I broke my heart as well.
Michael and the Saints deliver
My soul from the nethermost Hell!”
—M. E. Coleridge, Wilderspin.
The grey March afternoon was dwindling into dusk, a dusk of windless cloud. A little sunset afterglow stained the west, behind the leafless chestnuts, as Gilbert walked steadily along the rough and narrow lane, one of that network of intersecting pathways which only a Vendean born could comfortably traverse. He was making his way, by an unfrequented route, to the solitary little hostelry which, just over a week ago, he had appointed as a rendezvous for his cousin when the latter should return from Nantes. Since then he had changed his mind about sending him on a further errand; but the arrangement had not been cancelled, and he must at any rate meet Louis at the Etoile de Vendée. And perhaps the unfamiliar surroundings would help him in what he had to do.
Gilbert de Chantemerle, unlike his father, had never found any real consolation in philosophy. Over against the solace which it offered he could always discern, set as in battle array, the challenge of the Christian life—of the lives of Christians. He lived himself in close contact with such a life, which—as his father had done—he admired and loved, but it troubled him with its perpetual question. He could not, like his father, walk placidly by Sébastien des Graves with his eyes on a different goal. Even from the tenantry towards whom he was so wise and so upright, to whose welfare he had sacrificed his own young ambitions, he was separated by a gulf which he knew to be impassable. It had not needed M. des Graves to tell him that he could not lead them, when the time came, in the spirit with which they would follow. If only he could! All the winter, since his return from Brittany, a longing had been budding in his heart. But the fulfilment of that longing demanded a miracle; in other words, it was impossible. How could he ever change his point of view, how pass from doubt to the certainty of faith? Mere desire, however vehement, will not transport one’s body from one adjacent point to another; how should it change the country of that immeasurably more tenacious thing, the soul?
Then had come the priest’s attack on him, and that interview which, though only a week old, seemed to be separated from the present by a century of struggle and anguish. . . . And he had been so consumed with wrath at the preposterous suggestion then made to him just because M. des Graves was not really the first to make it. His own heart had once or twice faintly whispered the same thing to him. But now, since one who dwelt within the gates of his desire had said that this was the key to unlock them, what could he do but try it? He did not believe in its efficacy, and yet—must not a sacrifice so bitter, so crushingly repugnant, for it was the immolation of his own intensely stubborn will—must not this offering call down some spark from heaven? . . . To this had the depth of his desire brought him, to the oblation, almost as an experiment, of his inmost personality, and to this, the crisis of all his emotional and moral life, he walked under the cloudy sky, repeating to himself the formula in which he meant to accomplish it. Only in such a way, as an actor speaking a part well conned, could he ever get through it.
The Etoile de Vendée, nominally an inn, was in reality half a farmhouse, half a cottage, in front of which the solitary old man who owned it had hung out a signboard, perhaps merely to satisfy a whim, for the building stood by no high-road, and lay at least two miles away from the nearest hamlet. It was all the better as a rendezvous. When Gilbert turned at last into the wavering lane which crawled past it, it suddenly occurred to him how more than likely it was that Louis had not been able to get to the tryst at the time appointed. But the unconfessed hope was vain, for there, tethered in front, was his cousin’s bay horse, who turned his head enquiringly at the sound of steps, and pricked his ears as he recognised the Marquis.
The door of the long, low parlour was exactly opposite the hearth, so that the first thing which Château-Foix saw on entering was Louis, sitting in a somewhat dejected attitude by the fire, with his head on his hand. He looked round as the door opened, but did not move from his chair, and the Marquis divested himself of his own hat and cloak without saying anything, and came forward to the hearth.
Louis plunged his hand into the breast of his coat. “I met your man at Nantes,” he said. “He gave me this letter for you. But it seems to me that it matters little to us now how much of M. de la Rouërie’s plans for Brittany are discovered. The whole of Northern Vendée is alight.” His tone expressed no elation at the fact—nothing but weariness.