NEW YEAR’S EVE
WHILEthe young men were still sitting over their coffee and rolls in uncheerful converse, Dr. Vermont stole upstairs—not to see Gabrielle, but to talk to Henriette. His thoughts had been with her all night, and he was eager for sight of her by day.
When he entered, a spot of insufferable radiance burnt into the hollow of her thin cheek; but this confession was counteracted by the extreme sadness of her greeting. She, too, had thought during the night, and thought had cruelly struck at her life-long idol. For had he not forgotten Adèle? and was Adèle’s child anything more than his by name? To have found him indifferent to her because of the dead! But to find him indifferent to both! There was the point of pain, and with it the wrench of a wounded faith, which could never more uphold her in her solitude.
She looked at him anxiously, to see if a nightspent in the blue room had stamped his cynical, handsome face with a trace of suffering, of revived feeling. The poor lady could not be expected to interpret any such sign except as homage to her dead sister. So she lifted up her heart in honest gratitude for the touch of humanity in his manner as he held Gabrielle to his knee, and stroked her brown hair gently. Such is the guileness and simplicity to be found on a forsaken island, where gossip is not, and society revelations are unknown.
‘And you have lived here the old quiet life, Henriette, with no thought of marriage or change,’ the Doctor said musingly, and noted with pleasure the charming habit of blushing she had retained, like a very young girl.
‘Surely, François, you would have expected to be apprised of my marriage, or of any other change?’
‘I? Why should I? Had I not of my own will dropped out of your existence? If I chose to forget our relationship, what claim on your courtesy could I urge? You are too sensitive, too loyal, too good, Henriette. You were always that. Your father used to say so, and so used Adèle. Ah! they loved you well—thosetwo. I wish now for your sake—I honestly wish you had dealt me the measure I deserved, and my neglect would have stung you less.’
‘It did not sting me, François. I have no pride of that kind. Life is too full of pain. But I was sorry and grieved for Gabrielle’s sake.’
Had she not the right to hide the rest from him—simple-minded lady? who believed she had succeeded—since she so honourably strove to hide it from herself? Dr. Vermont pushed the child away, and came and stood before his sister-in-law. His imperious glance compelled hers, which she lifted timidly, apprehensively.
‘You are an angel, Henriette—oh, I don’t mean in the hackneyed conventional sense, but as a man means it when the goodness of another forces him to face right and wrong, and he feels he cannot undo the wrong and cannot choose the right. It is a miserable position. Ah! if it were not so late? But my tongue is tied. My first mistake was here, in this very room, years ago—twenty, thirty, a lifetime may be. Your father lay on the canapé dying, and I was sitting beside him. He spoke of you; I knewwell that he spoke of you, though he did not mention your name. It was you he wished me to marry, and I, following his glance, looked at Adèle instead. Happiness seemed to woo me from that flower-like face, and I believed in happiness then. Now!’ he shrugged in his expressive way, and added, in a softer voice, drooping humbly to her: ‘God forgive me, Henriette, but now I question the wisdom of that choice.’
‘It was a natural choice, François, and it would be anguish for me to think that you could regret it. Spare me that sorrow. Surely I have suffered enough, and have not reproached you. But this indignity would indeed give voice to the pain of silent years, and bid me utter words neither you nor I could forget. I gave her to you,’ she went on, in a dull tone of protest. ‘It was the best I had, my dearest and sole one on earth. But what did it matter if I was the lonelier, so that you and she were happy together? I have asked so little of life. Leave me that remembrance, François. No man had a sweeter wife than my Adèle, and for her I can be satisfied with a loyalty no less from her husband than that which I have given her.’
She glided from the room without another look for him. He stood and stared after her, with a fantastic, almost amused movement of eyebrow, though the heart within him felt heavy to bursting with an odd assortment of sensations.
When they met again, it was at the luncheon table, with his companions and Mademoiselle’s foreign friend.
‘Anatole devours her with his eyes,’ he said to himself. ‘Poor moth! he is sadly burnt, and the fact that she is eight or nine years his senior makes his hurt the graver. There are compensations in a hopeless love when the ages are reversed.’
