The Battle Of The Strong, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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It was curious that the Duke had never even hinted at the chance of his
being already married--yet not so curious either, since complete silence
concerning a wife was in itself declaration enough that he was unmarried.
He felt in his heart that a finer sense would have offered Guida no such
humiliation, for he knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of
speech.
He had not spoken, partly because he had not yet become used to the fact
that he really was married. It had never been brought home to him by the
ever-present conviction of habit. One day of married life, or, in
reality, a few hours of married life, with Guida had given the sensation
more of a noble adventure than of a lasting condition. With distance from
that noble adventure, something of the glow of a lover's relations had
gone, and the subsequent tender enthusiasm of mind and memory was not
vivid enough to make him daring or--as he would have said--reckless for
its sake. Yet this same tender enthusiasm was sincere enough to make him
accept the fact of his marriage without discontent, even in the glamour
of new and alluring ambitions.
If it had been a question of giving up Guida or giving up the duchy of
Bercy--if that had been put before him as the sole alternative, he would
have decided as quickly in Guida's favour as he did when he thought it
was a question between the duchy and the navy. The straightforward issue
of Guida or the duchy he had not been called upon to face. But,
unfortunately for those who are tempted, issues are never put quite so
plainly by the heralds of destiny and penalty. They are disguised as
delectable chances: the toss-up is always the temptation of life. The man
who uses trust-money for three days, to acquire in those three days a
fortune, certain as magnificent, would pull up short beforehand if the
issue of theft or honesty were put squarely before him. Morally he means
no theft; he uses his neighbour's saw until his own is mended: but he
breaks his neighbour's saw, his own is lost on its homeward way; and
having no money to buy another, he is tried and convicted on a charge of
theft. Thus the custom of society establishes the charge of immorality
upon the technical defect. But not on that alone; upon the principle that
what is committed in trust shall be held inviolate, with an exact
obedience to the spirit as to the letter of the law.
The issue did not come squarely to Philip. He had not openly lied about
Guida: so far he had had no intention of doing so. He even figured to
himself with what surprise Guida would greet his announcement that she
was henceforth Princesse Guida d'Avranche, and in due time would be her
serene highness the Duchesse de Bercy. Certainly there was nothing
immoral in his ambitions. If the reigning Prince chose to establish him
as heir, who had a right to complain?
Then, as to an officer of the English navy accepting succession in a
sovereign duchy in suzerainty to the present Government of France, while
England was at war with her, the Duke had more than once, in almost so
many words, defined the situation. Because the Duke himself, with no
successor assured, was powerless to side with the Royalists against the
Red Government, he was at the moment obliged, for the very existence of
his duchy, to hoist the tricolour upon the castle with his own flag. Once
the succession was secure beyond the imbecile Leopold John, then he would
certainly declare against the present fiendish Government and for the
overthrown dynasty.
Now England was fighting France, not only because she was revolutionary
France, but because of the murder of Louis XVI and for the restoration of
the overthrown dynasty. Also she was in close sympathy with the war of
the Vendee, to which she would lend all possible assistance. Philip
argued that if it was his duty, as a captain in the English navy, to
fight against the revolutionaries from without, he would be beyond
criticism if, as the Duc de Bercy, he also fought against them from
within.
Indeed, it was with this plain statement of the facts that the second
military officer of the duchy had some days before been sent to the Court
of St. James to secure its intervention for Philip's freedom by exchange
of prisoners. This officer was also charged with securing the consent of
the English King for Philip's acceptance of succession in the duchy,
while retaining his position in the English navy. The envoy had been
instructed by the Duke to offer his sympathy with England in the war and
his secret adherence to the Royalist cause, to become open so soon as the
succession through Philip was secured.
To Philip's mind all that side of the case was in his favour, and sorted
well with his principles of professional honour. His mind was not so
acutely occupied with his private honour. To tell the Duke now of his
marriage would be to load the dice against himself: he felt that the
opportunity for speaking of it had passed.
He seated himself at a table and took from his pocket a letter of Guida's
written many weeks before, in which she had said firmly that she had not
announced the marriage, and would not; that he must do it, and he alone;
that the letter written to her grandfather had not been received by him,
and that no one in Jersey knew their secret.
In reading this letter again a wave of feeling rushed over him. He
realised the force and strength of her nature: every word had a clear,
sharp straightforwardness and the ring of truth.
