MONSIEUR GOMBARD’S MISTAKE.
CONCLUDED.
About a month after this memorable expedition of M. Gombard’s the town of Loisel was in a state of extraordinary commotion; the elections were going on, which meant that all men had gone mad, that the seven devils were let loose, and that no man could be sure of sleeping in his own bed from one night to another. The decree had gone forth that General Blagueur was the government candidate, which signified that every man was to vote for him, and that every man who didn’t was a dead man—every man, that is, who had anything to lose or anything to hope for from the powers that were. No one knew who this General Blagueur was, or where he came from, or anything about him, except that he was the right man whom it was their business to put into the right place. This was all it concerned them to know or to care as dutiful subjects of Napoleon III. But though there were many such at Loisel, there were many of another sort, who set their backs stiffly against the right man, and were perversely bent on having a wrong man of their own. It does not matter to our story whether this rebellious outburst was justifiable or successful. It may be mentioned, however, for the comfort of the many who are born sympathizers with rebels in every class and country, that the rebellion of Loisel did succeed, and that General Blagueur was ignominiously beaten. But what a price Loisel paid for this wicked victory! A detachment of troops was at once sent down to prey upon its vitals
and hold a cocked pistol at its head. The state subsidy promised to the local municipality for rebuilding the tumble-down hospital was refused; the concession for a railway to connect it with the main line, after having been distinctly promised to an enterprising company, was withdrawn; the prefect was “promoted” to a post in a dismal, out-of-the-way town in an eastern department. It was said at one moment that the mayor was going to be dismissed, or in some way visited by the imperial displeasure. But this was one of those unreasoning panics that are common to every period of social terror; men lose their heads, and see monstrous and impossible events impending. The government, powerful as it was, never dreamed of laying a finger on M. Gombard.
The worthy mayor forbore, with his usual prudence, from taking any prominent part in the war that was raging at Loisel, and ostensibly left the prefect all the honors and perils of leadership; but it was perfectly well known, as he admitted to friends in confidence, that if M. le Préfet reigned, M. le Maire governed; and M. le Maire’s power arose in great measure from the consummate tact with which he managed to hide this fact from everybody, above all from M. le Préfet. Now, it happened that, just when the excitement of the contest was at its greatest, when the wildest stories were afloat about the sinister machinations of the government, the base and cruel means it employed to compass its ends—setting brother against brother, and wife against husband, carrying bribery and discord and all manner of corruption into the very marrow of the bones of Loisel—it happened that, when things were in this state, a young man arrived at the principal inn of the place. He did nothing
to provoke the anger or suspicions of the population: he was silent, unobtrusive, speaking to no one at the table-d’hôte where he took his meals; but before he had been two days at Loisel the entire town was infuriated against him. He had been seen standing before a dismantled old round tower that guarded the entrance to the town, and once had boasted of battlements and a cannon; this report had gone abroad the first day of his arrival, and the next morning it was positively stated that he had been seen by an applewoman and a milkman walking round the tower, and scrambling upon a broken wall close by to get a view into it. It was at an early hour, before anybody was likely to be abroad. Such facts, resting on such clear and forcible evidence, admitted only of one interpretation—the stranger was a paid miscreant sent down to examine the tower with a view to fortifying it as of yore, and so terrifying the refractory towns-people into surrendering their independence to the government. A council was called by the outraged citizens, and in ten minutes the fate of the engineer was decided. A rush was made on the inn where he lodged; he was seized, dragged forth amidst the yells of the enraged mob, and would have rendered up his mercenary soul to judgment there and then, if the prefect had not chanced to ride up at the moment to the scene of popular justice.
“What is this? Call out the soldiers! I will have every man of you shot, if you don’t release your prisoner!” he cried, charging boldly into the fray.
“He’s a spy, a traitor! We won’t have him here! He wants to murder us; to butcher our wives and children,” etc. Fifty people shouted out these and similar cries together;
but they had ceased maltreating the unfortunate stranger, and were now only clutching him and threatening him with clenched fists.
