The Battle Of The Strong, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"Those who are in heaven, monseigneur, know best what Heaven may do."
Philip's pale face took on a look of agony. "She is dead--she is dead!"
he gasped.
Grandjon-Larisse inclined his head, then after a moment, gravely said:
"What did you think was left for a woman--for a Chantavoine? It is not
the broken heart that kills, but broken pride, monseigneur."
So saying, he bowed again to Philip and turned upon his heel.
CHAPTER XLIV
Philip lay on a bed in the unostentatious lodging in the Rue de Vaugirard
where Damour had brought him. The surgeon had pronounced the wound
mortal, giving him but a few hours to live. For long after he was gone
Philip was silent, but at length he said "You heard what Grandjon-Larisse
said--It is broken pride that kills, Damour." Then he asked for pen, ink,
and paper. They were brought to him. He tried the pen upon the paper, but
faintness suddenly seized him, and he fell back unconscious.
When he came to himself he was alone in the room. It was cold and
cheerless--no fire on the hearth, no light save that flaring from a lamp
in the street outside his window. He rang the bell at his hand. No one
answered. He called aloud: "Damour! Damour!"
Damour was far beyond earshot. He had bethought him that now his place
was in Bercy, where he might gather up what fragments of good fortune
remained, what of Philip's valuables might be secured. Ere he had fallen
back insensible, Philip, in trying the pen, had written his own name on a
piece of paper. Above this Damour wrote for himself an order upon the
chamberlain of Bercy to enter upon Philip's private apartments in the
castle; and thither he was fleeing as Philip lay dying in the dark room
of the house in the Rue de Vaugirard.
The woman of the house, to whose care Philip was passed over by Damour,
had tired of watching, and had gone to spend one of his gold pieces for
supper with her friends.
Meanwhile in the dark comfortless room, the light from without flickering
upon his blanched face, Philip was alone with himself, with memory, and
with death. As he lay gasping, a voice seemed to ring through the silent
room, repeating the same words again and again--and the voice was his own
voice. It was himself--some other outside self of him--saying, in
tireless repetition: "May I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned
and alone, if ever I deceive you. I should deserve that if I deceived
you, Guida! . . . " "A black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone": it
was like some horrible dirge chanting in his ear.
Pictures flashed before his eyes, strange imaginings. Now he was passing
through dark corridors, and the stone floor beneath was cold--so cold! He
was going to some gruesome death, and monks with voices like his own
voice were intoning: "Abandoned and alone. Alone--alone--abandoned and
alone." . . . And now he was fighting, fighting on board the Araminta.
There was the roar of the great guns, the screaming of the carronade
slides, the rattle of musketry, the groans of the dying, the shouts of
his victorious sailors, the crash of the main-mast as it fell upon the
bulwarks. Then the swift sissing ripple of water, the thud of the
Araminta as she struck, and the cold chill of the seas as she went down.
How cold was the sea--ah, how it chilled every nerve and tissue of his
body!
He roused to consciousness again. Here was still the blank cheerless
room, the empty house, the lamplight flaring through the window upon his
stricken face, upon the dark walls, upon the white paper lying on the
table beside him.
Paper--that was it--he must write, he must write while he had strength.
With the last courageous effort of life, his strenuous will forcing the
declining powers into obedience for a final combat, he drew the paper
near, and began to write. The light flickered, wavered, he could just see
the letters that he formed--no more.
Guida [he began], on the Ecrehos I said to you: "If I deceive you
may I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone!" It
has all come true. You were right, always right, and I was always
wrong. I never started fair with myself or with the world. I was
always in too great a hurry; I was too ambitious, Guida. Ambition
has killed me, and it has killed her--the Comtesse. She is gone.
What was it he said--if I could but remember what Grandjon-Larisse
said--ah yes, yes!--after he had given me my death-wound, he said:
"It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride." There is
the truth. She is in her grave, and I am going out into the dark.
He lay back exhausted for a moment, in desperate estate. The body was
fighting hard that the spirit might confess itself before the vital spark
died down for ever. Seizing a glass of cordial near, he drank of it. The
broken figure in its mortal defeat roused itself again, leaned over the
paper, and a shaking hand traced on the brief piteous record of a life.