A crisis was near, and he must prepare to meet it.
The Duke had said that he must marry; a woman had already been chosen for
him, and he was to meet her to-morrow. But, as he said to himself, that
meant nothing. To meet a woman was not of necessity to marry her.
Marry--he could feel his flesh creeping! It gave him an ugly, startled
sensation. It was like some imp of Satan to drop into his ear the
suggestion that princes, ere this, had been known to have two wives--one
of them unofficial. He could have struck himself in the face for the
iniquity of the suggestion; he flushed from the indecency of it; but so
have sinners ever flushed as they set forth on the garish road to
Avernus. Yet--yet somehow he must carry on the farce of being single
until the adoption and the succession had been formally arranged.
Vexed with these unbidden and unwelcome thoughts, he got up and walked
about his chamber restlessly. "Guida--poor Guida!" he said to himself
many times. He was angry, disgusted that those shameful, irresponsible
thoughts should have come to him. He would atone for all that--and
more--when he was Prince and she Princess d'Avranche. But, nevertheless,
he was ill at ease with himself. Guida was off there alone in
Jersey--alone. Now, all at once, another possibility flashed into his
mind. Suppose, why, suppose--thoughtless scoundrel that he had
been--suppose that there might come another than himself and Guida to
bear his name! And she there alone, her marriage still kept secret--the
danger of it to her good name. But she had said nothing in her letters,
hinted nothing. No, in none had there been the most distant suggestion.
Then and there he got them, one and all, and read every word, every line,
all through to the end. No; there was not one hint. Of course it could
not be so; she would have--but no, she might not have! Guida was unlike
anybody else.
He read on and on again. And now, somehow, he thought he caught in one of
the letters a new ring, a pensive gravity, a deeper tension, which were
like ciphers or signals to tell him of some change in her. For a moment
he was shaken. Manhood, human sympathy, surged up in him. The flush of a
new sensation ran through his veins like fire. The first instinct of
fatherhood came to him, a thrilling, uplifting feeling. But as suddenly
there shot through his mind a thought which brought him to his feet with
a spring.
But suppose--suppose that it was so--suppose that through Guida the
further succession might presently be made sure, and suppose he went to
the Prince and told him all; that might win his favour for her; and the
rest would be easy. That was it, as clear as day. Meanwhile he would hold
his peace, and abide the propitious hour.
For, above all else--and this was the thing that clinched the purpose in
his mind--above all else, the Duke had, at best, but a brief time to
live. Only a week ago the Court physician had told him that any violence
or mental shock might snap the thread of existence. Clearly, the thing
was to go on as before, keep his marriage secret, meet the Countess,
apparently accede to all the Duke proposed, and wait--and wait.
With this clear purpose in his mind colouring all that he might say, yet
crippling the freedom of his thought, he sat down to write to Guida. He
had not yet written to her, according to his parole: this issue was
clear; he could not send a letter to Guida until he was freed from that
condition. It had been a bitter pill to swallow; and many times he had
had to struggle with himself since his arrival at the castle. For
whatever the new ambitions and undertakings, there was still a woman in
the lonely distance for whose welfare he was responsible, for whose
happiness he had yet done nothing, unless to give her his name under
sombre conditions was happiness for her. All that he had done to remind
him of the wedded life he had so hurriedly, so daringly, so eloquently
entered upon, was to send his young wife fifty pounds. Somehow, as this
fact flashed to his remembrance now, it made him shrink; it had a certain
cold, commercial look which struck him unpleasantly. Perhaps, indeed, the
singular and painful shyness--chill almost--with which Guida had received
the fifty pounds now communicated itself to him by the intangible
telegraphy of the mind and spirit.
All at once that bare, glacial fact of having sent her fifty pounds acted
as an ironical illumination of his real position. He felt conscious that
Guida would have preferred some simple gift, some little thing that women
love, in token and remembrance, rather than this contribution to the
common needs of existence. Now that he came to think of it, since he had
left her in Jersey, he had never sent her ever so small a gift. He had
never given her any gifts at all save the Maltese cross in her
childhood--and her wedding-ring. As for the ring, it had never occurred
to him that she could not wear it save in the stillness of the night,
unseen by any eye save her own. He could not know that she had been wont
to go to sleep with the hand clasped to her breast, pressing close to her
the one outward token she had of a new life, begun with a sweetness which
was very bitter and a bitterness only a little sweet.
