CHAPTER XV.
TO SHUNTER.
Lepsius, the Exhibition being now about to begin, should have been in Paris, but was at Serapis: and that was a true word of the gossip Nundcumar that woman works a relaxation in the screw of greatness, and taints its vein. Paris was strange; and the weather there “treacherous,” as they say. Frequently each day Lepsius was in communication with Monsieur Fautras, his broker, and with Schuré, his chief engineer. A rumour was abroad that the last of the Moon Debenture Bills (asking the sanction of the Chamber to the issue of yet new stock to the tune of a milliard and a half) would hardly be carried, because of another rumour that the moon-structure itself was fated to failure: an event that must ruin very many investors. So the croakers and screamers arose and mouthed: the scheme, they screamed, was never sound; down all at once one day from par to 97 fell the stock; speeches breathing rage were everywhere being made, in the streets, on ’Change, in the Chamber; newspapers furious with froths of abuse—true Paris-babies, created to live three days—saw the light, cried, and died; pamphlets, pamphlets, flooded the cafés; Lepsius, men said, had fled.
During all which a kind of riot one afternoon (the seventh of July) sprang up in Serapis itself. As the old Nundcumar told it with a moving head to Miss Ruth Vickery at the bedside of Healy that evening, “Sir Lepsius was at the telephone when Captain Bréhat broke into his presence with a face like volcano-ashes mixed with fire-flashes, to bring him the message news and betidings that some two hundred and fifty of the private troops had broken loose, and had wrecked two of the barrack-rooms. So Sir Lepsius finished his talk and chit-chat at the telephone, and then, starting off with a malign light in his eyes, though smiling ever his smile of the smiles, caught up a weapon of queer and dark appearances, and ran away to a square in the north-east, where the crew of them stood—all picturesque rascals of Spahis, mixed with Turcos, Mamalukes, Zouaves, Uhlans, Don Cossacks, some of them on horse-back, but most on foot in their half-dress, all under arms, so that the heart, missie, paused under the bosom-bone to see it through. Three-four of them said ‘Bravo,’ on beholding Sir Lepsius come, but the brows of the rest only scowled blackly at him, and one big Spahi spurred out to him with his grievance-list. Never a word breathed Sir Lepsius from first to last, but as the grievance-list was going to be presented, all at once he sprang like a flea of the fleas to the ringleader’s horse-back—a great Hungarian horse, all rings and piebalds—and he began to stick the horse with his penknife like a pig, here and there, till the creature in its raging, plunging, prancing, and very arrogance of arrogances dashed down the ringleader on the ground. Then Sir Lepsius shot his gun-shot up in the clouds, and down upon the crowd of them a shower of shot dropped back broadcast and hard-hitting; at the same moment he aimed the gun at them, drove the Hungarian mare at a gallop round about, pressing them, and on a sudden they were gone in a rout with bowed backs, as a crowd rushes out of a shower suddenly. Then he came again to the north palace, and later in the afternoon got the news that all was well, as the troops had resumed their duties. But wait, wait, it is not done with yet——” He stopped, Miss Ruth rising to wipe the lips of the dying man in silence....
But it was, in truth, not “done with”: for the very next forenoon the troops anew broke into mutiny, and Lepsius was told that one part of the soldiers’ quarters was being burnt. He had already observed the redness of it in the sky, spent twenty seconds in dire reflecting, and then sped away, intending this time to be terrible. It was a morning of storm that spat dribble and brine, the strip of sea seen from the higher parts of Serapis had an appearance of wrath, a league to the east a brigantine had been wrecked in the night, the sky was all grey and hurried like a current, and all pools of water darted darkling continuously under the swoops and pursuits of the squalls. Lepsius was making headway in the teeth of it eastward to the scene of the _émeute_, when, to his amazement, a maid came pelting to meet and present him a line scribbled on the fly-leaf of a Bible, “Pray, sir, do not come to the men. It will be well.—RUTH VICKERY.” Nevertheless, he ran on; and presently, peering through a wicket, saw Miss Ruth with the mutineers in a court, moving to and fro before them, her hair blown loose over an old cloak of faded blue that enfolded her, flapping, on her head a forage-cap of the men, she haranguing them loudly in French against the sounding of the gale. Lepsius stood too far off to know what was being said, but saw Miss Ruth laughing anon, the troop laughing also, soon became aware of a rumour of voices raving “Bravo!” then of Miss Ruth pointing at the flame, as if enjoining the troop to hasten to help in its suppression, then saw them press pell-mell through a gate and go, taking her in the current of their haste.