I climbed too fast. Things dazzled me. I thought too much of
myself--myself, myself was everything always; and myself has killed
me. In wanton haste I came to be admiral and sovereign duke, and it
has all come to nothing--nothing. I wronged you, I denied you,
there was the cause of all. There is no one to watch with me now to
the one moment of life that counts. In this hour the clock of time
fills all the space between earth and heaven. It will strike soon--
the awful clock. It will soon strike twelve: and then it will be
twelve of the clock for me always--always.
I know you never wanted revenge on me, Guida, but still you have it
here. My life is no more now than vraic upon a rock. I cling, I
cling, but that is all, and the waves break over me. I am no longer
an admiral, I am no more a duke--I am nothing. It is all done. Of
no account with men I am going to my judgment with God. But you
remain, and you are Princess Philip d'Avranche, and your son--your
son--will be Prince Guilbert d'Avranche. But I can leave him
naught, neither estates nor power. There is little honour in the
title now. So it may be you will not use it. But you will have a
new life: with my death happiness may begin again for you. That
thought makes death easier. I was never worthy of you, never. I
understand myself now, and I know that you have read me all these
years, read me through and through. The letter you wrote me, never
a day or night has passed but, one way or another, it has come home
to me.
There was a footfall outside his window. A roysterer went by in the light
of the flaring lamp. He was singing a ribald song. A dog ran barking at
his heels. The reveller turned, drew his sword, and ran the dog through,
then staggered on with his song. Philip shuddered, and with a supreme
effort bent to the table again, and wrote on.
You were right: you were my star, and I was so blind with
selfishness and vanity I could not see. I am speaking the truth to
you now, Guida. I believe I might have been a great man if I had
thought less of myself and more of others, more of you. Greatness,
I was mad for that, and my madness has brought me to this desolate
end--alone. Go tell Maitresse Aimable that she too was a good
prophet. Tell her that, as she foresaw, I called your name in
death, and you did not come. One thing before all: teach your boy
never to try to be great, but always to live well and to be just.
Teach him too that the world means better by him than he thinks, and
that he must never treat it as his foe; he must not try to force its
benefits and rewards. He must not approach it like the highwayman.
Tell him never to flatter. That is the worst fault in a gentleman,
for flattery makes false friends and the flatterer himself false.
Tell him that good address is for ease and courtesy of life, but it
must not be used to one's secret advantage as I have used mine to
mortal undoing. If ever Guilbert be in great temptation, tell him
his father's story, and read him these words to you, written, as you
see, with the cramped fingers of death.
He could scarcely hold the pen now, and his eyes were growing dim.
. . . I am come to the end of my strength. I thought I loved
you, Guida, but I know now that it was not love--not real love. Yet
it was all a twisted manhood had to give. There are some things of
mine that you will keep for your son, if you forgive me dead whom
you despised living. Detricand Duke of Bercy will deal honourably
by you. All that is mine at the Castle of Bercy he will secure to
you. Tell him I have written it so; though he will do it of
himself, I know. He is a great man. As I have gone downwards he
has come upwards. There has been a star in his sky too. I know it,
I know it, Guida, and he--he is not blind. The light is going, I
cannot see. I can only--
He struggled fiercely for breath, but suddenly collapsed upon the table,
and his head fell forward upon the paper; one cheek lying in the wet ink
of his last written words, the other, cold and stark, turned to the
window. The light from the lamp without flickered on it in gruesome
sportiveness. The eyes stared and stared from the little dark room out
into the world. But they did not see.
The night wore on. At last came a knocking, knocking at the door-tap!
tap! tap! But he did not hear. A moment of silence, and again came a
knocking--knocking--knocking . . . !
CHAPTER XLV
The white and red flag of Jersey was flying half-mast from the Cohue
Royale, and the bell of the parish church was tolling. It was Saturday,
but little business was being done in the Vier Marchi. Chattering people
were gathered at familiar points, and at the foot of La Pyramide a large
group surrounded two sailor-men just come from Gaspe, bringing news of
adventuring Jersiais--Elie Mattingley, Carterette and Ranulph Delagarde.
This audience quickly grew, for word was being passed on from one little
group to another. So keen was interest in the story told by the
home-coming sailors, that the great event which had brought them to the
Vier Marchi was, for the moment, almost neglected.
Presently, however, a cannon-shot, then another, and another, roused the
people to remembrance. The funeral cortege of Admiral Prince Philip
d'Avranche was about to leave the Cohue Royale, and every eye was turned
to the marines and sailors lining the road from the court-house to the
church.
