The flight to La Rochelle was of necessity most furtive and secret. The highways must be avoided, travelled only fleetingly at night, and then with drawn pistols. Then it was the gloomiest, as they fled like muffled shadows under the moon or the ragged black clouds, clinging to the nebulous shapes of the trees, watchful alike of Cardinal and highwaymen. Some travelled ahead on a dangerous stretch, then whistling softly and shrilly, heartened their companions to come on. They rode through the most desolate country, wild with ravine and rock, starved, blasted and blackened under spectral moons that etched strange sharp shadows on barren cliffs, and stretched lean pale fingers over empty plain, or glistened wanly on marshland threaded with writhing lines of silver. They heard, as they rode, the dolorous thunder of heavy wind in the dark trees, felt the uneasy breath of the ponderous and giant earth. They wrapped their cloaks closely about them, and shivered, sensing their insignificance in the enormous face of nature.
These hours were the worst. They dared not sing to lift their spirits, nor were they able to while away the black hours with jests or laughter, for fear of enemy ears. Like phantoms, like exiles, they drifted by little hamlets and villages, seeing the night fires, the squat chimneys, blooming like agitated red towers against the darkening purple skies, seeing the dark steeples and towers outlined with the first stars, or the last, hearing the chiming of pious bells sweet against the rising fragrance of wood and harvest-land and vineyards, or the distant call of a child and the laughter of a woman, frail and musical in the evening. Often, crouched in a thicket, they saw the peasant girls bringing in the cattle, heard the lowing of the beasts and the echoing tinkle of their bells and the munching of their jaws, and sometimes the joyous bark of rollicking dogs. They heard the Angelus over fields like beaten and serried gold, and saw how the peasants humbly bent their heads and clasped their hands, their figures heavy and dim and earthy against the burning sunsets. They watched the dawns rise like an army with blue and scarlet banners over the formless horizon of the night, heralding the approach of the sun, which, like a young warrior carrying a shield of blazing gold, stepped on the highest hill with a waking shout. They passed these lovely and simple and majestic things, feeling their exile, feeling their hearts grow heavier and sadder, knowing that they had no part in all this, might never again have part. Even the rivers beside which they paused, to lave weary eyes and sick pale faces, seemed to be alien rivers in an alien land. This was France, but they felt no longer like Frenchmen, and many were the secret tears hastily wiped away unseen on the back of trembling hands. They felt in themselves the separation of all that was flesh of their hearts and substance of their souls. They were like souls forced violently from their bodies and wandering disconsolately over the earth they had so greatly loved, shut away forever from the warmth of loving and living and the voices of kinfolk. Long before they had indeed become exiles, their spirits had felt the crushing weight of exilehood, beyond which there is no greater agony.
Many there were like Cecile, accepting the exile with stern fortitude, but feeling that this exile was in itself a sacrifice to greater things. There were times that Arsène felt this also, but many more times when his anguish of mind seemed more than he could endure.
He rode through the countryside at sunset, all through the night, until the passionate dawns made further travel too dangerous, and he looked about him and his heart said to him with a solemn conviction which he could not deny: I shall not pass this way again. It is done with me, and I am done with it. Then his sorrow became like a sword in his breast and he longed to lie down in the soil of France and never rise again. All his sleeping love for his native land rose up in him, and he looked about him with wild and streaming eyes, and sometimes thought that nothing in heaven or earth or hell should dare come between the heart of a man and his country. A man could lose all else, even his soul, but so long as his feet stood upon his native earth and his eyes dwelt on familiar and beloved things, his fortitude could not be shaken, his spirit never crushed.
He thought to himself that he could not speak of these things, and then suffering became endurable. The shapes of his companions became unreal in the moon-steeped darkness, and they had no faces, no forms, no blood and no flesh, not even Cecile. And it would seem to him that he was accompanied by ghosts riding thinly by his side over the rim of the earth, out into the everlasting night of exile and homelessness. How could he know that so many thought these things also, and that to them, he, too, was a ghost?