In truth, Miss Ruth was at present no more a prisoner in Serapis, but roamed whithersoever she chose in and out of it, visiting the Breton peasants round about, the sick in Serapis, and corresponding whenever she chose with her parent, to whom she wrote that the angel of the Lord had broken the bars of her prison. On the whole, she was so well known, and with so much respect, to everyone in Serapis, that it may have been beyond the wit of Lepsius, had he willed it, to keep her strictly a prisoner. At any rate, the _émeute_ thus suppressed did not recur; and Lepsius pondered this anon.
Little enough time had he for pondering, however. That forenoon of wet and wind the slump in moon-stock continued from 97 to 95, and at nine that night a crowd that had waited for hours outside the Palais-Bourbon in the storm, unharnessed the horses from Monsieur de Courcy’s brougham, and brought the Minister home with hurrahs, because his thunder at the Debenture Bill had resulted in its overthrow.
“Thrice on the eighth,” writes Saïd Pasha in his Notes, “I raced across to the Rue de la Chausée d’Antin, on each occasion getting wetted to the skin, in order to talk with Lepsius through Monsieur Schuré’s private telephone. On each occasion I had to wait, since others were before me. The first time I saw Colonel Doumic, Monsieur Leflô and Cardinal Dampmartin talking together, standing in a corner of the drawing-room; and two hours later when I returned they still stood in the same place, talking. The house, in fact, was much frequented throughout the day, people coming, lingering, going, and coming again; but no sign of either host or hostess. The Abbé Sauriau, who for some time sat alone on a sofa with his legs crossed, perusing with quite evident surprise and delight an old book of his own—it was his _Pindar_—told me that Monsieur Schuré ‘was supposed’ to be at home, but abed, in a condition of alcoholism; while as to Madame, Colonel Doumic, who had a cold in the head, and trumpeted persistently through the nose, told me that the lady was spending three days with her sister at Meudon. To Monsieur Favre, the Procurator-General, and to me the colonel also made this remark, ‘My friends, let the politicians do their worst, but what can un _tas de pékins_ do to the individual in question when the name of Lepsius still raises a cheer in each company of _pioupious_ through France?’ I wished that I could share in his confidence, but to me who knew the under-currents and each secret wire which each of the puppets obeyed, it appeared quite beyond the ingenuity of a Nestor and a Richelieu in one to save the situation. ‘Nothing has happened!’ exclaimed General Le Goffic, the Prefect’s aide-de-camp, to me at Bignon’s near eight in the evening, ‘and yet what a revolution in public opinion within these two little weeks!’ ‘_Mon ami_,’ added the old Orléaniste, who was a descendant of the mulatto Ducs de Dornis, and still at seventy a gallant figure, ‘the individual in question thought to inaugurate an empire on the race-course at Longchamp, as the Prince de Condé is said to have begun the battle of Lérida to the cry-cry of a dozen violins: but the fantastic soon ceases to amuse at a cost of three milliards. As to “La Lune,” since the word means also the part of the human person on which children are spanked, it was always certain that this fact, by itself, would doom the scheme to failure. At the actual moment, what hope remains, monsieur? since we know that when Belleville, St. Antoine and Ménilmontant have pricked the ear, _le plis est pris_, and Heaven itself is helpless. In passing down the Boulevard Majenta just now, I encountered a crowd bounding south, to the Palais-Bourbon, no doubt, singing “Conspuez Leps_ie_, conspuez Leps_ie_, conspuez”—the grave sound on the last syllable of “Leps_ie_”—a truly gross and terrible growl.’
“Well, at half after eight a messenger hastened to tell me that Isabeau Thiéry was about to mount the tribune, and to the Palais-Bourbon Pierre Huré and I set off in a fiacre, seeing on the way streams of people who were speeding to join the crowd that loitered round the House, without seeming to heed the showers and the noise of the wind. Having reasons of my own for not desiring to be seen within the Chambre des Députés itself, I strolled in the Salle des Pas Perdus, while Thiéry, ever the _enfant terrible_ of the Députés, rolled his periods in the interior. Among us outside in the Pas Perdus the question was, ‘Is Thiéry speaking for or in opposition to the Debenture Bill?’ and managing to seize upon the old Major-General Dauriac, one of the three Quæstors, who came rushing in, I put to him the question. He shrugged both his shoulders on high, giving me the reply, ‘Who knows, my friend? In the former half of his oration Thiéry has denounced the Bill, but now is no less loudly sounding its praises. _C’est un homme nul, ce monsieur-là_’—and he hastened on his way.