The Isle of Jersey, ever stubbornly loyal to its own--even those whom the
outside world contemned or cast aside--jealous of its dignity even with
the dead, had come to bury Philip d'Avranche with all good ceremony.
There had been abatements to his honour, but he had been a strong man and
he had done strong things, and he was a Jerseyman born, a Norman of the
Normans. The Royal Court had judged between him and Guida, doing tardy
justice to her, but of him they had ever been proud; and where conscience
condemned here, vanity commended there. In any event they reserved the
right, independent of all non-Jersiais, to do what they chose with their
dead.
For what Philip had been as an admiral they would do his body reverence
now; for what he had done as a man, that belonged to another tribunal. It
had been proposed by the Admiral of the station to bury him from his old
ship, the Imperturbable, but the Royal Court made its claim, and so his
body had lain in state in the Cohue Royale. The Admiral joined hands with
the island authorities. In both cases it was a dogged loyalty. The
sailors of England knew Philip d'Avranche as a fighter, even as the Royal
Court knew him as a famous and dominant Jerseyman. A battle-ship is a
world of its own, and Jersey is a world of its own. They neither knew nor
cared for the comment of the world without; or, knowing, refused to
consider it.
When the body of Philip was carried from the Cohue Royale signals were
made to the Imperturbable in the tide-way. From all her ships in company
forty guns were fired funeral-wise and the flags were struck halfmast.
Slowly the cortege uncoiled itself to one long unbroken line from the
steps of the Cohue Royale to the porch of the church. The Jurats in their
red robes, the officers, sailors, and marines, added colour to the
pageant. The coffin was covered by the flag of Jersey with the arms of
William the Conqueror in the canton. Of the crowd some were curious, some
stoical; some wept, some essayed philosophy.
"Et ben," said one, "he was a brave admiral!"
"Bravery was his trade," answered another: "act like a sheep and you'll
be eaten by the wolf."
"It was a bad business about her that was Guida Landresse," remarked a
third.
"Every man knows himself, God knows all men," snuffled the fanatical
barber who had once delivered a sermon from the Pompe des Brigands.
"He made things lively while he lived, ba su!" droned the jailer of the
Vier Prison. "But he has folded sails now."
"Ma fe, yes, he sleeps like a porpoise now, and white as a wax he looked
up there in the Cohue Royale," put in a centenier standing by.
A voice came shrilly over the head of the centenier. "As white as you'll
look yellow one day, bat'd'lagoule! Yellow and green, oui-gia--yellow
like a bad apple, and cowardly green as a leek." This was Manon Moignard
the witch.
"Man doux d'la vie, where's the Master of Burials?" babbled the jailer.
"The apprentice does the obs'quies to-day."
"The Master's sick of a squinzy," grunted the centenier. "So hatchet-face
and bundle-o'-nails there brings dust to dust, amen."
All turned now to the Undertaker's Apprentice, a grim, saturnine figure
with his grey face, protuberant eyes, and obsequious solemnity, in which
lurked a callous smile. The burial of the great, the execution of the
wicked, were alike to him. In him Fate seemed to personify life's
revenges, its futilities, its calculating ironies. The flag-draped coffin
was just about to pass, and the fanatical barber harked back to Philip.
"They say it was all empty honours with him afore he died abroad."
"A full belly's a full belly if it's only full of straw," snapped Manon
Moignard.
"Who was it brought him home?" asked the jailer. "None that was born on
Jersey, but two that lived here," remarked Maitre Damian, the
schoolmaster from St. Aubins.
"That Chevalier of Champsavoys and the other Duc de Bercy," interposed
the centenier.
Maitre Damian tapped his stick upon the ground, and said oracularly: "It
is not for me to say, but which is the rightful Duke and which is not,
there is the political question!"
"Pardi, that's it," answered the centenier. "Why did Detricand Duke turn
Philip Duke out of duchy, see him killed, then fetch him home to Jersey
like a brother? Ah, man pethe benin, that's beyond me!
"Those great folks does things their own ways; oui-gia," remarked the
jailer.
"Why did Detricand Duke go back to France?" asked Maitre Damian, cocking
his head wisely; "why did he not stay for obsequies--he?"
"That's what I say," answered the jailer, "those great folks does things
their own ways."
