The Quest of Glory - Marjorie Bowen (most interesting books to read txt) 📗

CHAPTER XIV # IN THE CONVENT

Luc sat in the front room of the gardener’s cottage, looking out on the

whitewashed wall of the hospice.

 

He felt utterly weary; the exaltation and the ecstatic visions of the

morning had faded. In the next room the dead child lay waiting for her

coffin; a sound of sawing wood came harshly from a shed near by.

 

Luc rested his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands; he had

taken off his sword, and laid it across the wand-bottomed chair by the

window. As he sat motionless, he noticed the pale November sunlight

sparkling along the scabbard, the shell, and the quillons.

 

“A useless sword,” he found himself saying. He looked round the room, at

the bare walls, the rough furniture, the image of St. Joseph in a corner

niche. It seemed to him like a prison cell, though he had often lodged

more rudely. The plaster image and the faint stale scent of incense

filled him with disgust; he longed for Paris and the great muddy river,

or for Aix and his own home. The door that gave on to the garden opened,

and Luc rose stiffly to meet the person he expected, the nun the lay

sister had promised to send.

 

The Countess had not given him the name of the convent, but he recalled

that it was an order of Ursuline sisters. Since his childhood, he had

seen them walking in twos through the streets of Aix.

 

The nun closed the door, and looked at him with steady courtesy. Her

face, her hands, and her serge robe were all faded and worn; the line of

white that enclosed her face was vivid in contrast to her parched and

withered skin; her eyes were inscrutable, her whole expression worldly

and slightly amused.

 

“You will remain our guest, Monsieur?” she said.

 

“I have no right,” answered Luc. “I should have left before but that I

feared to carry the infection.”

 

“You did a reckless thing,” said the nun quietly. “The child died of the

black smallpox. I have nursed many cases.”

 

“And never been stricken yourself, sister?” asked Luc gently.

 

“No.”

 

“I may be as fortunate.”

 

The alert grey eyes glanced slowly over his graceful person, his

beautiful face. “You may, Monsieur de Vauvenargues. At least, you are in

good hands here. The house of de Clapiers has always been generous to

us. You do not remember the Great Plague? I worked with your father then

in Aix.”

 

Luc coloured and his eyes narrowed.

 

“I do not like to stay, my sister.”

 

She smiled.

 

“You think we are afraid, perhaps? Madame la Comtesse knew better. And

where would you go, Monsieur?”

 

He was indeed at a loss. He shook his head, and her smile deepened.

 

“If I stay, my sister, I must work. You have sick here?”

 

“Yes, Monsieur.”

 

“I can help you. I have learnt, in war, to do little services for the

sick.”

 

“If you wish, Monsieur. They are all very miserable, humble people.”

 

Luc looked at her quickly, and the colour flushed deeper into his

sensitive face.

 

“I must tell you one thing, my sister. I have no right to your

hospitality, as I said. I do not believe.”

 

“Ah?” she said gravely.

 

“I am a follower of M. de Voltaire.”

 

“And we are followers of Christ,” answered the nun serenely, “and in His

name we bid you welcome, whoever you are.”

 

Luc bent his head.

 

“May I remain here, in this cottage?”

 

“If you wish. But the Abbess would desire you to have the guest-house,

Monsieur.”

 

“I would rather be here, my sister.”

 

The nun smiled again.

 

“The man is old, and has had the plague,” she answered; “that is your

reason, I think. Very well; I will tell the Abbess. We have sent a

messenger to Monsieur your father. And that is all I have to say,

Monsieur.”

 

Luc thanked her reverently. He was glad when she again left him, for her

calm, expressionless presence oppressed him. He set his lips and went to

the window, where his sight was bounded by the white sunny walls of the

hospice; he longed to see a wide sweep of country, a distant horizon.

 

The sawing ceased, and there was a sound of hammering in its place, as

of nails being knocked in. Luc began pacing up and down the narrow room.

He picked up his sword presently and strapped it on; as he drew the

thong through the last buckle, Carola entered. He looked over his

shoulder at her, moved his lips, but did not speak.

 

She had not changed her gown, but she wore no jewellery, and her hair

was drawn away from her face and fastened on her neck.

 

“I came to see the child,” she said. “I want this buried with her.”

 

She held out a narrow white hand on which lay a diamond ring with

sapphire points.

 

“M. de Richelieu told me its history,” she continued, “the bribe, the

wages, that you refused and that I took. This is the last of it.”

 

“You have a strange fancy,” said Luc.

