LXXXVI
Dunoisse had been arrested on the steps of the English Embassy upon the night of the Monster Ball at the Élysée. Not a moment too soon, it may have been, for the safety of the chicken that had hatched out of the basilisk-egg.
Having himself suffered the slow torture of imprisonment, who should know better than Sire my Friend, how to refine and embroider upon the sufferings of a prisoner? Dunoisse was assigned to the care of the Commandant ofthe Fortress under minute and particular instructions, which were, by that official, scrupulously carried out.
Solitude and Silence were the regimen prescribed for the captive. Save the Commandant, or the priest who would on rare occasions be admitted to administer religious consolation—no one might speak to Dunoisse, or answer when spoken to, save by certain strictly-regulated signs. Pens, pencils, ink and paper, newspapers and books—manuals of devotion excepted—were sternly prohibited. In order to guard against communication between the prisoner and the soldiers of the garrison, blinds were nailed over the windows of the barracks looking on that restricted space upon the ramparts, where Dunoisse was permitted to take the air.
The room allotted to him in the prison of the Fortress was one of a suite of three that had in 1840 accommodated a certain political gamester, ruined by the failure of an ambitiouscoupat Boulogne. Luck had turned; the penniless plunger had swept the board, and broken the bank. Now, lifted and borne high upon the tidal wave of Fortune, he could look down upon Powers and dignities by whom he had been despised.
The cage that had held the Imperial bird—repaired at the time of his incarceration—was now dilapidated and leaky. The floor of uneven bricks was damp and chilly, the plaster of the ceiling was tumbling down. The paper hung upon the walls of weeping stone in folds and festoons—the rusty iron sashes of the thickly-barred windows would neither shut or open. With the fever and ague of the Dobrudja still upon him, Dunoisse, denied the comfort of fire or extra bedding, invalid nourishment, medical attendance, or the commonest human intercourse; would have died, or sunk into a lethargy of inertia ending in death, but for one thing.
Habitual criminals, when subjected to the system of solitude and silence, either become imbecile or are rendered tenfold more brutal, degraded, and dangerous than they were before. Under the same process, men and women of wide education and high intelligence condemned by the laws of Government for political offenses—although the alternative of idiocy or insanity be open to them as to the felon or the murderer—usually emerge from the ordeal—presuming they survive?—confirmed in their convictions,strengthened in determination, fortified by suffering for endurance of greater ills. The enthusiast has become a fanatic, the propagandist has become a leader. The cause for which the man or the woman has suffered becomes flesh of the flesh and bone of the bone.
That intention of atonement—vague, unspecified—that determination to unmesh the net that he had woven—upheld and supported this man. Otherwise the fatigue-party of four soldiers with spades, the box of tarred planks, and the blanket of quicklime would have been called into requisition—and Sire my Friend would have been disappointed of a reprisal he had planned.
He had not given Dunoisse the room for nothing. On the stone lintel of the low, barred window was scratched, perhaps with the point of a nail or a pair of scissors, a fragment of erotic verse beginning:
“O charmante Henriette! Mon ange, ma belle!...”
Dunoisse knew the handwriting for that of his late master. Reminiscent of that old intrigue, it had few stings for him, who had done with intrigue forever. There were other inscriptions, in the same hand—philosophical, heroic, amatory, cynical—upon the mantelshelf, upon the balustrade of the staircase, upon the parapet of the ramparts where the prisoner was allowed to exercise. Two beds of earth were here, containing some straggling untended annuals. A few sickly violets were trying to bloom in the shadow of the chill gray stone. Beneath the rampart, fosse and marsh were flanked by the canal that was edged by tall straggling poplars, standing ankle-deep in the grim green-black waters that wind snakily across the plain. Beyond the canal rose thedemi-lune—beyond this mass of comparatively modern masonry was yet another fosse. And then, the interminable marshes spreading to the misty horizon, and beyond these—the world.