"Ma fistre, I believe you," ejaculated the centenier. "But for the
Chevalier there, for a Frenchman, that is a man after God's own
heart--and mine."
"Ah then, look at that," said Manon Moignard, with a sneer, "when one
pleases you and God it is a ticket to heaven, diantre!"
But in truth what Detricand and the Chevalier had done was but of human
pity. The day after the duel, Detricand had arrived in Paris to proceed
thence to Bercy. There he heard of Philip's death and of Damour's
desertion. Sending officers to Bercy to frustrate any possible designs of
Damour, he, with the Chevalier, took Philip's body back to Jersey,
delivering it to those who would do it honour.
Detricand did not see Guida. For all that might be said to her now the
Chevalier should be his mouthpiece. In truth there could be no better
mouthpiece for him. It was Detricand--Detricand--Detricand, like a child,
in admiration and in affection. If Guida did not understand all now,
there should come a time when she would understand. Detricand would wait.
She should find that he was just, that her honour and the honour of her
child were safe with him.
As for Guida, it was not grief she felt in the presence of this tragedy.
No spark of love sprang up, even when remembrance was now brought to its
last vital moment. But a fathomless pity stirred her heart, that Philip's
life had been so futile and that all he had done was come to naught. His
letter, blotched and blotted by his own dead cheek, she read quietly. Yet
her heart ached bitterly--so bitterly that her face became pinched with
pain; for here in this letter was despair, here was the final agony of a
broken life, here were the last words of the father of her child to
herself. She saw with a sudden pang that in writing of Guilbert he only
said your child, not ours. What a measureless distance there was between
them in the hour of his death, and how clearly the letter showed that he
understood at last!
The evening before the burial she went with the Chevalier to the Cohue
Royale. As she looked at Philip's dead face bitterness and aching
compassion were quieted within her. The face was peaceful--strong. There
was on it no record of fret or despair. Its impassive dignity seemed to
say that all accounts had been settled, and in this finality there was
quiet; as though he had paid the price, as though the long account
against him in the markets of life was closed and cancelled, and the
debtor freed from obligation for ever. Poignant impulses in her stilled,
pity lost its wounding acuteness. She shed no tears, but at last she
stretched out her hand and let it rest upon his forehead for a moment.
"Poor Philip!" she said.
Then she turned and slowly left the room, followed by the Chevalier, and
by the noiseless Dormy Jamais, who had crept in behind them. As Dormy
Jamais closed the door, he looked back to where the coffin lay, and in
the compassion of fools he repeated Guida's words:
"Poor Philip!" he said.
Now, during Philip's burial, Dormy Jamais sat upon the roof of the Cohue
Royale, as he had done on the day of the Battle of Jersey, looking down
on the funeral cortege and the crowd. He watched it all until the ruffle
of drums at the grave told that the body was being lowered--four ruffles
for an admiral.
As the people began to disperse and the church bell ceased tolling, Dormy
turned to another bell at his elbow, and set it ringing to call the Royal
Court together. Sharp, mirthless, and acrid it rang:
Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!
IN JERSEY-A YEAR LATER
CHAPTER XLVI
"What is that for?" asked the child, pointing. Detricand put the watch to
the child's ear. "It's to keep time. Listen. Do you hear it-tic-tic,
tic-tic?"'
The child nodded his head gleefully, and his big eyes blinked with
understanding. "Doesn't it ever stop?" he asked.
"This watch never stops," replied Detricand. "But there are plenty of
watches that do."
"I like watches," said the child sententiously.
"Would you like this one?" asked Detricand.
The child drew in a gurgling breath of pleasure. "I like it. Why doesn't
mother have a watch?"
The man did not answer the last question. "You like it?" he said again,
and he nodded his head towards the little fellow. "H'm, it keeps good
time, excellent time it keeps," and he rose to meet the child's mother,
who having just entered the room, stood looking at them. It was Guida.
She had heard the last words, and she glanced towards the watch
curiously. Detricand smiled in greeting, and said to her: "Do you
remember it?" He held up the watch.
She came forward eagerly. "Is it--is it that indeed, the watch that the
dear grandpethe--?"
He nodded and smiled. "Yes, it has never once stopped since the moment he
gave it me in the Vier-Marchi seven years ago. It has had a charmed
existence amid many rough doings and accidents. I was always afraid of
losing it, always afraid of an accident to it. It has seemed to me that
if I could keep it things would go right with me, and things come out
right in the end. Superstition, of course, but I lived a long time in
Jersey. I feel more a Jerseyman than a Frenchman sometimes."
