Upon the sixth stroke of the cathedral bell, he offered his hand in silence to Julien Renaud, who squeezed it roughly, in assurance of undiminished courage. Poor lad! He needed the assurance sadly. Upon the eighth stroke, Dr. Vermont sought Gaston’s hand, but the limp moist fingers he grasped made no effort to respond to his pressure.
‘Courage, Gaston,’ he cried, in a friendly, animated voice, and upon the tenth stroke he turned to Anatole, and had there been a ray of light above or around, Dr. Vermont’s face would have been seen to undergo a wonderful and beautiful change. Honest affection that makes no pretence of concealment, humanised it, and a magnanimous resolve filled its expression with cheering purport. The worst of us, you see, have our heroic moments, only it often happens that, like Dr. Vermont’s, they pass unnoticed in the dark.
‘There is happiness ahead for you yet, Anatole,’ he breathed quickly through his teeth, while he swung the unhappy young fellow’s arm once up and down, in warm emphasis to communicate the reassuring fluid to him.
‘Gentlemen, ’twas an excellent joke, and as might be expected of such excellent lads as you, carried out with uncommon spirit and dash. I’m proud of you, gentlemen, and shall feel honoured in the privilege of saluting the new century in your midst. We fire heavenward—a good omen—and then we shake hands again, in cordial assent that humanity is not so worn but it may still be relied upon for entertainment. You will say there are higher things. I’m not so sure there are not. Anyway, ’tis not an excessive claim that youthful pessimists may without shame start a fresh century as cheerful philosophers. The heavens are not always weeping, and most of us are the better for the sun’s shining.’
He spoke rapidly, and a muffled shout dying away upon a thick sob, broke from each troubled breast. The first throb of emotion spent itself in obedience.
When the last stroke of the cathedral bell had fallen upon the silence with a prolonged thin echo, a loud simultaneous report was heard to startle the night, and travel above the roar of the river, far across the empty country.
Gaston and Julien Renaud, utterly unnerved by the reaction, fell sobbing into each other’s arms, but Anatole, bewildered past understanding, thought he was shot, and fell in a heap at Dr. Vermont’s feet.
EPILOGUE
(From the travellers notebook)
THE suppressed excitement of the past two days has more than made up for the stillness of the two months that preceded them. Against these forty-eight hours of trembling anticipation and surmise, the long weeks of undisturbed and pleasant converse and childish chatter make a background of placid years, instead of weeks.