But his mild sarcastic face wore no look of dejection or dismay as he sat and discoursed upon Shakespeare and Molière with the foreigner, only of intelligent survey and an amiable satisfaction in all things, including the clowns of Shakespeare, from whom most Frenchmen instinctively shrink. After lunch they played chess and discussed, in the usual way, the school of realists, décadents, symbolists, and the recent revival of romanticism in a gentleman, said to combine the melodious styleof George Sand with the adventurous spirit of the great Dumas. It was only when the foreigner retired, and the young men went upstairs to study the stars in the friendly odour of tobacco, that the Doctor ventured again to address Henriette.
‘He is an interesting lad, Anatole—eh?’
‘Very. But it distresses me to see him so sad and worried at his age. He appears to have some trouble on his mind,’ said Mademoiselle, leaning her elbows on the table and her chin upon her folded hands.
‘He has fallen in love with you—that’s his trouble, Henriette. I assure you, up in Paris, he is the reverse of sad or worried. He is the life of Lander’s.’
Dr. Vermont achieved his purpose: he made her blush from neck to forehead.
‘You forget, François, that you are talking to a middle-aged woman of a very young man,’ she said, in surprise.
‘Not so middle-aged as that,’ laughed Dr. Vermont, unjoyously. ‘And the others,—do they appear to have any trouble on their minds?’
‘It has not struck me. I should say theyare rather futile men, who would probably fail in any undertaking in an abject way,’ she said, dismissing them.
But she did not dismiss Anatole from her mind, and when he came to say ‘Good-night’ to her, she greeted him with so much direct and personal sympathy in her smile, in her glance, and in the slight pressure of her fingers, that I declare the poor fellow was only restrained by the presence of Dr. Vermont from bursting into tears then and there, and confessing all to her. Instead, he choked an inclination to sob, and turned despairingly on his heel.
It rained heavily all next day—the fatal New Year’s Eve. With an instinct for dramatic fitness, Anatole spent the first half in a state of suppressed tearfulness, as an appropriate ending of his young life. He was unrecognisable to himself even, for never before had he dropped into the elegiac mood. With the lyric, with the martial, with the bacchanalian, he was familiar enough. He tried to recover his self-esteem by imagining what his state would be on the battle-field. But the satisfaction he might feel in shooting a German, or bayonetingan insolent Englishman, was wanting to take from the horror of contemplated death; and the candid wretchedness of his face provoked sympathetic misery in the glance of all who beheld him. What would he not give for one more sight of the old fishing town in Normandy, for a chat with the genial honest fishermen who had never heard that accursed phrase,Fin de siècle, and little cared whether they were at the beginning or the end of the century. No, if his mother were alive, he was convinced he never would have entered into that wicked jest upon matter so solemn as death. He would have known better, had he even a sister, like that sweet and noble-looking lady, Mademoiselle Lenormant.
It was too late now, and this was his last day. Thank God it rained! It rained so darkly and so dismally that the regrets of life were mitigated by the mournfulness of nature. It was relieved thereby of much of its attraction and of all its enchantment. Had a single ray of sunlight fallen upon the damp earth, it would have shaken him to the depth of his being. This fact he jealously kept to himself, dreading the sneer of those two superior young men,Julien and Gaston, who thought themselves such very fine fellows because they persisted in their indifference to eternity, and cared not a rush for the poor old world they were going from. But Anatole knew better than to envy them. He held that it requires but a bad heart, or none at all, and feeble brains atrophied by the cheap philosophy of the hour, to reach this stage. So, while they smoked and joked downstairs in dismal hilarity, he sat upstairs with the ladies, and drank tea, and made a gallant effort to play with little Gabrielle. How happy he might be if this were to be permanent reality, and Paris, with its unrest, its bitterness, its noise and glitter, an ugly dream!
Dr. Vermont showed himself neither upstairs nor downstairs. Before lunch he walked to Beaufort, and on his return, he slowly made the tour of the island. It had been mentioned that upon one side of the island, as you stepped from the bridge beyond a broken arch and a dangerous reach of rocks down to the inky waters, there was an old tower. Monsieur Lenormant’s house was lower down on the opposite side, facing the cemetery. This tower had been an ancient fort when the entire isle was the fortifiedretreat of an illustrious and rebel house. It had sustained sieges, and known the roar of musketry, and it still stood nobly upon its martial memories, albeit a ruin of centuries. All was silence and desolation on this side of the island. No one walked its pavements, and the laundresses wheeling their barrows to town from the lower end, instinctively chose the inhabited quarter to pass.