“If he is guilty of any misdemeanor or crime, or intent to commit crime, he shall be made to answer for it; but it is the business of the law to see justice done, not yours. Let go your prisoner!” said the prefect in a tone of high command.
Courage and the prestige of lawful authority seldom fail to impress and subdue an excited mass of men. The mob fell back, and two gendarmes, at a sign from the prefect, stepped forward; the crowd made way for them. “That man is under arrest. Conduct him to the mairie and lock him up,” said the prefect.
The gendarmes marched off the rescued man, a crowd trooping on with them, hooting and yelling with an energy that sounded far from reassuring, though it was so in reality, being a kind of safety-valve to the excited mob. It was a great relief, nevertheless, to the object of this manifestation to find himself locked up and safe out of its reach. He was not a coward, but the bravest may be permitted to shrink from such inglorious danger as this from which he had just escaped.
He had not been many hours in captivity when a sound of steps and voices approaching the door announced that some one was about to appear—probably the magistrate. The key turned in the lock, and M. Gombard entered, accompanied by two other persons: one was a clerk who was to take down in writing the interrogatory of the mayor and the prisoner’s replies; the other was a witness who was to sign it. The moment M.
Gombard beheld the prisoner his countenance changed; he felt it did, though no one present noticed it. In the hatless, muddy, battered-looking man who rose painfully to salute him the mayor recognized the lover of Mlle. Bobert. Was he still only her lover? In all probability he was her husband by this time. When M. Gombard had mastered his surprise and recovered from the shock of the discovery, he proceeded to examine the prisoner. The latter made no attempt at self-defence; he admitted, with a frankness which the reporter set down as “cynical,” that he had visited the round tower on the two occasions alleged; that he would gladly do so again, if the citizens of Loisel gave him the opportunity. He had a natural love for old monuments of every description, and was professionally interested in them—especially ancient fortifications and fortresses of every kind; this old tower was a curious specimen of the fifteenth-century style, he was anxious to take a sketch of it, and so on, with more in the same tone. The clerk wrote on with great gusto, interlarding the prisoner’s remarks with commentaries intended to complete them, and explain more fully the depth of malice every word revealed: “The accused looked boldly at M. le Maire”; “the accused here smiled with a fiendish expression”; “the accused assumed here a tone of insolent defiance”; “the countenance of the accused wore an air of cool contempt,” and so on. Meantime, the mayor was wondering at the calm, dignified manner of the prisoner, and admiring his well-bred tone and perfect self-possession; he was evidently no common kind of person, this lover, or husband, of Mlle. Bobert. At the close of the interrogatory,
when the clerk had wiped his pen and was folding up his document, the mayor, with a vaguely apologetical remark, inquired whether the prisoner was a married man. The answer came with the same quiet distinctness as the preceding ones: “No, monsieur, I am not.” He bowed to M. Gombard, and M. Gombard bowed to him. The interview was at an end. “The case looks bad,” observed the reporting clerk, as the door closed behind them, M. Gombard himself locking it, and pocketing the key unnoticed by the others, who hurried on, loudly discussing the matter in hand.
“Do you not think it looks badly, M. le Maire?” inquired the reporter.
“Very badly. We shall be the laughing-stock of the whole country, if the prisoner is brought to trial; we shall pass for a community of cowardly idiots. We must do our utmost to prevent the affair getting into the local paper, at any rate. You are a friend of the editor’s; have you influence enough with him, think you, to make him sacrifice his interest for once from a patriotic motive? It would be a fine example, and you will have done the town a service which I shall take care they hear of in due time.”
The reporter held his head high and looked important. “I was thinking of this very thing, M. la Maire, while I was taking down the prisoner’s answers,” he said. “I did my best to swell the silly business into something like a charge, feeling, as you say, that we should be disgraced if the case were trumpeted over the country as it really stands; but the best way to hinder the mischief will be to keep it out of the paper. I think I can promise you that this shall be done.”
“Then my mind is at rest. The honor of Loisel will be saved!” said M. Gombard.
“It shall, it shall, M. le Maire!” said his companion. He was excited and big with a sense of patriotic responsibility.