“I did not remain during the oration of Monsieur de Courcy, who followed Isabeau Thiéry in the tribune, but hurried back northward in order to have direct speech with Lepsius himself. I now found the _salon_, the stairs, the passages of Schuré’s house actually crowded—I am unable to state why, since Schuré himself remained invisible—men of the Bourse, newspaper-men, men-of-state, besides a number of mere well-dressed _badauds_ and _désœuvrés_. Monsieur Fautras, the broker of Lepsius, was speaking with General Figuier, the Military Governor of Paris, and with Graf Bobertag of the German Embassy, which last arrested me thirteen minutes with conversation of a secret nature. To Lepsius I then spoke of the tone of Paris up to the present, and was surprised that, though I had come at full speed, he already knew the gist of Thiéry’s speech. It was said, indeed, that he had mysterious instruments by means of which he could see and hear that which takes place at a distance, though I myself have never seen any such with him: at any rate, I now freely revealed my fears, reading to him some headlines from the evening papers, and even venturing to say that the air of Paris was believed to be bearable even in September! He took it coldly. But did he ever know his friends? Was Lepsius ever capable of appreciating the nature of friendship? Yet how he was loved by a few! and how he was abhorred by all, even by the few who loved him! ‘I knew,’ he replied to everything of mine. ‘The Debenture Bill will undoubtedly now be thrown out,’ I told him. ‘I knew,’ he answered, adding, ‘it is of no importance, if Schuré be kept staunch: I rely upon you to keep him staunch.’ This astonished me. ‘How can I?’ I asked. ‘Keep close to Thiéry to-night and to-morrow,’ he replied, ‘influence him, and you will find out how I can repay.’ ‘Monsieur,’ was my answer, ‘I will do this with much pleasure without the prospect of any such discovery.’ ‘Many thanks,’ said he. ‘I have,’ I then said, suddenly remembering it, ‘to deliver to you this message from Mr. E. Reader Meade, that it might be most inadvisable at the actual moment to try to tempt Thiéry in a monetary sense’—a suggestion which (unless I was mistaken) had the effect of strangely irritating Lepsius, for he made me the amazing reply, ‘Monsieur, the oak is hardly the highest form of life,’ and closed the interview.
“I at once set out on the quest of Thiéry, wondering within myself how it was that Lepsius was not that night in Paris! Was it _because_ of the very hardship of combating the storm from the place in which he happened to find himself that he decided to remain in it? Some stiffness of neck? Some arrogance? For he was arrogant. Nothing was greater than the grossness of his arrogance, save the glory of his lowliness. Seeing men, he felt himself a deity; but he was saved from even the least taint or vein of vanity, because his consciousness was so quick and large, that no less nearly and clearly than he saw men he saw stars, and felt himself a flea. At any rate, he could never be induced to take the human race quite _au sérieux_; he abided in his Brittany.
“Thiéry I did not light upon until nigh on eleven in the night, and then in the unexpected quarter of his own tiny _apartment_ in the Rue de Rome—a two-roomed den, with a _cuisine_ and a vestibule; and it was necessary for me to sit waiting in the vestibule, since the Abbé Sauriau was there in the _salon_, engaged in talk which it was altogether impossible for me to escape hearing, since nothing separated us save an aged green drapery, which the gale, penetrating between the beams, waved in my face. Thiéry was going up and down wrapped in a greasy dressing-gown, a fez on his head, the abbé being seated, speaking ceaselessly; nor was it long before I knew that it was a question of offering Thiéry the portfolio of Justice as from Monsieur de Courcy, who that day could have foreseen for himself nothing less than the Chief Magistracy of France. Thiéry did not accept, did not reject it. The abbé coaxed, quoted, fawned, exhorted, flattered. ‘The destinies of France rest this night on your shoulders’; ‘it is for you to-night, my friend, in rocking the tocsin of enfranchisement, to toll once and no more for ever the death-knell of despots.’ ‘But the Army,’ said Thiéry, ‘the Army.’ ‘Can the Army rescue a ruined man?’ asked the abbé; and he added, ‘Listen, my friend, you are not a financier, but you know that the company started with a capital of three milliards in 1,200,000 shares of 2,500 francs each; you know, too, that 800,000 ordinary shares were offered at par to the public at the first issue, as to which the individual in question not only gave his guarantee to pay four per cent. interest during construction, but to repay every ordinary shareholder at par, if the venture should prove a failure. And if it does!—as it is in your power to make it! Could revenues so countless really come out of any private fund and not leave it dry? And how in the day of his failure may the Army avail to save him from the wrath of France?’ But numbers always dropped like water on a duck’s back upon the skull of Isabeau Thiéry: and the breezes penetrating beneath the door chilled my shins, and still he remained in his indecision of mind. Finally he undertook to deliver his reply as to the portfolio before twelve the next day, and the Abbé Sauriau then went away.