Adventure was no new thing to him, and he had always loved it. But it was a different thing, this real exile, to night adventures that led inevitably in the morning to a warm sweet bed within familiar and beloved walls, and the sound of kinsmen. Adventure of that kind was a play, a spectacle, the sport of young men, heedless and gay. But this was the hard dark road travelled by grim men, without hope, without consolation. And Arsène found the process of maturity a painful one, and sometimes he revolted with passionate despair, and felt himself surrounded by dour and menacing strangers.
He grew to hate the night, which once he had loved. Now it took on itself the substance of all his anguish, his desolation, and his abandonment. Never had he known that the night could be so long, so silent, so empty, and so cold! And when the morning came, and they hid in thickets, woods and copses, and in ravines, and in caves, he would fling himself unspeaking upon the earth and give himself up to oblivion.
But there was one morning that he never forgot as long as he lived, for it was the kind of morning which comes once in a lifetime to all men, when things became lucid and filled with a strange and solemn light.
The night had been unusually cold and long. After midnight, a cold rain, accompanied by icy lightning and tearing wind, made the torments of the travellers unendurable. Only the beat of their horses’ hoofs on the dusty or stony paths could be heard above the sound of the wind and the roaring of the wild trees. They had had to seek shelter in a lonely inn, and spent the rest of the night in the dirty drinking room, where the host yawned and eyed them with apathy. The man built a fire for them. Its red and wavering light glimmered over their haggard faces and sunken eyes, their disordered dress, their streaming cloaks and sodden hats. The wine was abominable, but its fiery warmth penetrated their numbed bodies at last. They ate the tough rabbits and fowl the host set before them, and broke the dry stale bread. Now they were slowly becoming men again, and could look at each other with faint smiles. The Marquis, who found the intimate inconveniences of the travel the most insupportable, had persuaded the inn-keeper to heat water for him, and, behind the high back of a settle he had taken off his crumpled clothing and was luxuriously bathing. Once or twice he lifted up his voice and bewailed the condition of his hands, and a certain other portion of his body much in contact with the saddle, and did this in such rich and lusty language that the others burst into laughter, and even Cecile joined in the general merriment. But to Arsène, his father’s uncomplaining endurance over the miseries of the flight seemed the most moving and saddest thing of all.
To what have I brought him? he asked himself, with hatred. He was inspired not even by the spurious gallantry and impulsiveness which animated myself. He had not even the consolation of a woman, as I have. He is an old man to whom music and candlelight and a soft bed must be more than any firing of the heart. Thinking this, he said aloud, his voice grating and hoarse and strange against the laughter which still rang through the room:
“My father, you ought not to have come with me!”
The others became suddenly silent, and their faces turned on Arsène darkly and alertly, for they had heard a breaking sound in his voice. Cecile paled; she reached out to touch Arsène’s hand, but, with a distraught gesture, he repudiated her, and addressed himself to the settle above which, like a decapitated head, the staring face of the Marquis could be seen. How old and tired was that wizened and narrow countenance, and how exhausted those red-rimmed eyes! Arsène did not see the sudden gleam in the latter.
He repeated: “You ought not to have come with me!”
The Marquis continued to stare at his son, and they saw no one else but each other. Then the Marquis said: “So, you would deprive me of the illusion that I have become significant?”
There was an ominous silence in the room, in spite of the lightness of the Marquis’ tones. Arsène rose abruptly. He looked at the fire, at the faces of his companions, and his own face worked. He struck his hands together. Now he could hardly control himself.
“What is all this to you?” he cried out, and his voice broke even mote.
“In truth,” replied the Marquis, “it has taught me one thing: the ineffable luxury of a bath and clean towels.”
He then emerged from behind the settle, the towel wrapped about his middle. His body showed every rib, every sunken bone. It was the body of an old man. The face that confronted Arsène was an old man’s wrinkled face, unshaven and haggard, webbed with years. No one smiled at this apparition, grotesque, shrunken and creased though it was. There was a sudden dignity about the Marquis now, such as he had never possessed in the days of richest velvet and finest lace and perfume. Clad only in his nakedness, with the towel as a mere concession to Cecile, he stood before Arsène with a strange and unfamiliar majesty, and he spoke only to him:
“Is it to yourself you speak, my son, or to me?”
