A rogue's tragedy

by Bernard Capes

He had done this thing for her; and she had accepted the burden of its consequences. She had prayed, prayed that even as he had saved her out of silence, so might she save him. And this was her heroism—to deprecate his blindness as a wilful vileness.

Then, poor child, she would call herself a wicked traitor to her lord, blame her own foul suspicions, and seek by loving demonstrations to atone. Her wistful guiles to win his favour, her rehearsals for his sake of that old forgotten part of tranquil innocence, her gratitude for only half-thawed acknowledgments, were moving things to witness. How could she dream her Louis guilty of this monstrous meanness—the man who had dipped his hand in blood to keep hers white? His first terror of that apparition had been real; he had afterwards accepted her word for its being an illusion. He always trusted others’ assurances: that very weakness it was which made him so lovable. So lovable, so lovable; and she had let her wicked heart condemn him! Could he have recovered from the shock of that visitation so utterly as he had, if he had seen in her the ever-present hostage for his immunity from deadlier hauntings? Her whole protecting knowledge of him was to answer; and it answered piercingly remorseful. No dear soul, it said, had ever less power than Louis-Marie for affecting to ignore the influences of a present depression. Yet Louis-Marie, the terror once laid, had rallied—had even come to recover something of the serenity of his earlier innocence. Why should he not, indeed? She thought, with heart-felt joy, it spoke his peace made with God; and, so justified of her burden, was more frenziedly determined than ever to hide her bearing of it from him, while she smiled and smiled under its load, impersonating out of torture her own untroubled youth. Alas! blind Love—who yet perhaps deserves scant pity! For did he not put out his own eyes!

Now she saw, and was rejoiced to see, as the months drew into years, his soul relax upon an ancient sweet security; the spectre of his fear grew less and less; his natural goodness mature into the full fruitage of its blossoms’ promise. So peaceful did he grow, so seemingly unvexed by apprehensions, so confident in his demands upon her charity for others’ sake, she was sometimes moved to wonder if, after all, she were not being made the victim of a hellish conspiracy—if he had really committed the crime with which villainy had charged him. But as often she recalled Bonito’s words—“Ask him, if you doubt me”—and that she dared not do. The answer might destroy at a blow the whole structure of his soul’s redemption, which her self-obliterating love had patiently built up for him year by year. Fruitless all her devotion then; useless that cementing of its bricks with her own heart’s blood. He had come to be nearer heaven now than she, raised on the altar of her sacrifice. She had lied to save him. Should she risk his soul at the last to save her own?

Divinely steadfast to her purpose, she kept her way. Her sweet eyes shone inspired to it. Though she were lost by holding to it, he should win to harbour. What greater love could woman show? If God would forgive her for that—concede her the mercy to creep into heaven, lost in her dear saint’s shadow! For he was her saint again—twice beatified through his fault. He had been guilty of his one worldly lapse for her—had done outrage to his nature that hers might suffer none. Was not such sin the prerogative of consecration?

So, with an unfading resolution, through days of exaltation and depression, through drear heart-burnings and the agonies of misunderstandings not to be explained, through poignant ecstasies and thorns of non-fulfilment, she strove unfaltering—until, lo! there came a time when all her struggles seemed in vain; when, bursting from the thicket, her bleeding feet stood halted in an instant, not before the dear meadows they had hoped, but at the base of a monstrous God-veiling cliff.

That year, the heavens themselves had seemed to speak the omens of disaster. From its opening they had poured down incessantly from sooty reservoirs a torrent like the deluge. The season was an abnormally mild one, if any such term could be applied to tempests of wind and water, overwhelming, inexplicable. The ice in the mountains, cracking and answering under the assault, boomed an unceasing cannonade; the land slid down in continents; trees were tossed in flood-water, like sprouts boiling in a saucepan. And to all this descending hubbub the rising of a human tide seemed to leap sympathetic. The waters of unrest were gathering force and volume; the dark hour of Savoy was drawing near; the Prefect had hard ado to keep his feet.

Then at last came a period of respite, when the powers of darkness seemed to sleep exhausted; and the sun came out, and the waters sounded peaceably on the hills, and Spring opened its drowned eyes and preened its draggled plumes.

One day, when all the land was glowing in a noontide rest, a servant came to inform Madame Saint-Péray that his excellency the Prefect of Faissigny craved the honour of a word with her alone. She opened her eyes in amazement.

The Prefect! Impossible! The man could not have heard aright.

But the man was not mistaken. M. le Préfet, it would appear, had foreseen this reluctance on Madama’s part to grant him that honour, inasmuch as he had impressed very earnestly upon the messenger the importance of an occasion which could thus excuse his presumption in calling upon one with whom he was unacquainted.