‘A man might rot to carrion here,’ said Dr. Vermont, as he stood between the battered walls of the tower, and looked up at the weeping heavens, and then down at the sullen and swollen river. ‘None would know, and a few days’ persistent rain would rush the river beyond the rocks in among these ruins, and carry our bodies away to the sea.’
And then he walked with his hands in his pockets, unmindful of the rain, to the neglected cemetery. He stood a while against the white tomb of his young wife, upon which some flowers lay, a lifeless pulp in a pool of water. Thirty-nine only, and two days ago he believed he had tasted all life had to offer, and wanted no more of its bitterness or its sweetness? But he would not humble himself to admit that hehad erred two days ago, and that there still remained at the bottom of the cup a draught he would willingly drink. He put the present from him, and the stirring voice of a troubled consciousness, and leaned there in the rain to dream a while of youth, and hope, and all things good that have been and are no more.
It was late in the afternoon when he returned and shut himself in the blue-room to write letters. This done, he examined a pair of pistols, loaded one which he laid upon the table, and with his odd, hard smile, carried the other into the dressing-room where Anatole slept, and placed it on the bed. There was still half an hour to dispose of before dinner—his last half hour of solitude. He took up the candle, and walked slowly round the room, inspecting each object, pricking by association, memory, that just then needed no pricking. The pity was that the man’s sharp face never lost its calm irony of expression, and his shapely mouth never lost its trick of quiet smiling. For him absurdity lay at the bottom of all things—if not absurdity, something so much worse as to be beyond toleration.
Man in all his moods, he insisted, was a mixtureof grossness and absurdity, and it mattered little which of the two elements prevailed. The one excess worked mischief for himself, and the other mischief for his neighbours.
When the dinner-bell rang, Dr. Vermont appeared still smiling and humorously observant. He it was who spoke most, and most coherently, at table. Julien and Gaston swaggered a little, and their faces were pale and excited. Anybody with an eye in his head might have guessed they were morally perturbed, and Mademoiselle, mindful of the hurried departure that night, questioned her foreign friend, sitting below with Dr. Vermont, in a swift, apprehensive glance. But the Doctor was so cool and steady, and discoursed so blandly with his neighbour, that she dismissed her fears, and set herself to cheer and encourage poor Anatole. If his depression were really due to a violent fancy for herself, then she was in duty bound to act the part of mother, or at least of elder affectionate sister,—which she did with consummate ability, and drove the unhappy lad to despair.
After dinner the Doctor, instead of rising, said, laughing—
‘Henriette, to-night we men will follow the example of our barbarous brothers of England, and will remain over our wine after the ladies. To borrow a habit from your countrymen, Madame, cannot offend your taste, though I am afraid I should not find a Frenchwoman tolerant of it.’
‘I believe Englishmen sit at wine and the ladies retire,’ said Mademoiselle, hesitating. She did not like the innovation, and frankly showed it.
‘Your pardon, Henriette, we have our plans to discuss. You, Madame, too, will hold us excused?’
‘Certainly, Monsieur, I think it a commendable custom which keeps men and women so much apart. They meet then with greater zest and novelty.’
Dr. Vermont held the door for the ladies and bowed. He stooped and kissed little Gabrielle, and held her head a moment against him. And then when the door closed, he shrugged his shoulders, and sighed.
‘That’s the Englishwoman for you—a creature without tact or charm. The British matron is only fitted to be a mother of a family. Shecan neither hold us back, nor encourage us with dignity. Ah! lucky we are, gentlemen, to be the slaves and masters of that adorable bundle of perversities—la femme française!’
While he spoke he uncorked a bottle of Monsieur Lenormant’s fine old Burgundy, and filled each glass to the brim.
‘Allons, Messieurs.Let us drink the last hours away. I give you a toast to begin with—the delicious Frenchwoman.’
The young men half emptied their glasses at a draught, and then cast haggard glances at the sarcastic Doctor. He slowly drained his glass, and lifted the bottle again.
‘And since our delightful torment would never consent to go unmated, even in a toast, let us drink, gentlemen, to her inadequate, but sympathetic partner—the gallant Frenchman.’
The first bottle of Burgundy loosened their tongues again, and inspired them to a febrile gaiety. They laughed loudly, broke into snatches of song, and by the time the second bottle was empty, one and all had fallen upon sentimental reminiscences. They thought themselves back at Lander’s, and the discretion of the ladies’ retreat could not be questioned. Anatolethundered roughly upon the perfidy of a certain Susanne, and Gaston vowed that none of her crimes could equal the trick one Blanche played him—the men used to call her ‘Blanche of Castille,’ in recognition of the many virtues she seemed to have inherited from her illustrious namesakes, doubtless; and Julien interposed dryly, with a droll anecdote of a lady once known in Paris as ‘La Perle Noire’.