Arsène’s pale lips parted in his unshaven beard, then closed again.
“If it is to me,” continued the Marquis, “then you have offered me an insult. If it is to yourself, then I can only despair.”
Cecile stood up, disheveled and white as death, her wet hair streaming about her face, her colorless lips trembling and proud. She stretched out her hand to Arsène, and said with stern imploring: “Come with me.”
Arsène did not move. He looked at the others, who sat like streaming and haggard statues, then at his father, and finally at Cecile. Her eyes, sunken and feverish with exhaustion though they were, yet sparkled with an intense blue light. The power of her soul was stronger than his own rebellion and despair. Moreover, something was cracking within him, and he felt the weight of weeping in his chest. He took her hand, and, like a blind child, she led him out of the inn.
The night had passed. Earth and heaven stood in clear crystal light, in which there was no color. Their footsteps echoed on the flagged path. They walked alone into the morning. On and on Cecile led him, opening a rustic creaking gate, descending a steep pathway, brushing by shrubbery and trees that showered down drops of diamonds upon them. The air was permeated with the sweetest and most poignant smells, and birds were whistling in the trees, and darting from bough to bough with soft rustlings and flashes of wan light upon their glistening wings.
They found themselves in a tiny glade. The grass under their feet sparkled; warm breaths floated in gentle breezes into their faces. The far trees stood in luminous mist. Now there was only profound silence about them. The sun had not yet risen. There was no color on the earth, only that mist, only that radiant half-shadow sweeping over the pale and distant hills beyond the trees like the ghostly heralds of the sun. The peace that fell on them was like the whisper of an angelic host, and Arsène felt the hot fire smoldering in his heart, then disintegrating.
Cecile stood at his side and they looked together at all this silence, this crystal motionless, this fleeting bright shadow. She still held his hand. Then, very slowly, she turned and faced him.
How clear was that young and exhausted face, those steadfast blue eyes, and how stern yet understanding were those pale young lips! Her cloak was heavy on her firm shoulders. Her loosened light hair tumbled against her neck and over her weary brow. She was bedraggled and soiled. But she had majesty and pride and Arsène gazed at her with a little fear and a new adoration.
“I have heard your thoughts, all these long dark nights, Arsène,” she said quietly. “I have understood all your thoughts. Monsieur your father is right: you did not speak to him, you spoke to yourself.”
She turned a little and looked into the far distance. The rims of the spectral hills were outlined with bands of blowing gold.
“Do you think I do not love this, too?” she whispered. “This is my land, as it is your land. We leave it, for a strange city, for strange people. We shall hang precariously on the battlements that overlook a strange sea. Where shall we go from that place? What is our end to be—?”
“I have brought you to this exile, to this hopelessness, to this death!” cried Arsène, hoarsely. He tried to put his arm about her, but she stepped aside. Now the blue light was so intense in her eyes as she gazed at him that he was taken aback.
“This is your hour of decision, Arsène! You must decide in this hour whether personal life, and personal safety, are more than greater things! You must decide whether there is not something more sacred than life, or, you must return to Paris. There is time no longer for any further hypocrisy.”
As he stared at her, dumbly, he was overwhelmed with her sternness, her beauty, her steadfastness, and her extreme and piteous youth. There was no contempt in her eyes, only a bright waiting and calm aloofness. He thought, incoherently: Shall I return, and take her with me, back to peace and quietness and security? And then he knew that if he returned, he returned alone.
He said, in a shaking voice: “You are hard, my poor little one.”
She smiled then, and her smile was less gentle than it was swift and flashing. But she said nothing, and only waited.
He cried out: “What can I say to you about my thoughts, and my pain? My longing for peace and cleanness, my hatred for flight and exile and this misery which shall never end? I have thought so much! Do you not understand, you child, my dearest one, that we cannot win, that we must fail? That we can only fight, and die, or flee ignominiously, again and again, until we fall, exhausted? This is a lost cause!” He could not speak again, and fell silent, with a groan.