What was taking place out there? Were nations striving against nations? Were Fire and Iron, Lead and Steel, Death, Famine, and Pestilence playing their parts in the dreadful Theater of War? Were those secret treaties, those signed contracts, those imposed oaths, bearing fruit, not in the defeat of an enemy, but in the destruction of an ally? Had those vast sums of poured-out gold purchased for Sire my Friend the vengeance that would be sweeter to him than victory? To pace upon those ancient stones,tainted by his dainty, mincing footsteps—and wonder—and be kept in ignorance of what was common knowledge to the drummers of the garrison, the scullions of the Commandant’s kitchen—was torture to Dunoisse.
Treachery.... Ever since that night of his unexpected return to the Abbaye, the thought of treachery had held and obsessed him. It had flavored his food. He had tasted it in his drink. Unknown to himself, the traveler’s cold accusing glance had stricken terror to the soul of the Greek or Slav or Turkish innkeepers who had overcharged him, the peasants who had robbed him, and the knavish servants who had stolen the fodder from his horses, and the rugs from their backs. The nomad Tartar who refused payment for shelter in his flea-ridden tent of felt, and a share of the rancid boiled mutton smoking in his sooty caldron because it would, to his untutored mind, be a sin to barter for silver the sacred privilege of hospitality, was puzzled by that chilly, questioning look.
Suspicion had rankled in the man like a poisonous thorn or an eating ulcer. Seated near some pretty woman in a public conveyance or a public place, he would wonder with whom the charming stranger was deceiving her husband or playing her lover false? Drawing rein before some Wallach peasant’s hut of turf and reeds at eventide, as the bronzed, black-eyed maiden drew the woolen threads from the distaff stuck in her wide, embroidered girdle, the look the traveler cast on her would question: “Are you as pure as you appear? Does this virginal exterior cover a spotted conscience?” And when his dog fawned upon him, he would think, even as he caressed it: “Ah, but suppose I fell, attacked and worried by other dogs, would you defend me against them, or would you not rather aid the pack in tearing out my throat?” And as the thievish innkeeper had quailed, and the innocent young woman or the pure young girl had trembled beneath that chill regard of his, the dog would quail and tremble too, and slink guiltily away. And the heart of the man would contract in a bitter spasm, and drops of sweat would start upon his forehead. For to the generous it is anguish to suspect.
One does not know what would have been the end of this man—to whom no man might speak—who was not even permitted to dibble in the earth of Sire my Friend’sold flower-beds lest he should scratch a message on the arid soil that might meet some friendly eye; who might not even feed with crumbs—saved from his scant meals—the doves upon the ramparts—lest some written communication from that tabued world outside, cunningly attached to a leg or hidden beneath a wing, should reach him in his captivity. Perhaps inertia would have ended in collapse, mental or bodily. But that in his crying need of friendship, he found a Friend at last.
The Breviary and Vulgate, with theImitatione Christiof Thomas à Kempis—left in Dunoisse’s cell by some cynical whim of his Imperial jailer—proved to contain within them fountains of healing for his sick and suffering soul. Unguessed, undreamed-of beauty and delight and sweetness had lain hidden in the narrow columns as in the closely-printed pages. The casual reader became a student, the student a scholar, long before he knew.... And the Denier denied no longer. Dayspring banished the darkness; Faith revived in him—he could pray again. How strange it is, that only when the meanest and humblest of our fellow-creatures turn from us, do we seek the companionship of One Who is King of Kings.
At Christmastide—for the snow lay on the marshes and the ramparts—the fosse and the canal were frozen—and the church bells of the distant town had rung the carillon of Nöel at midnight—they admitted a confessor to the prisoner in his cell.
“What is the news, my Father? What has happened in the great roaring world whose voice has never reached me since these walls of Cyclopean masonry rose up about and penned me in? War had been proclaimed when I was arrested.... Has there been War? Is there War now?” Dunoisse asked.
But the priest made answer to his eager questions:
“My dear son, to gain admittance here I have pledged my word that I will not discuss with you any worldly matter. Let me, while I have the opportunity, give you news of the Kingdom of God.”
Dunoisse, so long a willing exile from that Kingdom, had been by slow and painful stages finding his way back there. Now, with the aid of the Church, he cleansed his sin-stainedsoul in the lustral waters of Confession. He was absolved. He received the Bread of Life.