Philip was in no fitting mood to write a letter. Too many emotions were
in conflict in him at once. They were having their way with him; and,
perhaps, in this very complexity of his feelings he came nearer to being
really and acutely himself than he had ever been in his life. Indeed,
there was a moment when he was almost ready to consign the Duke and all
that appertained to the devil or the deep sea, and to take his fate as it
came. But one of the other selves of him calling down from the little
attic where dark things brood, told him that to throw up his present
chances would bring him no nearer and no sooner to Guida, and must return
him to the prison whence he came.
Yet he would write to Guida now, and send the letter when he was released
from parole. His courage grew as the sentences spread out before him; he
became eloquent. He told her how heavily the days and months went on
apart from her. He emptied out the sensations of absence, loneliness,
desire, and affection. All at once he stopped short. It flashed upon him
now that always his letters had been entirely of his own doings; he had
pictured himself always: his own loneliness, his own grief at separation.
He had never yet spoken of the details of her life, questioned her of
this and of that, of all the little things which fill the life of a
woman--not because she loves them, but because she is a woman, and the
knowledge and governance of little things is the habit of her life. His
past egotism was borne in upon him now. He would try to atone for it. Now
he asked her many questions in his letter. But one he did not ask. He
knew not how to speak to her of it. The fact that he could not was a
powerful indictment of his relations towards her, of his treatment of
her, of his headlong courtship and marriage.
So portions of this letter of his had not the perfect ring of truth, not
the conviction which unselfish love alone can beget. It was only at the
last, only when he came to a close, that the words went from him with the
sharp photography of his own heart. It came, perhaps, from a remorse
which, for the instant, foreshadowed danger ahead; from an acute pity for
her; or perchance from a longing to forego the attempt upon an exalted
place, and get back to the straightforward hours, such as those upon the
Ecrehos, when he knew that he loved her. But the sharpness of his
feelings rendered more intense now the declaration of his love. The
phrases were wrung from him. "Good-bye--no, a la bonne heure, my
dearest," he wrote. "Good days are coming--brave, great days, when I
shall be free to strike another blow for England, both from within and
from without France; when I shall be, if all go well, the Prince
d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, and you my perfect Princess. Good-bye! Thy
Philip, qui t'aime toujours."
He had hardly written the last words when there came a knocking at his
door, and a servant entered. "His Highness offers his compliments to
monsieur, and will monsieur descend to meet the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse
and the Comtesse Chantavoine, who have just arrived."
For an instant Philip could scarce compose himself, but he sent a message
of obedience to the Duke's command, and prepared to go down.
So it was come--not to-morrow, but to-day. Already the deep game was on.
With a sigh which was half bitter and mocking laughter, he seized the
pouncebox, dried his letter to Guida, and put it in his pocket. As he
descended the staircase, the last words of it kept assailing his mind,
singing in his brain: "Thy Philip, qui t'aime toujours!"
CHAPTER XXII
Not many evenings after Philip's first interview with the Comtesse
Chantavoine, a visitor arrived at the castle. From his roundabout
approach up the steep cliff in the dusk it was clear he wished to avoid
notice. Of gallant bearing, he was attired in a fashion unlike the
citizens of Bercy, or the Republican military often to be seen in the
streets of the town. The whole relief of the costume was white: white
sash, white cuffs turned back, white collar, white rosette and band,
white and red bandeau, and the faint glitter of a white shirt. In
contrast were the black hat and plume, black top boots with huge spurs,
and yellow breeches. He carried a gun and a sword, and a pistol was stuck
in the white sash. But one thing caught the eye more than all else: a
white square on the breast of the long brown coat, strangely ornamented
with a red heart and a cross. He was evidently a soldier of high rank,
but not of the army of the Republic.
The face was that of a devotee, not of peace but of war--of some forlorn
crusade. It had deep enthusiasm, which yet to the trained observer would
seem rather the tireless faith of a convert than the disposition of the
natural man. It was somewhat heavily lined for one so young, and the
marks of a hard life were on him, but distinction and energy were in his
look and in every turn of his body.
Arriving at the castle, he knocked at the postern. At first sight of him
the porter suspiciously blocked the entrance with his person, but seeing
the badge upon his breast, stood at gaze, and a look of keen curiosity
crossed over his face. On the visitor announcing himself as a
Vaufontaine, this curiosity gave place to as keen surprise; he was
admitted with every mark of respect, and the gates closed behind him.