The next day was the grand crisis in the electioneering fever—the opening of the ballot-box. All Loisel was abroad and on tiptoe with expectation; there was no buying or selling that day. No wonder the unlucky inmate of the lock-up was forgotten. M. Gombard, however, had not forgotten him.
Late on the previous night, when the town had gone to bed and the streets were silent, nobody being abroad but the night watch and a few stragglers whose business and state of life made them avoid public notice and daylight, M. Gombard might have been seen stealing out by the back door to his own stable, and thence to the corner of a neighboring street, where he fastened his horse to a lamp-post, and stole back to the mairie with the quick, furtive air of a thief. He stepped softly down the stone passage that led to the lock-up room, laid his dark-lantern on the floor outside, and then turned the key slowly and with as little noise as possible. The dead silence that reigned in the place made the slight grating of the key sound like a shriek. When the mayor entered the room, the prisoner was walking up and down, trying to keep his blood in circulation; for the cold was intense, and he was famished with hunger. “I have come to release you,” M. Gombard said. “There is no time to lose. I have left a horse ready saddled at the corner of the street that leads straight to the ruined tower; you will mount him and ride for your life.”
The prisoner could hardly believe his ears.
“What does this mean?” he said. “You are a perfect stranger to me, and whoever you are, you must run a great risk in rendering me this service. May I ask why you take this interest in me?”
“I am glad to pay back a service that one whom … that was rendered to me not long since when passing through Cabicol. I will not say more; but you will learn all from the person in question most likely some day. Meantime, have no hesitation in accepting this service at my hands. It is a debt of gratitude that I am happy to be able to pay. Come, every minute is precious.”
The prisoner was not inclined to shut the door on his deliverer; whatever his motive might be, mysterious or romantic, it was a merciful chance for him. The two men left the house, stepping softly, stealthily like a couple of thieves. When they reached the entrance of a street, M. Gombard stopped, and pointed silently to where the gaslight fell upon the horse, giving him the appearance of a phantom beast amidst the surrounding gloom. The traveller held out his hand, and grasped the mayor’s in a long, strong pressure. M. Gombard returned it, and noticed now that his companion was bareheaded.
“You forgot your hat!” he said in a low voice.
“I lost it in the fray this morning.”
“Then the town of Loisel owes you another. Take this; it will serve you on the road as well as a new one.”
M. Gombard pulled off his hat and handed it to the fugitive, turned brusquely from him, and hurried home.
No one remembered the stranger who had provoked the popular fury, until two days after his arrest, when the agitation of the electioneering crisis had subsided, and the authorities had leisure to attend to ordinary business. Then it was discovered that the bird had flown, no one knew when, no one knew how. There was great consternation amongst the subordinate officials at the mairie whose duty it was to have looked after him; but each declared he was not responsible, that the prisoner had not been given into his charge, that the prisoner was only put there temporarily, and ought to have been conveyed at once to the jail, etc. This did not prevent them shaking in their shoes in mortal dread of being turned out of their places. The reporter was one of the first to hear of the escape. He flew at once with the intelligence to M. Gombard. M. Gombard looked him straight in the face and burst out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter; he shook, he held his sides, he laughed till he cried again. The reporter did not at first know what to make of it; but at last the contagion of M. le Maire’s mirth was irresistible. He began to laugh also, and then M. Gombard roared, and the two kept it up until they nearly died of it. At last M. Gombard, who was the first to recover himself, took out his red cotton handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and blew his nose, and, after sundry gasps and subsiding chuckles, said: “It is the cleverest joke I ever saw performed in my life, and you are the cleverest rogue I ever met with! It was bad enough to play it off unknown to me, to keep the fun of the thing to yourself; but then to walk in here with such cool impudence, and never move a muscle of your face while you announced it as the
latest intelligence! Ha! ha! ha!” And off he went again, falling back in his chair, and laughing till the tears rolled down his cheeks.
The reporter was in a terrible state. He had not the faintest notion what the fun was about, and he had really joined in it till he could laugh no more. One thing was clear: somebody had done something which M. le Maire thought extremely clever and was highly diverted at, and that he—the reporter—had the credit of.