It seemed to him at the supreme moment that a burning ray of Divine Light penetrated and illumined him. He saw himself clearly as he had never seen himself before. He understood how he had fallen from his old ideals, and strayed from the way of cleanliness and honor. He realized that Sympathy had been the missing link between himself and his fellow-men. He had loved one man. He had worshiped one woman with an overwhelming, guilty passion. Both friend and mistress had deceived him; and for this reason he had reared a wall of icy doubt between himself and the rest of Humanity.
You might have smiled, could you have seen him at this juncture trying to love his silent jailers, guessing at their hidden lives, wondering about their wives and families, probing without the aid of words, to reach their conjectural hearts.
And it seemed to him that they looked more pleasantly upon him. Probably it was so, for his black eyes had lost their piercing hardness, and his smile was no longer bitter and edged with scorn. Yet he suffered more, for the melting of the ice within his bosom had freed the springs of our common nature. He yearned for human kindness and human companionship. He thirsted for the voice and the grasp of friendship. He longed inexpressibly—and none the less that he knew himself to have forfeited the right to this—for some pure woman’s devoted love.
He looked out over the ramparts as the snows vanished, and a rosy tinge that spoke of coming spring stole over the leafless copses, and young green grass-blades peeped in the sheltered hollows; and the yellow aconite and the pale primrose bloomed, and the tall scraggy poplars of the thawing marshes showed the black knots of bud. He had never been beloved, it seemed to him.... Doubtless his mother had loved him—poor old Smithwick, dead many years ago, had certainly loved him. Adjmeh might have loved him—as some pampered pretty animal loves the master who tends and feeds it. Henriette had entertained a sensuous, fanciful passion for him. But Love he had never known, in its fullness, as it may exist between woman and man.
Once he had met a woman with a noble, earnest face and calm, pure, radiant eyes, and had gone upon his world’s way and had forgotten her. They had met again, on the night of thecoup d’État, at the French Embassy in London. And her glance had pierced to the quick through his armor of selfishness, and vanity, and lust. She had not spared him reproach, though at their parting she had softened and relented. She had said in effect: “Though you are nothing to me now, I might have loved the man you used to be!” What had he not lost by that change? What might he not have gained had he chosen, instead of the easy road of pleasure, the stony path of rectitude! Dimly he began to realize what an inestimable treasure of tenderness, what an inexhaustible mine of shining loyalty, and glowing faith, and pure passion, had lain hidden in the heart of Ada Merling, for the lover who should prove himself worthy of the supreme boon.
Had the lover come? Was the great gift bestowed, or yet withheld? Dunoisse wondered as he paced his daily hour upon the Fortress ramparts, followed by the two warders who were bound to keep him in sight. Was she wedded or free? He asked himself this question over and over. And, by the stab of pain that followed when he said: “She is a wife!” he knew....
He loved her. Happy for her that Fate had sundered them, if by any remote chance she might have loved a man so little worthy of her as Hector Dunoisse. But she never would have ... she never could have.... He tried to follow her in thought as she went upon her selfless way. He saw her pure, sweet influence shed on other hearts to soften, and uplift, and cheer them. He saw the poor relieved by those generous hands. He heard the sick, healed by her skilled and gentle ministrations, blessing her. He dreamed of her—with a cruel pang—as endowing some true man with the priceless treasure of her love. He pictured her with their children rocked in her arms and nourished at her bosom. He imagined her growing old, and moving down the vale of years, leaning on the stalwart sons and matronly, handsome daughters, who should look up to her even as they aided her, in perfect confidence; and whose children, inheriting their tender reverence for that dearest mother, should love and trust her, too. And a great yearning swelled in his desolate heart, and hisaching, mateless soul rushed out across the void to her....
“Ada!...”
In the anguish of his loneliness he lifted his arms to the wild, gray sky of March, and, in a voice that was like the wailing of the bitter wind across the marshes, cried on the beloved name:
“Oh, Ada!—Ada!...”
And—spun to the merest spider-thread of sound by infinite distance, her unforgettable voice answered ... beyond doubt or question answered:
“I hear you.... Oh, where are you?”