"Has his Highness any visitors?" he asked as he dismounted.
The porter nodded assent.
"Who are they?" He slipped a coin into the porter's hand.
"One of the family--for so his Serene Highness calls him."
"H'm, indeed! A Vaufontaine, friend?"
"No, monsieur, a d'Avranche."
"What d'Avranche? Not Prince Leopold John?"
"No, monsieur, the name is the same as his Highness's."
"Philip d'Avranche? Ah, from whence?"
"From Paris, monsieur, with his Highness."
The visitor, whistling softly to himself, stood thinking a moment.
Presently he said:
"How old is he?"
"About the same age as monsieur."
"How does he occupy himself?"
"He walks, rides, talks with his Highness, asks questions of the people,
reads in the library, and sometimes shoots and fishes."
"Is he a soldier?"
"He carries no sword, and he takes long aim with a gun."
A sly smile was lurking about the porter's mouth. The visitor drew from
his pocket a second gold piece, and, slipping it into the other's hand,
said:
"Tell it all at once. Who is the gentleman, and what is his business
here? Is he, perhaps, on the side of the Revolution, or does he--keep
better company?"
He looked keenly into the eyes of the porter, who screwed up his own,
returning the gaze unflinchingly. Handing back the gold piece, the man
answered firmly:
"I have told monsieur what every one in the duchy knows; there's no
charge for that. For what more his Highness and--and those in his
Highness's confidence know," he drew himself up with brusque importance,
"there's no price, monsieur."
"Body o' me, here's pride and vainglory!" answered the other. "But I know
you, my fine Pergot, I knew you almost too well years ago; and then you
were not so sensitive; then you were a good Royalist like me, Pergot."
This time he fastened the man's look with his own and held it until
Pergot dropped his head before it.
"I don't remember monsieur," he answered, perturbed.
"Of course not. The fine Pergot has a bad memory, like a good Republican,
who by law cannot worship his God, or make the sign of the Cross, or, ask
the priest to visit him when he's dying. A red Revolutionist is our
Pergot now!"
"I'm as good a Royalist as monsieur," retorted the man with some
asperity. "So are most of us. Only--only his Highness says to us--"
"Don't gossip of what his Highness says, but do his bidding, Pergot. What
a fool are you to babble thus! How d'ye know but I'm one of Fouche's or
Barere's men? How d'ye know but there are five hundred men beyond waiting
for my whistle?"
The man changed instantly. His hand was at his side like lightning.
"They'd never hear that whistle, monsieur, though you be Vaufontaine or
no Vaufontaine!"
The other, smiling, reached out and touched him on the shoulder kindly.
"My dear Frange Pergot," said he, "that's the man I knew once, and the
sort of man that's been fighting with me for the Church and for the King
these months past in the Vendee. Come, come, don't you know me, Pergot?
Don't you remember the scapegrace with whom, for a jape, you waylaid my
uncle the Cardinal and robbed him, then sold him back his jewelled watch
for a year's indulgences?"
"But no, no," answered the man, crossing himself quickly, and by the dim
lanthorn light peering into the visitor's face, "it is not possible,
monsieur. The Comte Detricand de Tournay--God rest him!--died in the
Jersey Isle, with him they called Rullecour."
"Well, well, you might at least remember this," rejoined the other, and
with a smile he showed an old scar in the palm of his hand.
A little later was ushered into the library of the castle the Comte
Detricand de Tournay, who, under the name of Savary dit Detricand, had
lived in the Isle of Jersey for many years. There he had been a
dissipated idler, a keeper of worthless company, an alien coolly
accepting the hospitality of a country he had ruthlessly invaded as a
boy. Now, returned from vagabondage, he was the valiant and honoured heir
of the House of Vaufontaine, and heir-presumptive of the House of Bercy.
True to his intention, Detricand had joined de la Rochejaquelein, the
intrepid, inspired leader of the Vendee, whose sentiments became his
own--"If I advance, follow me; if I retreat, kill me; if I fall, avenge
me."
He had proven himself daring, courageous, resourceful. His unvarying
gaiety of spirits infected the simple peasants with a rebounding energy;
his fearlessness inspired their confidence; his kindness to the wounded,
friend or foe, his mercy to prisoners, the respect he showed devoted
priests who shared with the peasants the perils of war, made him beloved.
