Part 14

In truth, some three hundred people were on the lookout at the entrance to the main street, and they ran off at once toward the centre of the village, shouting: "The dragoons! The dragoons!" They were only the rearguard of a crowd assembled around the church on the square, a sketch of which was annexed to the "supplementary instructions." There were more than twelve hundred peasants there, men and women, who opposed a living barrier to the horses. It took the troopers nearly fifteen minutes to reach the square, forcing back the enthusiasts with the cautious consideration which was expressly enjoined upon them. Their greatest difficulty was to control their horses, excited as they were by that great crowd singing with its thousand voices the well-known chant: "Nous voulons Dieu!" Another quarter of an hour was required to execute the same operation in front of the church and to establish the lines as ordered.

About half-past eight the little square had the aspect of a veritable halt in war-time. The horses were collected in the centre, held by the troopers, each of whom had charge of two. The rest of the men formed barriers at the ends of the streets. Behind them one could see the heads of the peasants, close together and constantly moving. The steps leading to the church, which stood on a sort of platform of earth, were still filled with kneeling women, who had begun to recite, at the tops of their voices, the litanies of the Blessed Virgin. There was something at once heart-rending and grotesque, brutally ugly and no less idiotic, in that display of military force to subdue the possible resistance of those humble creatures who cast upon the peaceful air of the lovely morning such pious appeals as "Refuge of sinners! Consoler of the afflicted! Salvation of the infirm!" And the crowd replied, from the lanes barred by dragoons: "Pray for us!"

"Upon my word they've given us a dirty job to do," said Vigouroux, the other lieutenant, in an undertone to Landri, having joined him on the square. After stationing their men, they were walking back and forth in the space left clear. "It's a hard mouthful to swallow."

"All the same, it must be done," rejoined Landri.

"Is it you who say that, Claviers?" exclaimed Vigouroux in evident amazement.

"A soldier knows only his orders," replied the other sharply.

"Oh, well! I'm not the one to blame you!" said Vigouroux. "It suits me, as you know, to have you think that way."

They continued to walk side by side without further speech. In declaring to his comrade, as he had done to his captain the evening before, his determination to go on to the end, Landri was perfectly sincere. He was keeping himself up to the mark by declarations which did not, however, make it any the less true that he had had but a single thought that day and that not of his orders! By virtue of a contradiction only too natural in a heart so deeply wounded, the nearer he approached to the moment when he might be called upon to take the decisive step after which he would have broken either with the army or with M. de Claviers, the image haunted him, ever more distinct and more touching, of that man who had not ceased to love him as his son, and whom he loved so dearly! That image was there, between Vigouroux and himself, gazing at him, and saying with those limpid blue eyes the words of the victim to his murderer: "And thou, too, my child!"

Landri did not yield to that entreaty, he was determined not to yield. It was to banish it from his mind that he had spoken so to Vigouroux. Moreover, it seemed that affairs were not likely to assume a very tragic aspect, judging from the disposition of the crowd, evidently due to orders from the curé. Those peasants were protestants, they were not rebels.

But the affair assumed a very different aspect on the arrival of a landau, preceded by gendarmes, from which three persons alighted: one in a uniform embroidered with silver, another with a scarf across his breast, the third in a frock coat. They were the sub-prefect, the special commissioner, and the recording clerk.

No sooner had they set foot to the ground, than the responses of the litany were succeeded by threatening cries of "Down with the robbers!" which attracted from the house adjoining the church a fourth personage, the curé of Hugueville himself. He was a handsome old man, bare-headed despite the cold. Two other priests accompanied him. He came forward as far as the porch of his church, the keys of which he could not, upon his soul and his conscience, surrender. He was very pale. He, too, was assuming a terrible responsibility. Blood might be shed. He raised his aged arms which had so many times exhibited the monstrance to his flock, and which at that moment implored rather than commanded respect for his wishes. The gesture was instantly understood, so unbounded was his authority, readily explained by the aspect alone of that ascetic apostle. The insulting outcries were not repeated, and a vast silence overspread the multitude, while the newcomers ascended the steps, among the women who made way for them with visible terror.

Abbé Valentin--that was the curé's name--stepped forward, and there ensued between the priest, whose face had lost its pallor, and the officials, a conversation the words of which did not reach any of the others. They noted its expressive pantomime: the curé shaking his venerable head so that his white hair fluttered in the wind, as one who meets urgent insistence with a categorical refusal, the sub-prefect almost imploring, the commissioner threatening, the recording clerk exhibiting papers. At last Abbé Valentin withdrew and the three civil functionaries, having taken counsel together, descended the steps, while the crowd, interpreting this retreat as a victory for the priest, shouted his name and began the chant:--

"Je suis chrétien, voilà ma gloire!"