“Tell me, how did you do it?” said M. Gombard, again recovering himself and mopping his face, that was now as red as the handkerchief.
“Really, M. le Maire, I—I don’t quite understand,” said the reporter, smiling and trying to look at once confused and knowing.
“Come, come, no more of this! Tell it out like a good fellow; let me have the fag-end of the fun at any rate. How did you manage to give them all the slip?”
“Positively, monsieur, there is some mistake. I don’t see—I don’t understand—” stammered out the reporter.
M. Gombard gave a tremendous gasp, as if the laughter were still in him and it required a huge effort to keep it down.
“Well, well,” he said, “I won’t press you, but I think you might have trusted me; we are old friends now. However, keep your secret and accept my best compliments. You missed your vocation, though; you ought to have been a diplomatist. I see no reason after this—after this”—here he began to shake again and brought out the cotton handkerchief—“why you should not be minister some day. Vous irez loin, mon cher—vous irez loin!”
There was a knock at the door. The two men stood up.
“M. le Maire, I am to understand that you are rather glad than otherwise of this—this mysterious disappearance?” said the reporter, with some hesitation.
“Glad! You deserve the Cross for it!” exclaimed the mayor. “It is the greatest service you could have rendered to the town. Some day or other they shall hear of it.”
“I really must disabuse you of a false impression,” began the reporter. “Anxious as I was to be of use, my share in this matter—”
“Tut, tut!” said M. Gombard, “none of this nonsense with me, my dear fellow. Keep your own counsel—quite right; but don’t be such an idiot as to deny your services to those who can reward them. Mark my words: Vous irez loin!” He tugged gently at the reporter’s ear, and, shaking hands with him, sent him away happy and elated, but utterly mystified.
The affair made some noise; a procès verbal was drawn up, there was an interrogatory of the clerks, and before a week the escape of the spy was forgotten.
Just before Easter—that is, three months after this little electioneering incident—M. Gombard had occasion to go to Cabicol again. This time, however, he was not alone; he was accompanied by M. le Préfet, the new one, who was making a tournée in his kingdom, and took the mayor with him by way of a moral support. He was a timid man; he knew that his appointment was unpopular, and that M. Gombard’s influence might help to reconcile people to it.
They alighted at the Jacques Bonhomme to change horses and take some refreshment before officially inspecting the town of Cabicol. M. Gombard was anxious to get some news of Mlle. Bobert,
when the marriage had taken place, and how it was supposed to prosper so far; but there was no opportunity of saying a word to the landlord, for the prefect was there, and M. Gombard had no plausible excuse for leaving him. He could not help remarking the strange expression of the landlord’s countenance on first beholding him; the scared, incredulous glance he cast upon him, and the mysterious manner in which, on assisting him from the chaise, he pressed his arm and whispered: “I congratulate you, monsieur; I congratulate you.”
What could the fellow mean by this extraordinary behavior! But the mayor remembered how oddly he had behaved on the occasion of his former visit, and set him down as an original, a harmless monomaniac of some sort.
Just as they were starting, and the prefect was receiving the compliments of M. le Curé at the door of the Jacques Bonhomme, M. Gombard seized the opportunity of a word with the landlord. Pointing his cane towards the old house opposite, he observed in a careless manner:
“Your pretty heiress is married by this, of course? What is her name now?”
“Married! Alas! no,” replied the landlord mournfully. “Monsieur has not, then, heard?”
“Good heavens! she is not dead?” cried M. Gombard, dropping his feigned indifference in an instant.
“She is blind, monsieur—stone blind! It was a terrible accident; she was thrown from a carriage, and the shock and injuries she sustained destroyed her sight. They say she may recover it after a while; but I doubt it, monsieur, I doubt it.”
“And her fiancé—has he given up—”
The mayor was here cut short by the prefect, who called out from the post-chaise, where he had already seated himself.
“Come, M. Gombard, we had better be starting.”