Cecile drew a deep breath. She approached closer, and gazed steadfastly into his eyes.
“My grandfather,” she said, in low and thrilling tones, “once told me there are no lost causes. There are only lost men.”
Her voice, clear and penetrating, echoed back from the clear and colorless air. And now Arsène wished only to escape her eyes. He turned aside.
“I am a lost man, then, perhaps,” he said, so deeply that the tones were like a moan.
When he could control himself once more, he began to speak discordantly, his words tumbling with incoherence over each other.
“‘There are no lost causes!’ That is the stupidest of all things. The world is heaped with dead and ruined causes. The graves of martyrs are piled so full that their bones can be seen bleaching in the earth. I have no love for martyrdom—I have no true idealism. In the beginning of this journey, I had delusions to sustain me. But now they are gone. I have nothing left but fear and weariness, and hopelessness. Noble words are only noble words. They are no substitute for fires and peace, for security and quietness, for cleanness and the smell of unthreatened vineyards—”
His voice choked in his throat, and no sound could come from it.
This strange and unshaken girl, this girl so very young and unbroken in spite of weariness and desolation, looked at him deeply and said:
“And you believe these things still exist in France, in Europe? Once my grandfather said to me that Europe was rotten with history, that its centuries were too heavy and crushing upon it, that its cellars were gutted with filth and rats, that its beams were broken and bending. It has too long a memory. He said that if all men could forget history there might be hope.” She paused, then said: “If one could only go to a land where history did not yet exist, where life was new—. But there is no such land. We must live in our ruined city, and rebuild its broken walls.”
There was a long silence between them now. Arsène bent his head. His face became more haggard, more distraught. Then he flung out his hands. “I find no strength in myself to rebuild, to live, in this desolate place.”
He turned to her, as if imploring her: “My darling, how can I labor and fight in dust? I know this cause is lost from the beginning. I know that we have no hope that we shall overcome the Cardinal. We can do nothing to destroy the growing Catholic reaction in Europe. There is nothing but death—”
She clasped her hands convulsively together, but this was the only sign of her desperate agitation. Her face was still calm and cold, and her tone quiet, when she said: “You would wish to go to England, perhaps?”
“No! Not to England! The old men are there, also! The old men are everywhere, in their mouldering grave cloths, and their voices echoing in their dead bony skulls like ancient doom. They have no new books to open, but only the hoary lying ones, full of sickness and disillusion and decay. Can I not tell you, Cecile,” and now his voice rose higher, became more full of agony, “how I long for a land where the old men have not yet come, have not yet filled the graves, and where there is no history? Where there is no hatred, no lies, no cities of filthy intrigues, and no tombs of tales and rotten bones? All these things are here. We can build nothing clean and living upon them. Whatever new is built must fall into broken sewers and reeking kennels.”
Now his anguish was so extreme that the girl could not endure it. She put her warm arms about his neck. The wet and bedraggled sleeves fell back from them, exposing their white and tender flesh. He pressed his cheeks against them, holding them closely with his hands against his face. She lifted her lips to his, and they clung together like two alone in a rocking world.
When they finally released each other, her eyes were wet, and more gentle than he had ever seen them. He saw her lips, moved and trembling. It was some moments before she could speak.
“Arsène, my love,” she said, with more than a little humility in her voice, “this only do I know in truth. That one must have faith. One must believe that the individual is nothing in the long tasks of the future, but only men. The work at hand may appear hopeless, doomed to failure. But assuredly, it has not failed, in the end! Let us do what we can. When that single task has been accomplished, we will look further, to see what has to be done.”
She paused, and now the blueness of her eyes had intensified, become a deep glow, as though she contemplated something still unseen by him. She smiled a little.
“‘A new world!’” she said, very softly. “Who knows, there may be a new world for us!”
Her words seemed mysterious and inconclusive to him, but Arsène suddenly felt a strange uplifting of his spirit as though he had heard an exciting and heroic promise. He was comforted. His heart rose. He pressed her hands to his lips. They returned to the inn together, and when the others saw his face they smiled as if some unbearable pressure, some fear, had been lifted from them.