"I fancy that's settled," said Vigouroux, "and that we have no further business here."

"On the contrary, it's just beginning," said Landri. "They have gone to fetch the workmen."

A half-hour passed, during which the crowd ceased its singing to engage in excited conversation. The constant repetition of the words, "a locksmith," proved that the officer had guessed aright. At last the three functionaries reappeared, followed by a man visibly livid with fright; he was the public drummer of Hugueville, with his drum hanging from his neck. A prolonged howl greeted him, then abruptly ceased, to be succeeded by breathless curiosity. The commissioner, instead of ascending the steps as before, passed through the cordon of soldiers and went up to Landri.

"I have not found any workmen in Hugueville, lieutenant," he said, "to break in the door. They have all left their workshops, to avoid doing it. Their curé has made fanatics of them. I am going to ask you to give me your assistance. Here is my requisition."

And he handed the lieutenant a paper which he ran through with his eyes. The spectators of this tragic episode--one more incident in the lamentable tale of the most criminal of religious wars--saw only the helmet bending over the document, which the constantly increasing wind seemed to try to tear from the hand that held it.

"I have brought the drummer to make the announcement," added the commissioner.

"Very good," said Landri, in a voice choked with emotion, "let him do so."

In the same hollow voice he ordered the six sappers to take their axes and follow him. He began to mount the steps, while the three rolls of the drum announced the imminence of the catastrophe. They were followed by several minutes of painful anticipation. Landri, standing now on the platform, had halted, and he said no word. As he ascended the steps, he had looked up at the great clock over the portal of the church. It marked almost nine o'clock. At that moment the Marquis de Claviers was on Rue de Solferino. They were about to remove the bier of the man for whom he wept as a friend, as a brother. Tears were streaming down his noble face. His great heart was torn with grief.

That vision had arisen before the lieutenant with a distinctness which brought him abruptly to a standstill. He, the son of the Judas, was on the point of making that heart bleed from another wound!

"Well, lieutenant!" said the commissioner. "I believe the time has come."

"No," replied Landri, rousing himself forcibly from his abstraction and speaking now in a firm voice, "no, I refuse."

"You refuse?" said the sub-prefect, coming forward. "But have you duly considered the consequences, monsieur--Article 234 of the Penal Code?"

"I refuse," reiterated the young man; and with a military salute to the three officials, who were motionless with amazement, he ran rapidly down the steps which he had climbed so slowly, followed by the sappers.

"To horse!" he cried, when he reached the foot; and in the next breath, "By fours, march!" Five minutes later there was not a single dragoon on the square, but an enthusiastic crowd followed on the heels of the officials as they returned to their landau, with shouts of "Vive l'armée! Vive le lieutenant!"

"I can't understand it at all," said the commissioner, as the carriage moved away; "I'd have sworn that that officer would obey. As you saw, he didn't argue, as they usually do, about the text of the requisition."

"I thought as you did," replied the recording clerk; "I said to myself: 'We sha'n't have to come to this port again,' and I was mighty glad. If it hadn't been for the curé those beasts would have done us a bad turn."

"Do you know what his name is?" queried the sub-prefect.

"Wait," said the commissioner, looking through his papers. "Lieutenant de Claviers-Grandchamp."

"A noble!" cried the sub-prefect; "that explains everything. He was evidently very desirous to obey orders, and then, at the last moment, he balked. Why? I'll tell you; but first listen to a little story."--He was an old _boulevardier_ and fond of telling stories.--

"Under the Empire there was a journalist of the opposition who wrote very violent articles in a 'red' newspaper. One fine day some one discovers that he writes, under a false name, others just as violent but on the other side, in a government sheet. 'There's nothing left for me but to disappear,' he groaned, and he talked about blowing out his brains.--'Bah!' said one of his friends, 'you'll get clear of it by changing your café.'--He was not wrong. Everything can be arranged in life, so long as one can change his café. But the nobles, they can't do it. There's the whole story of your lieutenant. He thought he wouldn't be well received at the Jockey Club. That's what comes of having too swell a café."

While the jovial-minded servants of a régime in which people have, in truth, changed their cafés a good deal, were laughing carelessly at the philosophic sub-prefect's outbreak, that short-lived tragedy, which lacked not even the requisite irony, came to an end with the dispersion of the actors. The protesting peasants rushed into the church, which was opened at last, and the hoof-beats of the horses, mingled with the jangling of the scabbards, died away in the yellowing woods that lie between Hugueville and Saint-Mihiel.