Dr. Vermont said nothing, but listened and attacked the third bottle. He reached across, and filled Anatole’s glass, and smiled upon him almost pleasantly.
‘Never mind Susanne, or any other perfidious fair, my lad. It comes to the same at the end, whether they have been faithful or not. They die, and we die, and sleep “a long, an endless, unawakeable sleep”. It’s half-past nine now,’ he added, looking at his watch. ‘In two more hours, we shall be starting out upon the road that has no ending, leads nowhither, unless it be to dark, bottomless space.’
‘Why so?’ asked Julien. ‘May we not be shooting through the stars? Anatole in his present mood will make straight for Venus, but I, seeking compensation for the dulness of a peaceful life, will rather choose Mars.One ought to fall in for some good fighting there, eh?’
Anatole stood up, and went over to the window. The melancholy flow of water from the drooping eaves could be heard, and the sky was as black as the river and the landscape. No light in the heavens, no light below nearer than Beaufort, no sound but the splash of rain. The susceptible fellow shivered visibly, and went back to the table to comfort himself with another draught of Burgundy.
‘There is not a star to be shot into,’ he said gloomily; ‘and it is raining as if the whole universe were melted.’
‘We have a couple more toasts to drink, gentlemen,’ said the Doctor, standing. ‘Are your glasses filled?’
Well, if they could do nothing else, they could at least get drunk before they went on a voyage among the stars, or fell asleep like dogs for eternity.
‘An Englishman, when he is tired of life, takes to drink; a Frenchman blows his brains out,’ Julien observed, as he helped his neighbour to the bottle.
‘Upon my conscience, I do not know that the Englishman has not the best of it.’
‘He is of hardier build, my friend, and can take his drinking and pessimism in equal doses. We are the slaves of our nerves, and can stand neither pessimism nor drink.’
‘Are you ready? The toast is the downfall of France.’
The young men stolidly laid down their untasted wine, and looked at the Doctor for explanation. They themselves might go to the dogs, and the mischief take them there, or elsewhere. The universe might melt away into nothingness, but France, beloved France, must ever stand fast, proud and honoured and beautiful. Drink to her downfall? Was Doctor Vermont mad?
‘Why not?’ said Doctor Vermont imperturbably. ‘We shall be no more. And what can it matter to us? France has had her day, as Egypt, Greece, and Rome had theirs. I would have her spared the misery of a slow decline. It is now the turn of Russia, which will be the civilisation of the future. If you prefer it, we will drink then to Russia.’
So they drank to Russia, long and deeply; and Anatole, who had a pretty tenor voice, intoned the Russian Hymn, which the otherslistened to on their feet. And then to keep up the musical glow, and the golden moment of unconsciousness, he burst into theMarseillaise, knowing well that few can resist that most thrilling and spirited of national songs.
When he had finished the last verse, and the last chorus was sung, his companions sat silently gazing into their empty glasses. They had finished six bottles of Burgundy between them, and were now passably drunk, though not incapable of presenting themselves before the ladies to say good-bye. The Doctor went first, and waited for Anatole outside the salon door.
‘Remember, boy, it is “Good-night”—not “Good-bye,”’ he said sadly, as he pressed his friend’s shoulder.
Mademoiselle and her companion sat before a low wood fire, chatting quietly. They heard the songs from the dining-room, and smiled and shook their heads. Mademoiselle remarked that the young men were discourteous enough to carry the habits of the Latin Quarter into private houses, but since her brother-in-law tolerated such behaviour, it was not for her to object, since they were his guests.
When the door opened, both ladies looked blankly round at the invasion. The Doctor stood a moment on the threshold and arched his brows in smiling signification. The foreigner felt she would give a good deal to get behind that smile, and understand that queer lifting of the eyebrow. That the man wore his smile as a mask, she had no doubt, and she was not without suspicion that behind it lay concealed a different personage from the actor on view. He advanced, and came and stood in front of his sister-in-law, looking down on her with a new gravity on his reckless handsome face. The flush under his eyes gave a brilliance to his wistful gaze that justified the fascinated flutter of the poor lady’s heart. For she had never seen him look in the least like that, though she had seen his eyes melt to another.