M. Gombard left Cabicol with a sad heart. He looked wistfully up at the latticed window under the grand old escutcheon where he had last caught a glimpse of the beautiful young creature, now so heavily stricken. It made his heart ache to think of her in that lonely house, her bright eyes sightless, dwelling in perpetual night. Why had not his rival insisted on marrying her in spite, nay, because, of this catastrophe? He could fancy how her brave and generous nature would refuse to accept what she considered a sacrifice; but what sort of a love was his that could not overcome such reluctance? Poor child! How gladly he would have devoted himself to soothing and cheering her darkened life! But perhaps he was wronging his rival; it might be that she had merely postponed their marriage, that they both believed in her ultimate recovery, and that she preferred waiting, until it had taken place, until her brown eyes had been restored, until the spirit which once animated them should awake and vivify them as of old.
M. Gombard did not return to Cabicol for many a long year after this. He left Loisel, and went to live in Normandy, where an uncle had died and left him some property—a rambling old house, surrounded by some wooded fields and a fruit-garden; the house was called the Château, and the fields were called “the Park.” M. Gombard had not been long in possession of
this ancestral estate before he was elected mayor of the village. He was the kind of man to be elected mayor wherever he resided. Some men, we hear said, are born actors, doctors, ambassadors, etc.; M. Gombard was born a mayor.
Life went smoothly with him amongst his fields and fruit-trees for nearly ten years. Then friends took it into their heads, and put it into his, that he ought to become a deputy; the elections were at hand, and they put up his name as opposition candidate for the department of X——, whose chef-lieu was Loisel. The proposal took M. Gombard’s fancy mightily. To go back to the place where he had left such a good name and exercised such undisputed influence; to go back as representative of the department—this was a triumph that even in perspective made him purr like a stroked cat. He started off one morning in high spirits for Loisel. His most direct road lay through Cabicol. The railroad landed him within a mile of the quaint old town at eight o’clock in the morning. He was in the mood for a walk, so he set out on foot. It was within a few days of Christmas; the weather was intensely cold, but the sky was as blue as a field of sapphire, and the sun shone out as brightly as in spring. He remembered the first time he had been to Cabicol; it was about this season of the year, but what miserable weather it was! Snow deep on the ground, and then the heavy rains coming before it melted, and turning the roads and streets into canals of mud and slush. This bracing cold, with the sun cheering up the landscape, was delightful. M. Gombard walked on with a brisk step, whistling snatches of one tune or another, till he came within sight of the church. The first
glimpse of the strong, graceful spire, pricking the blue sky, so high, so high it rose, brought a flood of soft and tender memories to the hard-headed, embryo legislator; he smiled, and yet he heaved a little sigh as the recollection of his first and his last visit to that fine old church came back upon him. He wondered how life had gone with the fair enchantress who had spirited away his heart from him in the brown twilight of the Gothic temple; whether she had ever cast a thought on him from that day to the present. And her sight—had she recovered it? M. Gombard had often thought of this, and breathed a hearty wish that it might be so. And was she married? In all probability, yes. The chances were that she was now the happy mother of a blooming little family, of which the man he had for a moment so vigorously detested was the proud protector. If so, M. Gombard would call upon him and pay his respects to madame. This was the proper thing for an opposition candidate to do, and it would be an opportunity for Mlle. Bobert’s husband to show his gratitude for former services.
He entered the town, now a busy, thriving place, and, crossing the market-place, made straight for the Jacques Bonhomme. There it was, not a whit changed, just as dingy-looking, with its stunted laurels before the door, that stood wide open as in the midst of summer. There, too, was the picturesque old manor-house opposite, just as he had first seen it, only that the roof was not covered with snow nor fringed with icicles. The ivy was thicker; it had grown quite over the front wall, but had been roughly clipped away from a space over the balcony, leaving the escutcheon visible—a gray patch amidst the glistening
green of the ruin-loving parasite. Two persons were coming out of the house as M. Gombard drew near. A group of poor people stood at the lodge, evidently awaiting them, with eager, questioning faces. One of these persons was the doctor, the other was the curé. The doctor walked on in silence. The curé spoke: “Alas! my friends, she is gone from us. We must be resigned; for the loss is all ours, the gain all hers.”
