its kind. It is Dr Bonito, the mage and soothsayer.”
“What! is he too the victim of a reformation? Heaven is very impartial, Martha. It condescends to no degrees in its chastisement. As well, after all, to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”
“Quite as well, if it is necessary to be hanged at all,” said Bonito at the door, to which he had mounted softly.
Martha exclaimed angrily, but Saint-Péray did not even stir.
“Pray make yourself at home, fellow-asteroid,” said he. “I must not complain if like attracts like. You can leave us, Martha.”
She obeyed reluctantly. Having followed impulse, she retired on mortification, which is the common way.
“What is your message?” said Louis-Marie, impassively, the moment his visitor was left alone to him. “You can sit or not as you like,” he added. “I am master of nothing.”
Bonito, as apparently phlegmatic for his part, remained standing where he was.
“You may think you know enough of my reputation to insult me,” he said. “It is no concern of mine what you or anyone thinks. The surest sign of worth is to be worth men’s slander, as its surest reward is ingratitude.”
“Pardon me,” said Saint-Péray. “I have never thought of you at all until this moment. But I agree with you so far—that to be vile and unscrupulous is, in this world, to be successful. If you are fortunate, we will admit, by antithesis, that you are virtuous.”
“They call me a Rosicrucian,” said Bonito. “I am at least so far in sympathy with the sect as to believe in the universal regeneration and the cosmopolitanism of the intellect. They call me also an alchemist. Certainly I would transmute the dross of life into gold. It is the world’s way to gild the calf and worship it. We see below the vile enamel. No idols of wealth or patriotism for us; no states or churches as jealous entities. Base metal is under the skin of all. Into the furnace with the vast accumulation, and there anneal it, with the salt of godliness, into that one and universal benevolence which shall be shoreless, landless, eternal—a single harmonious republic of the entire human race!”
He took breath. Saint-Péray sat as apathetic as a deaf mute. The other never thought to attribute his unconcern to his own uninvited self-exposition. Any propagandist, even of disinterestedness, is always absorbed in the first place in himself. In a moment he gave tongue again,—
“No need to question of the force which is to compel this transmutation. It has been growing consistently with the mind of man. The shame of the dominion of the brute in a world which intellect has shaped for itself; the shame of liberal knowledge lying at the mercy of illiberal ignorance; the shame of the animal coercing the angel, the fool cackling discredit on the sage—these things must cease off the earth at last. For when learning learns to combine, it shall be to ignorance as is the little bag of gun-powder, rammed home, to the material bulk which it is capable of annihilating. This is as certain as it is that the moment of the intellectual renaissance, age foreseen, is at last approaching. Because I, too, hunger and thirst with the fool, am I, Bonito, no better than a fool? The ‘fool’ can make it appear so, because in his numbers he commands the markets. Or has commanded—we shall see. The hour of his disillusionment perhaps is imminent. In the meantime we, who prepare the stage, do not cease of our efforts to divert the paths of evil, to over-reach iniquity, to gather each his quota of dirt and filth ready for the burning.”
He ended on a loud note, and wrung his lips between his thin fingers, leering at the other. If he had been tempted into an over long exordium, the more plausibly, he thought, would its moral “thunder in the index.” His craftiness was not to stultify itself by over-precipitancy.
Saint-Péray discussed his twitching face quite unmoved.
“I am obliged for your interesting message, sir,” he said. “You are reported to be a Rosicrucian? That concerns someone, no doubt; only I was under the impression that that sect eschewed politics. Thank you for putting me right. Good morning.”
Bonito did not stir.
“I aim,” he answered coolly, “in common with kindred spirits, many and potent, at the universal purification. Our politics are no more than that. Latency, cabala—all the rest of the terms which are held by the ignorant to condemn us, are only so many proofs of the divine sympathy with our mission. We can read the stars because we have, so to speak, friends at court there. Woe on him that scoffs at our message! Woe on di Rocco, I say, who heard and would not believe!”
He had shot his bolt, and as instantly saw that he had hit the mark. Louis-Marie gave a mortal start, and sat rigid. The curtain of his eyes was rent; there seemed things visible moving behind it. But not a word came from him.
“My message now is to you,” said the physician, low and distinct, “as to the one most intimately concerned in the scotching or expediting of a half-acted iniquity. I propose no plan; I point out no way. Bear that in mind very clearly. My task was accomplished when I warned di Rocco that his horoscope revealed Mars at the conjunction of the seventh and eighth houses, presaging quick death for him to follow on his marriage consummated. I have said that he disbelieved me. Disregarded would be the truer word. Passion in him was desperate enough to dare the test.”