‘Henriette, good-night,’ he said softly.
She gave him her hand, with a glance of sharp inquiry.
‘Is it good-bye, François?’
‘Good-bye? Why good-bye? It’s a lugubrious word.Au revoir, ma sœur.’
His lips touched her fingers an instant, and already he had turned to shake hands with hercompanion. Gaston and Julien came behind him, and bent their bodies in two in a dignified salute, but Anatole held out his hand, and clung feverishly to hers when she took it, while his eyes held hers in dismayed conjecture. Was it despair she read in them, or terror, or simply the pain of young love? But his speech was lagging and broken, not that, she decided, of a sober man, and she withdrew her hand abruptly, with a curt movement of dismissal of her head.
The boy turned to follow his companions, and felt his heart break within him as he went downstairs. While they passed through the blue-room, the Doctor again leant in affectionate pressure upon his shoulder.
‘Courage, Anatole. No woman is worth a pang.’
‘Ah, Monsieur le Docteur, you cannot think that of her. She is worth the best man could offer, and all he might suffer. You know it, Doctor. Deny if you admire her.’
‘I don’t deny it, if that will console you.’
‘And you can fling away such a chance,’ moaned Anatole.
‘I fling away nothing, for the simple reason,I have nothing to fling away. It is not chance any of us lack, chances of making fools of ourselves, of others. Chance, my friend, is generally another word for blunder. Some philosophers call the world chance, and is not that the biggest blunder of all?’
‘You mystify me, Vermont. I call perversity the worst of all blunders. And is it not perversity, if you love Mademoiselle Lenormant, to——’
‘Who says I love Mademoiselle Lenormant? I loved her sister, in a way, and she is dead. You’ll find your pistol all ready there on the bed. Put it into your pocket. It is half-past eleven. Tell the others I will join them instantly.’
Before crossing the passage to the other bedroom, Anatole stole softly upstairs, and knocked at the salon door. Mademoiselle Lenormant opened the door, and surveyed him in disapproving surprise.
‘In what way can I serve you, Monsieur?’ she asked. He slipped into the room under her arm. There was an empty chair near, and into it he dropped, glancing up at her prayerfully.
‘Mademoiselle, I am about to face a long,perhaps a perilous voyage,’ he said, and the slight break in his voice and the wet lustre of his boyish blue eyes captivated her judgment, and melted her into all heart as she listened and looked down upon him.
‘I have come back to you, to ask you before I set out for the unknown, just one moment, to place your hand on my forehead and say, “God bless you, Anatole.” Do you pardon the presumption?’
She bent forward, brushed the tossed hair off his forehead, kissed it tenderly, and said, ‘God bless you, Anatole.’
Silently and sobered the four men went out into the wet night. They walked round the island first to make sure that every house slept. There was not a light anywhere, not a sound. They trod the ground as quietly as booted men can tread, and came round by the cemetery and the low broken wall to the tower. Here they entered, and the Doctor struck a match that through the blurred illumination they might see the advantages of the spot he had chosen to salute the new century. It was certainly better than the sensation they should create anywhere near Paris. I doubt not that eachone privately regretted the rash engagement they had made over their punch at Lander’s a week ago. But none had the courage to give the first voice to regret. False shame and fear of ridicule held them tongue-tied, and resolved to make the best of their bargain.
When they had selected a spot near the hollow of the encroaching rocks, where, if they fell, they might be washed unnoted down into the river when the flood came high, Julien separated himself from the group, and walked over to the lower wall, whence the lights of Beaufort could be seen. These lights were rare and dim, but they cheered him inexpressibly. They were eloquent of life in the monotony of darkness.
He sat on the edge of the wall, and stared past the shadow of the bridge, out into the terrible loneliness of night, and shuddered at the roar of the eddying river below. Upon the breast of that river one might float into the beautiful South—a word made up of the sense of sweetness, and flowers, and sunshine, and blue waters, and clear skies. When he was a youngster he used to tell himself that he would save up his money, and go to Italy. And now he was no longer young, had not saved up hismoney, had not seen Italy, and was going to die—and leave it all behind.
At that moment a peal of bells was heard from over the water, and Gaston Favre announced in a cold, dull voice that the cathedral of Beaufort was pealing the midnight chimes. Had there been light, each man would have been seen to quiver from head to foot, and then grow rigid upon his feet.
