O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath.
That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!”
—D. G. Rossetti, The Heart of the Night.
The solid library windows rattled under the onslaught of the gale; rain streamed on to them furiously, then ceased as abruptly; torn twigs dashed against the panes, and the frenzied wind seemed to be concentrating on the glass all its attempts to get into the room, though now and again a puff of smoke, bellying slowly forward, testified to a successful entrance by the chimney.
There are occasions when the elements are not at variance with the mood of the individual. The whirling wind, its noisy but useless attack, was not, apparently, unpleasing to M. des Graves as he sat at the long table in the library and looked out into its manifestations. There was a little colour in his cheeks; his lips were pressed together, his eyes very steady, and he beat gently upon the table with his pen. It was as if there sat in his familiar chair a rather different man, much younger, more alert, with a new poise of the head, who seemed to be enjoying the storm.
As a matter of fact, the priest was not acutely conscious of the elements. It was another storm which he had been contemplating, and one not yet broken. Of the three principal inmates of the château M. des Graves had, very naturally, lent the most sensitive ear during the last few days to its mutterings. For he saw quite clearly that the long-expected crisis was on them at last, and he did not shrink before it. An observer would have said that it had revivified in him some older self, had conjured up, out of its long sleep, the ghost of a man who once had—who still had—all the aptitudes of command.
Yes, he could not doubt it: the moment was approaching. And all those long two-and-twenty years spent in this obscure corner of Vendée seemed to have been but a preparation for it; and so, too, seemed the lives of the two men with whom his own existence was so intimately united. How would the emergency find them? One was out there in the gale, riding in peril of his life, with bitter hatred in his heart. It was on just such another March afternoon that he had first entered the house—a little bright-haired child who had so easily won their hearts, a child for whom happiness seemed a birthright. . . . Poor Louis!