 

She passed him and went into the inner room.

 

He waited for her return with a blank mind, listening to the even blows

of the coffin-maker.

 

After a few moments she came back and crossed to the wide hearth, where

a meagre fire burned. An iron saucepan of soup stood on the tiles; she

placed it on the fire, Luc the while looking at her. When she rose from

her knees, she was once more face to face with him.

 

“You are staying here?” she asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Probably I shall not see you again,” she said. “I put on the habit of a

novice to-morrow.”

 

“I wish,” answered Luc, “I found it so easy to leave the world, but

while I breathe I cannot. Even this confinement irks me. If I live, I

shall go back to my ambitions.”

 

“Something is wrong,” said Carola; “you or I—or God.”

 

“Why?” he answered, with a grave gentleness. “I thought you had found

happiness.”

 

“I have found an opiate, Monsieur.”

 

They were both silent; then she turned towards the door.

 

Her splendid dress was as incongruous here as it had been in the wet

fields; it jarred on Luc to see her in such surroundings.

 

He turned suddenly and followed her. “You beautiful, foolish woman,” he

cried, “what are you doing in a convent? Go back to Versailles.”

 

“Is that your advice to me?” she asked slowly.

 

“Advice! I know not—but this is death.”

 

“Yes, death,” answered Carola.

 

She lifted the latch of the door.

 

“Will you pray for me?” smiled Luc.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then put your prayers this way—that if I am stricken I may die.”

 

“Death for both of us, then, it seems,” she replied. “How suddenly it

has come, Monsieur.”

 

Luc pressed his hands to his bosom.

 

“My God, my God!” he cried fiercely, “I want to live or die—do you

not understand? I have seen them—half blind, crawling, hideous.”

 

“But your spirit would be always beautiful,” said Carola gently, “and

always triumphant.”

 

They stood looking at each other, the width of the room between them. A

bar of clear sunlight fell through the half-open door across her gown

and across the floor. The sounds from the carpenter’s shed came

distinctly, and then presently the cold call of the convent bell. Luc

remained in an attitude of arrested movement, with his hands at his

heart and his deep eyes on her. Unnatural beauty rested on his absorbed

face, which was flushed and quivering.

 

“Monsieur,” said Carola, “when you have attained—but words are useless;

and after all, I do not think that you will ever forget me.”

 

“No, Clémence,” he answered, with great sweetness. “You will remember me

for my name’s sake.”

 

She opened the door a little wider; she was a thing of gorgeous colours

and delicate shape against the whitewashed wall.

 

“Good-bye,” she said.

 

A great faintness came over Luc; he held himself erect with difficulty;

he felt that something was going out of his life that would never come

into it again, as he had felt last night that he was riding away from a

world he would never enter more. Ambition, resolution, fear were all

lost in a sudden anguish of regret.

 

“Good-bye,” repeated the woman.

 

“Good-bye,” answered Luc.

 

A sense of the inevitable held him passive. She went out quietly; the

latch clicked into place. He turned his head towards the window and saw

her pass the white wall of the hospice; she was looking down, and he

noticed that the black coil of hair at the nape of her neck had become

loosened and was slipping free in long ringlets. She passed and was

gone.

 

He stood for a while gazing at the blank window, then walked to the

inner door and leant against it heavily.

 

The wall seemed transparent; it was as if he could see the chamber

within, the pallet bed, the little corpse with the ring hidden in her

shroud.

 

The convent bell ceased.

 

The door through which Carola had gone opened, and the gardener and a

boy entered, carrying between them a rough wood coffin, of a ghastly

smallness.

 

“Eh, Monsieur, we are late for breakfast,” said the man.

 

The boy nodded towards the fire.

 

“But Monseigneur has put the soup on, and it is boiling over.”

 

*

 

PART III # THE QUEST TRIUMPHANT

 

“Quand je parle de vertu, je ne parle point de ces qualités imaginaires

qui n’appartiennent pas à la nature humaine: je parle de cette force et

de cette grandeur de l’ame, qui, comparée aux sentiments des esprits

faibles, méritent les noms que je leur donne.” _Discours sur le

caractère des different siècles, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES.

 

“Insensés que nous sommes, nous craignons toujours d’être dupes ou de

l’activité, ou de la gloire, ou de la vertu! Mais qui fait plus de dupes

véritables que l’oubli de ces mêmes choses? qui fait des promesses plus

trompeures que l’oisiveté?”—_Discours sur la gloire_.