‘My friends, is it agreed that we salute the dying century upon the last stroke of the cathedral bell?’ asked Dr. Vermont, in a hushed, muffled voice.
‘It is agreed,’ said Gaston, after an imperceptible pause. The four men gathered together, and took their pistols out of their breast-pocket. Dr. Vermont lifted his face up to the cold wet wind. His lips parted to the heavens’ moisture, and he felt refreshed. Since there could be pleasure in the fall of raindrops upon heated lips, why not even then admit that life may be worth living? Why not see the bright background to present pain as well as the dark contrast of evil behind joy? We have said the Doctor was a proud and wilful man, and he would accept no sensation asadmonishment of error,—but this gave him some pause.
In one swift backward glance, he saw the long roll of travelled years—years misspent, possibly, but not without their baggage of unearned joys; saw the start of resplendent youth ringing him onward to a manhood of renown: remembered friends he had once regarded with other than mere cynical interest: moments that had throbbed with light, and all the loveliness of untainted freshness—perfumed, dewy like a May orchard in blossom, swathed in youth’s eternal purple. While the lads around him faced the inevitable, as they thought, and though shrinking, white-lipped, and frozen with horror, from his cold acquiescence, endeavoured to warm themselves to the last act in the spirit of bravado and contemplation of the deluged earth, he had taken a sudden rebound from his old attitude. It was no longer the dislike of life and the weariness of experience that held him in chill imprisonment The old desire for boyish blisses, and the cordial of laughter mantled and burst in his brain like a riot of song. It was a revelation, with all the meaning of prayer first understood. A pulsing regretfor all he was leaving, for what he had known, and, above all, for that which was yet unknown, swept him instantly upon a fiery wave. It shot his arm down nervelessly. The pallid, spiritual face of Henriette seemed to hang in the sullen space of black sky and wet black earth. It glowed like a lamp, and shed a faint illumination upon the dusk. The faded monotone of her voice murmured prayerfully above the weighted splash upon the stones, and awoke the essential impulse of existence. While such women lived and prayed for men, could the deeps of life be said to have closed? ’Tis an old-fashioned notion, but, like most old-fashioned things, ’tis the simplest and the best. It softened the hard retrospection of Dr. Vermont’s glance, and lent a wavering tenderness to his peculiar smile.
Upon the sixth stroke of the cathedral bell, he offered his hand in silence to Julien Renaud, who squeezed it roughly, in assurance of undiminished courage. Poor lad! He needed the assurance sadly. Upon the eighth stroke, Dr. Vermont sought Gaston’s hand, but the limp moist fingers he grasped made no effort to respond to his pressure.
‘Courage, Gaston,’ he cried, in a friendly, animated voice, and upon the tenth stroke he turned to Anatole, and had there been a ray of light above or around, Dr. Vermont’s face would have been seen to undergo a wonderful and beautiful change. Honest affection that makes no pretence of concealment, humanised it, and a magnanimous resolve filled its expression with cheering purport. The worst of us, you see, have our heroic moments, only it often happens that, like Dr. Vermont’s, they pass unnoticed in the dark.
‘There is happiness ahead for you yet, Anatole,’ he breathed quickly through his teeth, while he swung the unhappy young fellow’s arm once up and down, in warm emphasis to communicate the reassuring fluid to him.
‘Gentlemen, ’twas an excellent joke, and as might be expected of such excellent lads as you, carried out with uncommon spirit and dash. I’m proud of you, gentlemen, and shall feel honoured in the privilege of saluting the new century in your midst. We fire heavenward—a good omen—and then we shake hands again, in cordial assent that humanity is not so worn but it maystill be relied upon for entertainment. You will say there are higher things. I’m not so sure there are not. Anyway, ’tis not an excessive claim that youthful pessimists may without shame start a fresh century as cheerful philosophers. The heavens are not always weeping, and most of us are the better for the sun’s shining.’
He spoke rapidly, and a muffled shout dying away upon a thick sob, broke from each troubled breast. The first throb of emotion spent itself in obedience.
When the last stroke of the cathedral bell had fallen upon the silence with a prolonged thin echo, a loud simultaneous report was heard to startle the night, and travel above the roar of the river, far across the empty country.
Gaston and Julien Renaud, utterly unnerved by the reaction, fell sobbing into each other’s arms, but Anatole, bewildered past understanding, thought he was shot, and fell in a heap at Dr. Vermont’s feet.