A short time before, Paul de Vitry would have smiled gently at the story which Arsène told him of Madame duPres and the priest, de Pacilli, believing it some exaggeration of his friend’s vehement and colorful brain. But now he listened with incredulous dismay, still half-doubting. His last experience with the perfidy of man was still heavy upon him, and he was almost prepared to believe anything.
“I shall return at once to Chantilly,” he said. The loss of that bright virtue which had distinguished him was more obvious than ever. He sighed with weariness. “However, there may be some explanation. It might not have been Madame, nor the priest. The world is full of plotting—. It is strange, though, that I did not receive your message.”
“The woman is still at your château?”
“Yes.”
“Pardieu! Then there is no time to waste!”
Force of habit made Paul part his lips to calm Arsène’s extravagance, but they closed again without a sound, and the new drawn lines on his pale face sprang into strong visibility. He appeared overcome with lassitude, a lassitude of the spirit rather than the flesh. Arsène scowled with suppressed impatience. He could not conceive, in his vigor, that any one should be permanently distressed at the discovery of human meanness and treachery. He, Arsène, had known of it all his life, and morbleu! it had never robbed him of an hour’s sleep or a relish for a good meal! In truth, it added a piquancy to life. One then could match wits with rats and weasels and small monkeys, and see who was the better! There seemed something a little contemptible in Paul’s crushing wretchedness and ingenuousness.
They sat in the small drawing room of Paul’s Paris hôtel, warming their feet at the fire, for the evening had turned cool. Paul had already ordered his lackey to prepare for the journey to Chantilly. Paul gazed at the fire, and his thin and delicate features were etched with scarlet. His hands lay on the arms of his carved chair, and there was a disarmed appearance about them, more than a trifle touching. He began to speak in a low voice, without looking at Arsène:
“We meet next, then, at La Rochelle, in two weeks?”
“Yes. Certes! We shall have trouble enough there. I do not flinch from it. I anticipate it.”
Paul, despite his misery, could not restrain a smile. Still, he did not look at his friend.
“Is there a message you desire to give me for your old friend, Grandjean? And Mademoiselle Cecile?”
Arsène was abruptly silent. Then he spoke in a strained voice: “Give them both my remembrance.”
Paul said, as if Arsène had not spoken: “It is a strange history which Grandjean has told me, of himself. No doubt he communicated this to you?”
“I was too ill. Moreover, I was not interested.”
Paul shifted in his seat. “Nevertheless, it is very strange, and might intrigue you.”
Arsène was about to say curtly that he could not imagine himself intrigued, but something peculiar in his friend’s persistence aroused his curiosity. He felt that all this was pertinent to himself, and he was not a young man who would overlook such pertinence.
Paul spoke half aloud, still gazing at the fire:
“The family is very respectable, of good Breton sailor stock. Grandjean was captain of his own small merchant vessel, plying between France and England. Moreover, he possessed a large grant of land, which had been the home of his forebears for generations. He had a young daughter, who was the core of his heart, and whom he had brought to girlhood himself, as her mother had died at her birth.”
Paul was silent a moment. His hands moved listlessly on the arms of his chair.
“He had frequently taken Eloise, his daughter, on his sea journeys. But now, as she was almost a woman, he left her at home, to manage his house. He emphasized that she was gently bred, of much beauty and charm. She had been educated unusually well at the local convent, and was much loved by the abbess and all the nuns.”
It was a dull enough history, and only the peculiar tone of Paul’s voice kept Arsène from yawning and moving restlessly, for his quick mind lacked the ability to focus with concentration on much of anything that did not concern himself.
“Mademoiselle Eloise finally became betrothed to the first mate on Grandjean’s vessel. They were to be married in a certain June. Unfortunately, the vessel, out on a journey which they anticipated would be concluded within five weeks, was lost in a storm. They did not return to France for nearly four months. They had been given up for lost. But the most tragic thing was that the young mate had been swept overboard at sea, and was never found.”
Now Paul was silent for a long time. But Arsène’s attention was now caught with a premonition of dread excitement.
“It seems,” Paul almost whispered as he proceeded, “that the priest of the parish was a man in full vigor of life. He had long before observed the young Eloise and her growing beauty, and her innocence. He had seduced her a short time before her father and her betrothed had gone on their illfated journey. The results were already known. However, he had persuaded the distracted girl that her marriage, which was to have taken place in the near future, would hide their guilty secret, and the girl, who dearly loved her betrothed and dared not think of the possible effect upon him, could do nothing else but listen to the priest, in her despair.”
Arsène listened to that sordid story with wrinkled brows and angry disgust. He leaned towards Paul, who still did not look at him.
Paul continued: “Imagine that home-coming of the devoted father, with his tragic news of the death of his daughter’s betrothed! Imagine what took place between him and the poor distracted girl, when all was revealed and confessed! Grandjean was beside himself. That night, he sought out the priest and killed him.”
Arsène uttered a short ejaculation. Now he was truly absorbed in the story.