Although his look seemed to rest but casually on her face, it was evident
he was anxious to feel the effect of every word upon her, and he added:
"When the Sieur de Mauprat gave me the watch he said, 'May no time be ill
spent that it records for you.'"
"Perhaps he knows his wish was fulfilled," answered Guida.
"You think, then, that I've kept my promise?"
"I am sure he would say so," she replied warmly.
"It isn't the promise I made to him that I mean, but the promise I made
to you."
She smiled brightly. "You know what I think of that. I told you long
ago." She turned her head away, for a bright colour had come to her
cheek. "You have done great things, Prince," she added in a low tone.
He flashed a look of inquiry at her. To his ear there was in her voice a
little touch--not of bitterness, but of something, as it were, muffled or
reserved. Was she thinking how he had robbed her child of the chance of
heritage at Bercy? He did not reply, but, stooping, put the watch again
to the child's ear. "There you are, monseigneur!"
"Why do you call him monseigneur?" she asked. "Guilbert has no title to
your compliment."
A look half-amused, half-perplexed, crossed over Detricand's face. "Do
you think so?" he said musingly. Stooping once more, he said to the
child: "Would you like the watch?" and added quickly, "you shall have it
when you're grown up."
"Do you really mean it?" asked Guida, delighted; "do you really mean to
give him the grandpethe's watch one day?"
"Oh yes, at least that--one day. But I have something more," he added
quickly--"something more for you;" and he drew from his pocket a
miniature set in rubies and diamonds. "I have brought you this from the
Duc de Mauban--and this," he went on, taking a letter from his pocket,
and handing it with the gift. "The Duke thought you might care to have
it. It is the face of your godmother, the Duchess Guidabaldine."
Guida looked at the miniature earnestly, and then said a little
wistfully: "How beautiful a face--but the jewels are much too fine for
me! What should one do here with rubies and diamonds? How can I thank the
Duke!"
"Not so. He will thank you for accepting it. He begged me to say--as you
will find by his letter to you--that if you will but go to him upon a
visit with this great man here"--pointing to the child with a smile--"he
will count it one of the greatest pleasures of his life. He is too old to
come to you, but he begs you to go to him--the Chevalier, and you, and
Guilbert here. He is much alone now, and he longs for a little of that
friendship which can be given by but few in this world. He counts upon
your coming, for I said I thought you would."
"It would seem so strange," she answered, "to go from this cottage of my
childhood, to which I have come back in peace at last--from this kitchen,
to the chateau of the Duc de Mauban."
"But it was sure to come," he answered. "This kitchen to which I come
also to redeem my pledge after seven years, it belongs to one part of
your life. But there is another part to fulfil,"--he stooped and passed
his hands over the curls of the child, "and for your child here you
should do it."
"I do not find your meaning," she said after a moment's deliberation. "I
do not know what you would have me understand."
"In some ways you and I would be happier in simple surroundings," he
replied gravely, "but it would seem that to play duly our part in the
world, we must needs move in wider circles. To my mind this kitchen is
the most delightful spot in the world. Here I took a fresh commission of
life. I went out, a sort of battered remnant, to a forlorn hope; and now
I come back to headquarters once again--not to be praised," he added in
an ironical tone, and with a quick gesture of almost boyish shyness--"not
to be praised; only to show that from a grain of decency left in a man
may grow up some sheaves of honest work and plain duty."
"No, it is much more than that, it is much, much more than that," she
broke in.
"No, I am afraid it is not," he answered; "but that is not what I wished
to say. I wished to say that for monseigneur here--"
A little flash of anger came into her eyes. "He is no monseigneur, he is
Guilbert d'Avranche," she said bitterly. "It is not like you to mock my
child, Prince. Oh, I know you mean it playfully," she hurriedly added,
"but--but it does not sound right to me."
"For the sake of monseigneur the heir to the duchy of Bercy," he added,
laying his hand upon the child's head, "these things your devout friends
suggest, you should do, Princess."
Her clear unwavering eye looked steadfastly at him, but her face turned
pale.
"Why do you call him monseigneur the heir to the duchy of Bercy?" she
said almost coldly, and with a little fear in her look too.
"Because I have come here to tell you the truth, and to place in your
hands the record of an act of justice."