The detachment rode more rapidly. The sun, shining clear at last, warmed the air. It shone on the metal of the helmets and the gleaming flanks of the horses, which tossed their heads impatiently, scenting the road to the stables. Having given his orders, Landri had taken his place at the head of the column, with so savage an expression that his men, indifferent as they were to the moral crisis through which their leader had passed, were impressed by it. Vigouroux in fact had more definite reason than the commissioner for surprise at a volte-face which absolutely gave the lie to the words they had exchanged a few moments earlier. But upon him, too, his comrade's face made too deep an impression for him to try to speak to him. He rode along in the rear, secretly well pleased, in spite of himself, at the thought that paragraph 9 of Article 2 of the fifth part of the Military Annual was about to undergo a slight modification. He would advance one step on the seniority list of lieutenants of cavalry. But the artless wish to have a third _galon_ on one's cap a little sooner does not debar excellence of heart, and he was quite sincere when he pressed Landri's hand in the courtyard of the barracks, at the end of the march.

"I thank you, Claviers," he said. "If you hadn't remounted us, the sub-prefect would have telegraphed. The command would have been turned over to me, and I don't know whether I should have had your courage, on which I congratulate you."

"One doesn't congratulate an officer on having broken his sword," retorted the other with a brusqueness which disconcerted Vigouroux.

"If that's how he feels," he thought, as he watched Landri walk away from the barracks at the rapid pace of one who would be alone, "why did he do what he did? He rarely goes to mass. He adores the profession. He has no political opinions.--It's inconceivable! There must be a petticoat underneath it all.--Aha! I have it. He seemed to be very much in love down here with poor Olier's little wife, who's a finished bigot. She wants to get married, parbleu! She's in Paris. She must have heard of the thing from her friend Julie Despois, and have made a bargain with my poor Claviers.--Decidedly, Lieutenant Vigouroux, the best thing for us is not to care too much for pretty women."

With this aphorism of practical sagacity, this other, more inoffensive, philosopher, bent his steps, no less hurriedly, toward the mess. He had eight hours of horseback in his limbs, and he was of those fortunate folk whom excitement makes hollow.

This judgment of an exceedingly honest but exceedingly commonplace youth supplemented that of the jovial prefect. Thus it is that the painful dramas of our lives are enacted before the unintelligent eyes of half-informed witnesses. There are cases in which the sufferer prefers that sort. They assure him of secrecy at least, and it was secrecy that Landri craved, it was lack of comprehension. But who could have divined the real explanation of a sudden change of purpose at which he was himself confounded--that irresistible and passionate movement of the heart toward the most generous of men.

And now, seated, crouching rather, on one of the easy chairs in his apartment, he waited. As if he had already resigned, instead of making the report to his captain, called for by the regulations, he had written a note to the colonel in person to inform him of the manner in which his mission had ended. In what shape would he be dealt with? Withdrawn from active service, dismissed on half-pay, cashiered--so many synonyms to his mind of a single phrase, with which he had replied so bitterly to Vigouroux's warm and inopportune grasp of the hand: he had broken his sword. He no longer belonged to the army except for the purpose of undergoing the last rigors of a discipline which he had knowingly violated.

They were announced to him in a letter which arrived almost immediately, in reply to his, and which ordered him to consider himself strictly under arrest, "until a decision should be reached on the subject of the provisions of law concerning his case." Below this threatening line the colonel had written his name, "Charbonnier." The ferocious curl of the C, and the vigor of the concluding flourish proved that the plebeian officer, entrusted by the hierarchy with the right to punish the aristocratic officer, was hardly putting in practice the sage recommendation of the regulation concerning internal government: "Calmness on the part of the superior officer shows that in inflicting punishment he is animated only by the good of the service and by a realization of his duty."

What did Landri care for such a trifle? Having read this laconic and imperious message, he looked at the clock on the mantel-piece, as he had looked at the clock on the front of the church at Hugueville. The hands pointed to one o'clock. His mind reverted to the melancholy ceremony, the vision of which, suddenly evoked, had effected that abrupt change in his resolution. It was all over long ago. Doubtless M. de Claviers had returned to Grandchamp. The dead man was laid to rest in the grave which the workmen would have filled by evening.

"This is my 'Here lies,' this paper," thought the young man, pushing away the colonel's letter, "the 'Here lies' of the soldier." This coincidence between the burial of his real father and the event that put an end to his career as an officer, tore his heart. "At all events," he added, "before I go before the court-martial, I shall have a little solitude."

He looked about him, to allay his soreness of heart in the security of his prison. How many hours he had passed in that salon-library in the last three years, reading and writing--and dreaming of Valentine! He took from his table drawer a case containing a portrait, the only one that he had of her. It was a head only, which he had cut from a group taken by an amateur in the country. To separate it from the others he had had to cut off the wings of the broad garden hat she wore. But the pure, intelligent glance, the half-smile, the pose, slightly inclined, of the lovely head,--ah! it was all Valentine! He gazed long at those features which he had seen alight with love, upon which his lips had drunk burning kisses, and he said aloud:--

"I have sacrificed the other thing; I will not sacrifice her!"