“But not for a year.”
It was Saint-Péray who spoke, though his voice was scarcely audible. Bonito laughed little and low.
“Do you believe it? I know him very well indeed. There is no monster in all the world so self-convinced of his own irresistibility. You think he has left Le Prieuré. As a fact he does not start for Turin until to-morrow morning, when urgency compels him. But he will not fail to storm the coy fortress first—to-night he will do it—either to persuade or enforce!”
He paused, listening for an answer, but none followed.
“You may question how I know this,” he went on. “Be satisfied; we who read the stars command our instruments. He is to go secretly after dark, to-night, I say, crossing the glacier of the Winds from the further side towards the Montverd. Nicholas Target will be there to conduct him; Nicholas Target will have been instructed first to dismiss his daughter from the auberge on some errand which will delay her. Monsignore will find the Marchesa quite alone and defenceless—nothing to complain of for a wife. He will presently leave her to return, as secretly, by the way he came. What then? There are pitfalls on the glacier, and Target will likely be drunk. Perhaps Fate will choose to verify its prediction during that passage. I cannot tell. For me, I have done my part. If this act is necessary for his destruction, a young widow will be ensured in Le Prieuré before long. That is my message to you; I speak it, with absolute conviction of its truth, for your consolation. If the marriage is consummated, the man must die. On the other hand, if one would save a threatened honour, balk by a timely abduction the hand of Fate, one would certainly procure a renewed lease of life for a villain, and a villain, one might be sure, who would not accept his despoliation with meekness. It is a nice point in ethics, upon which I will not presume to give an opinion. It had occurred to me once, I admit, that a revelation of the plot to the father would be the proper course. Reflection, however, convinced me that he would be only too glad to sanction, indirectly, the most treacherous of means for breaking down the barrier which his daughter had raised between himself and a potential greatness. In the end, monsieur” (he prepared to leave), “I resolved to confide the issue to the hands the most strong, in faith and godliness, to direct it—to your hands, in fact. You have my sympathy and good wishes. I have the honour to bid you good morning.”
He might have been speaking to an apparition for any response he could extort. Only Saint-Péray’s eyes were fixed upon him with a greed more horribly eloquent than words. He felt them following him as he left the room—clinging, it seemed, like the discs of tentacles to his back as he descended the stairs—pursuing him, silently, deadlily, through all the convolutions of his way, however he might twist and turn to elude them. He was not a fanciful man for all his mysticism; but the impression of this unwinking pursuit haunted his soul into the very dominion of sleep. The eyes followed him upstairs, in the little inn where he was sojourning for the moment, and lay down with him on his pillow.
* * * * * * * *
On that same day Mr Trix received his final congé from his patron with the most serene good temper.
“Rogue, rogue,” said the old devil—“though I have loved a rogue, we must part. There is no place in this reformation for a Cartouche.”
“You have taken good care of that,” said the young man, pleasantly. “It is very natural you should not wish to be haunted by your past. Besides, I can foresee all sorts of complications if we remained penitents together.”
“Don’t tell me that you also are a penitent—no, no,” said the Marquess, with a nervous chuckle.
He was fumbling at a cabinet against the wall.
“See here,” he said; “I wouldn’t do the graceless thing by your mother’s graceless son. If this hadn’t happened—had redemption been denied me, I won’t say but that it might have been my intention to make you my heir—an evil inheritance. That’s past, that’s all over. Better to lose the world than your soul, eh? But I should blame myself to deprive you of the means to honesty. Take my advice, rascal, and live cleanly for the future. We’ve sown our wild oats, you and I. We must both be out of the house by to-morrow, and leave it clear to the sweepers and garnishers. In the meantime, here’s to commute your expectations. Money I can’t command, without abuse of the marriage settlements, but its equivalent lies here—take it.”
He held out a handful of jewels, of ancient setting and indiscriminate value. Cartouche received the heap passively.
“It would be false modesty in me to refuse my wages,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” said the other, returning, still agitated, to the cabinet. “There may be another trifle or so. There—”
He paused, holding a ring in his hand.
“This is your mother’s hair,” he said, suddenly and sharply. “You can have it also, if you wish.”
Cartouche received the ring from his hand.
“Thank you, father,” he said quietly.
“No such thing!” began di Rocco, loudly; but his voice broke on the word. Cartouche stepped forward, and kissed him on the cheek.
“Goodbye!” he said. “I wish you had made a good man of me.”
Di Rocco turned to the wall. When he looked round again, Cartouche was gone. Then the old libertine sat down and wept. But tears in such are nothing but the provocation to fresh evil emotions.