From the first all the leaders trusted him, and he sprang in a day, as
had done the peasants Cathelineau, d'Elbee, and Stofflet, or gentlemen
like Lescure and Bonchamp, and noble fighters like d'Antichamp and the
Prince of Talmont, to an outstanding position in the Royalist army. Again
and again he had been engaged in perilous sorties and leading forlorn
hopes. He had now come from the splendid victory at Saumur to urge his
kinsman, the Duc de Bercy, to join the Royalists.
He had powerful arguments to lay before a nobleman the whole traditions
of whose house were of constant alliance with the Crown of France, whose
very duchy had been the gift of a French monarch. Detricand had not seen
the Duke since he was a lad at Versailles, and there would be much in his
favour, for of all the Vaufontaines the Duke had reason to dislike him
least, and some winning power in him had of late grown deep and
penetrating.
When the Duke entered upon him in the library, he was under the immediate
influence of a stimulating talk with Philip d'Avranche and the chief
officers of the duchy. With the memory of past feuds and hatreds in his
mind, and predisposed against any Vaufontaine, his greeting was
courteously disdainful, his manner preoccupied.
Remarking that he had but lately heard of monsieur le comte's return to
France, he hoped he had enjoyed his career in--was it then England or
America? But yes, he remembered, it began with an expedition to take the
Channel Isles from England, an insolent, a criminal business in time of
peace, fit only for boys or buccaneers. Had monsieur le comte then spent
all these years in the Channel Isles--a prisoner perhaps? No? Fastening
his eyes cynically on the symbol of the Royalist cause on Detricand's
breast, he asked to what he was indebted for the honour of this present
visit. Perhaps, he added drily, it was to inquire after his own health,
which, he was glad to assure monsieur le comte and all his cousins of
Vaufontaine, was never better.
The face was like a leather mask, telling nothing of the arid sarcasm in
the voice. The shoulders were shrunken, the temples fallen in, the neck
behind was pinched, and the eyes looked out like brown beads alive with
fire, and touched with the excitement of monomania. His last word had a
delicate savagery of irony, though, too, there could be heard in the tone
a defiance, arguing apprehension, not lost upon his visitor.
Detricand had inwardly smiled during the old man's monologue, broken only
by courteous, half-articulate interjections on his own part. He knew too
well the old feud between their houses, the ambition that had possessed
many a Vaufontaine to inherit the dukedom of Bercy, and the Duke's futile
revolt against that possibility. But for himself, now heir to the
principality of Vaufontaine, and therefrom, by reversion, to that of
Bercy, it had no importance.
He had but one passion now, and it burned clear and strong, it dominated,
it possessed him. He would have given up any worldly honour to see it
succeed. He had idled and misspent too many years, been vaurien and
ne'er-do-well too long to be sordid now. Even as the grievous sinner,
come from dark ways, turns with furious and tireless strength to piety
and good works, so this vagabond of noble family, wheeling suddenly in
his tracks, had thrown himself into a cause which was all sacrifice,
courage, and unselfish patriotism--a holy warfare. The last bitter thrust
of the Duke had touched no raw flesh, his withers were unwrung. Gifted to
thrust in return, and with warrant to do so, he put aside the temptation,
and answered his kinsman with daylight clearness.
"Monsieur le duc," said he, "I am glad your health is good--it better
suits the purpose of this interview. I am come on business, and on that
alone. I am from Saumur, where I left de la Rochejaquelein, Stofflet,
Cathelineau, and Lescure masters of the city and victors over Coustard's
army. We have taken eleven thousand prisoners, and--"
"I have heard a rumour--" interjected the Duke impatiently.
"I will give you fact," continued Detricand, and he told of the series of
successes lately come to the army of the Vendee. It was the heyday of the
cause.
"And how does all this concern me?" asked the Duke.
"I am come to beg you to join us, to declare for our cause, for the
Church and for the King. Yours is of the noblest names in France. Will
you not stand openly for what you cannot waver from in your heart? If the
Duc de Bercy declares for us, others will come out of exile, and from
submission to the rebel government, to our aid. My mission is to beg you
to put aside whatever reasons you may have had for alliance with this
savage government, and proclaim for the King."