“He returned to his daughter, who had attempted to kill herself. He rescued her, in his great compassion and despair. But they had to flee at once, after that murder. Think what it meant to that man, to have to abandon his land and his vessel, and flee in the night with a girl almost in extremis. He had little time to prepare himself. There was one small bag of gold in the house, and this he took with a few garments of his own and the girl’s, and a single horse, on which they both rode. After exhausting journeys, they arrived in Paris, and lost themselves in the gutters and the anonymity of the masses. It was in Paris that the young Cecile was born, at the moment that her heart-broken young mother died.”
There was silence in the room after Paul had finished his story. Arsène had risen. He stood near the fire and looked down fully at his friend, whose eyes were averted. Then Arsène said in a changed voice:
“Why have you told me this?” But his heart was beating in a very strange manner, and he was more than a little disgusted.
Paul finally lifted his eyes and looked fully at Arsène, and now there was a stern expression upon his face.
“Grandjean told this to me when I asked him for Cecile’s hand.”
“You!” exclaimed Arsène, incredulously. “You, the Comte de Vitry!”
Paul rose abruptly to his feet. He regarded Arsène with scorn and hauteur. “I thought you would say this, Arsène! But I hoped that there had been a change in you. I thought you had become a man, a reasonable, understanding being, at last. It seems that I was mistaken.”
Arsène flushed darkly. His thoughts were all disordered and angry. He said thickly: “But that does not eliminate the fact that you are the Comte de Vitry.” And felt an inexplicable shame which only further angered him.
Paul turned aside as if he could not endure the sight of his friend.
“What can finally be the fate of a world which persists in its silly little vanities, its illusions of birth and position, of nobility and privilege? Its isolation from its fellows, all built on falseness, pride and stupidity?”
Arsène, biting his lip, and still darkly flushed, said nothing.
Paul continued: “Grandjean did not tell me this in order to set aside my desire. He believed that Cecile might look favorably upon me. He wished me to know that he came of a strong and decent family, that Cecile might, in the light of this, be no low bride for me.” He smiled drearily. “It appears that our Grandjean, himself, is not guiltless of pride.”
“You have forgotten the priest!” said Arsène, stung with overwhelming and obscure emotions, in which the desire to taunt his friend, and his own fiery jealousy, had no small portion.
Paul turned to him, with increasing sternness. “I did not forget the priest. I remembered his crime. But it might interest you to know that he was the bishop of that diocese, and the bastard son of the Duc d’Ormond.”
“The Duc d’Ormond!” exclaimed Arsène, before he could restrain himself. He colored more than ever.
A bitter smile appeared on Paul’s lips, and he said nothing.
Arsène clenched his fists. His mind was whirling. He dared not confess to himself the shameful thoughts that were stirring in him.
Then Paul seemed to lose control of himself. He whirled upon his friend, and his face was alive with his scorn and passion, and his eyes were glittering.
“Let us be done with pretenses, Arsène! Let us speak frankly, as men, and not fools or mountebanks! I have seen what there was to be seen, in the cottage of my steward. This girl loves you, and you love her. Is that not true?”
Arsène did not answer. He averted his head.
“Loving this girl, you married Mademoiselle de Tremblant. I confess that I, myself, could see no way of withdrawal from that marriage, with honor, for a man like you. Had I been in the same position, I might have been more ruthless. You are a bravo, with attitudes, and I am perhaps a sentimentalist.”
He waited, but Arsène did not speak. Paul then said, more temperately: “What will you do now?”
Arsène stirred, and asked brutally: “What would you have me do? Seduce this girl?”
Paul suddenly put his hands on his shoulders and spoke earnestly:
“This is a foul and dreadful world. What light lives in it is the light of love. You are going to La Rochelle. Take Cecile with you. For, in some mysterious way, I know that you shall not return to Paris again. When you leave this city, you leave it forever. Are you to die in La Rochelle? I do not know. But it will be farewell.”
A cold thrill of superstitious premonition passed over Arsène.
“Consider,” said Paul. “This is to be no mere skirmish. Those who fight for La Rochelle will be forever proscribed in France, if we are defeated. You will be compelled to flee —all of us will be hunted to the death. There will be no mercy. If we are defeated. And something most solemn tells me that we shall be defeated. Is that the end of the growing struggle for Protestant freedom and liberal dreams in France? I do not think so. A dream once dreamt is a dream remembered in the hearts of men. But the fulfillment may not come for many years. In the meantime, we who participated in this struggle are lost. It is exile or death for us.
“Therefore, I urge you to forget everything else, and seize happiness while you may. Why do I urge this upon you? Because you are my friend; because I love you. Because I love Cecile.”
Arsène sat down slowly in his chair. He covered his face with his hands, and said, in a muffled voice: “You would have me take this girl into such a precarious and dangerous future?”
“A moment’s happiness is better than a lifetime of unhappy security,” said Paul, with moving eagerness. “And, who knows, you may find peace at last, together, in exile.”
Arsène looked up. Paul was smiling; his gray eyes were moist and shining with tenderness, renunciation and compassion.
“In a few days, come to Chantilly. I shall be there. Arsène, you will come?”
“I will come,” answered the young man. And he breathed deeply. After a moment his dark face was suffused with joy and exhilaration.