M. Gombard felt a great pang go through him. He stood near the group, and heard the tearful cries that answered the curé’s words: “Ah, la bonne demoiselle! Yes, it is a happy deliverance for her; but what a loss for us, for the sick, for all Cabicol!” And they dispersed, lamenting, and repeating through their tears: “Pauvre Mlle. Bobert! Our good friend! She is gone! The funeral is to be to-morrow!”
So she had died, as she had lived, “Mlle. Bobert.” M. Gombard lingered a moment, looking up at the deep, latticed window where the slight figure would never be seen looking forth again. She was to be buried to-morrow, they had said. He resolved to wait and attend the funeral. He remained gazing up at the picturesque old edifice, which had arrested his curiosity and admiration for its own sake before he had become interested in its mistress. Whom would it go to now? he wondered.
A step on the pathway outside made him turn and look in that direction. He was startled, but not much astonished to see the fiancé of Mlle. Bobert approaching. Poor man! He looked much older than M. Gombard had expected to find him. Evidently he had suffered during these eleven years; his life had been blighted as well as
hers. The manly heart of the mayor went out to him in sympathy. He was preparing to hold out his hand, when, to his consternation, the gentleman raised his hat with the old courtly bow that M. Gombard so well remembered. How was this? The unhappy man was ignorant of his sorrow! He was saluting the dead, and he knew it not.
“Monsieur, pardon me,” said M. Gombard, meeting him with an outstretched hand and a face full of genuine compassion. “You have evidently not heard the sad news?”
“Concerning whom?” inquired the gentleman, giving his hand, but looking very blank.
“Who? Why … Mlle. Bobert!”
“What has happened to Mlle. Bobert, monsieur?” asked the gentleman.
“What has happened? Good heavens! Can it be possible.… The worst has happened: she is dead!”
“Ah!” exclaimed the gentleman. Was this man some near relation of hers, or did he mistake him for one?
“I tell you she is dead!” repeated M. Gombard, his surprise rising rapidly to indignation. “She died only a few minutes ago, and she is to be buried to-morrow!”
“Naturally; that is the law. A person who dies this morning must be buried to-morrow, unless,” the speaker continued, fancying he had here a clue to M. Gombard’s excitement—“unless good reason can be shown for obtaining a delay, in which case, as a resident, I may be of some use to you; you seem to be a stranger here.”
M. Gombard could not credit his senses. Was he dreaming, or was this man gone mad? He stared at
him for a moment in dumb amazement. At last he said:
“Perhaps I am under a mistake.… I may be taking you for a person who resembles you strongly. Who are you, monsieur?”
“I am an archæologist by profession; my name is De Valbranchart.” He drew out his pocket-book and handed a card to M. Gombard.
“Henri, Comte de Valbranchart,” repeated M. Gombard absently. He had heard the name before; but where? “The name is not unknown to me,” he added.
“It can hardly be unknown to any one who has read history,” replied the count, with quiet hauteur. “The De Valbrancharts played a stirring part in the history of France as early as the twelfth century. But their day is over; they have no existence in the present. I am the last of the name.”
“Where have I heard it before?” said M. Gombard musingly.
“Perhaps at Cabicol,” returned the count. “This old house was the home of my family for three hundred
years. Those are our arms carved upon its front; for twenty years I have saluted them daily as I pass. It is foolish, perhaps; but I feel as if the spirit of my ancestors haunted the old roof-tree, and that they are not insensible to the filial homage.”
As he said this he looked up at the stone shield, where a lion passant, on gule, was still visible, surmounted by a fleur-de-lis argent, en chef. Raising his hat deferentially to the worn and partly-obliterated symbols of a glory that lived only in his faithful memory, the Comte de Valbranchart bowed to M. Gombard and passed on.
“And so this was the lady-love he worshipped,” said M. Gombard to himself, as the tall, pensive man disappeared down the street. “He never loved her, perhaps he never knew her; and if I had only known, I might have.… But it is no use regretting the irreparable. I should have been a more miserable man at this hour, if I had won her and loved her all these years.”