As if to renew the solemn pledge that united them thenceforth, he pressed his lips to the poor card whereon there shone a reflection of that charm, unique in his eyes, and, seating himself at his desk, he began a letter to Madame Olier which should describe the decisive episode of the morning, or, rather, which should try to describe it. He was constantly obliged to pause in order to choose among his thoughts. How painful that careful surveillance of his words was to him! Complete confidence is so natural, so necessary, with the person one loves! It is the very breath of the heart.

That letter finished, he took another sheet to write another. It must not be that the marquis should learn from the newspapers of the episode of the Hugueville inventory. Landri owed it to himself as well as to him to conduct himself in his relations with him exactly as if the terrible revelation had never been made. But by what name should he call him? Thrice the young man dipped his pen in the ink and thrice he laid it down. His hand refused to trace the two affectionate syllables. At last, with a sort of devout horror, he wrote, "Dear father."--Rapidly, without choosing his words,--he was simply narrating facts now,--he filled four pages with his long, nervous handwriting, and signed, as usual, "Your respectful and affectionate son."

"I am entitled to it," he said, as he closed the envelope, which he sealed with the Claviers arms; "I have paid dearly enough for it."

These letters written and mailed, Landri was surprised to feel a sort of peace, depressed and gloomy to be sure, but peace none the less. How he had dreaded that turning-point of his destiny, that hour when he must cease to serve, when he would become once more, to use his own words, "an idler and useless,--a rich man with the most authentic coat-of-arms on his carriage,--an _émigré_ within the country!" That hour had struck, and he was almost calm. The misfortune that has happened has this merit at least: the tumult of ideas aroused by uncertainty subsides before the accomplished fact, and there ensues within us a sudden silence, as it were, which gives to the heart a simulacrum of repose. Assuredly Landri was very sad at the thought that he had taken part for the last time in the life of the regiment. But at all events he _knew_ that it was for the last time. The discomfort of indecision was at an end. During those long days of enforced retirement he would be able to apply the powers of his mind to his plans of a new future, without wondering whether or no that future was possible. It was possible--less simple, less in conformity with the aspirations of his youth than if he had remained a soldier while marrying Valentine; but as he still had Valentine, nothing was lost.

On that first afternoon of his compulsory seclusion, in order not to abandon himself to discouragement, he tried to concentrate his thoughts upon the plan of that existence _à deux_, wherein he would find, if not happiness, at least a balm for the smarting wound open forever in his heart. He looked on his shelves for books relating to the different French provinces, in order to study the conditions of an establishment in the country. That was what he looked forward to--a life of retirement on a large estate, at a distance from Paris, with all that an extensive rural undertaking represents in the way of profitable activity.

But ere nightfall the inward silence was broken and the tempest of ideas swept down upon him anew. He had been for years too zealous an officer not to feel a certain remorse, which was sure to increase upon reflection, for having been governed, throughout the incident of that morning, by motives so entirely unconnected with the military service. He had transformed an act in the line of his duty into an episode of his personal, sentimental life. That was a much more serious offence, from the professional point of view, than the breach of discipline. He would not have felt remorse if he had had, for refusing to act, the motives of a Despois, the subordination of military law to religious law, which latter such men regard as primordial and imprescriptible. He, Landri, had acted upon impulse. He had not even been governed by the argument he had used upon himself from the first day--that of a debt that he owed the Claviers-Grandchamps. Had he, in truth, acted at all? He had been acted upon, in the literal meaning of the words. The marquis's powerful personality had, as it were, prevailed with him from afar.

To this remorse for having consulted, under such circumstances, not his conscience, but only his affection and compassion for that man, was added the fear that the same influence would find him weak once more in the second assault that he would have to repel. He did not suspect that, with his inheritance as a love-child, he would display far greater energy in defending his passion. In him the source of strength was not in the reasoning power, it was in the heart. He was not to learn that until he was put to the test. What he did know was that, with the most imperative motives for making an irreparable breach between M. de Claviers and himself, the opportunity had been offered him and he had not grasped it. He could not do it. Those motives were still as strong as ever. The affection by which he had allowed himself to be mastered when he was on the point of doing what would set him free, was a wounded and poisoned affection. It had made him incapable of inflicting great suffering on that man. It would make him incapable of living with him, as he would be called upon to do, every day, now that he was free. How could he fail to say to himself again and again that, even outside the binding engagement that he had entered into with Madame Olier, to throw away this second opportunity to break with the marquis was to condemn himself in the future to an endless succession of painful scenes in one of which his secret would be discovered. M. de Claviers could not fail to see that he had changed. He would be anxious about it. He would investigate.