“It was then my turn to convert the poet, and certainly I worked with no little fervour, throwing off reserve. I blessed with my hands upon its head the bust of Cæsar on the mantel-piece; I spoke of the offer of the portfolio as a bribe, and as unpatriotic in spirit; I said ‘as in 1814,’ and ‘the destinies of France’; I spoke of the crowd of crowned heads then in Paris to be present at the opening of the Exhibition, and of their exultation to behold the overthrow of that being who was the hope of France; and, sitting on his table’s edge, his face glowed gallantly when in glaring hues I sketched the glories of the future. Lepsius, I saw, occupied a place in his heart. Unfortunately, just as 12.45 struck, in came Monsieur Josef, formerly a _mouchard_ of the Rue de Jerusalem, then a man who to Lepsius was ‘P.2.’ The moment I beheld him I had a boding of trouble; and, certain that the envelope that he delivered to Thiéry derived from Lepsius, I kept my eyes fixed upon Thiéry while he read. Thiéry at once turned quite worm-white; one could observe how his fingers quivered; and, getting down from the table, he began to move about the room in an absent manner, with a bosom somewhat breathless, and a visage at once flushed and blanched in patches. I muttered to myself, ‘Lepsius must have tempted him with some momentous money-offer.’ He walked presently near to me, and with his arms quivering and somewhat spread appealed rather piteously to me with a ‘Mon ami!’ He then began to walk about again; till now again he halted to frown piercingly into the bust of Cæsar on the mantel-piece; and now, beating his palm with his finger, he breathed, ‘But no, but no, the Eagle does not blink’; and all at once he was scarlet, cast up his head, letting slip a little ‘Ha!’ and suddenly all in a hurry and flurry, muttering to himself, ‘Stop, he is going to see,’ he was gone away.
“He very soon hurried in again from his bedroom, dressed, drawing on a glove, begging me to forgive him, since he must necessarily go. I ventured to ask him whither, and his answer, ‘Ah! to Meudon,’ convinced me that all was lost....
“When I flew to tell Lepsius of it, he during two seconds or so stood mute, then very hurriedly said, ‘Thanks. I’ll look to it’....”
What Lepsius did on learning of the disaster was urgently to telephone a certain course of conduct to an agent in Chantilly; he then at once summoned to his presence the Due de Rey-Drouilhet, who during two days had been staying at Serapis; and he took two pilules out of a cabinet and put them in a pill-box.
As soon as the duke came in he was struck staggering a step or two against one of the pillars, for the hall, all open to the four winds, was all vocal and haunted with the storm, and half its area of floor was as washed with rain-water as a ship’s quarterdeck. Lepsius seated the old man near him in the middle, and speaking as low as the sound of the winds allowed, said, “I wish to pray you to set off for Paris for me by my next special at 1.6; for if you wish to prove useful to me, and at the same time to make yourself affluent for life, this is your chance of chances. I may tell you that Thiéry has just taken train from Paris to Meudon to see his sister, Fanny Schuré, with a design unfriendly to me. Well, he will not see her to-night: for an agent of mine in Chantilly, where Schuré is, is at this moment telephoning her the false news that her husband is dying, and either fifteen or four minutes before Thiéry reaches Meudon she will have left it for Chantilly; nor will he be able, I see, to follow her thither to-night for want of a train. But to-morrow he will see her, unless I prevent him; hence I ask you to assist at his _premier déjeûner_ in the morning, and deftly to drop these two pilules into his coffee or chocolate. You are his friend—— What is it?”
He turned to a servant by his elbow who bore him a leaf of ivory scribbled with these words: “Healy can live only a few minutes more.—RUTH.”
Lepsius sprang up, pestered at this the third missive of the kind received that day, he having been too busy to pay any heed to them, though Healy was at this time, by his orders, near him in the north palace. He walked away to the columns, and cast a look out: no stars out there, no vault of heaven, only darksomeness mixed all with water and winds wawling; and back he bolted to the duke, saying, “Excuse me two minutes,” and hastened away.
His own motive in going he hardly knew, since that was hardly very rational that he should go: but something that is in the breast brought him. However, he did not enter, only stole nigh, and, standing outside a door-hanging, listened, spied.
The two windows looked toward the coast, and though these were well closed, everything movable in the room moved to a breeze that ever breathed through it—the bed-curtains, the skirt of an Ursuline who kneeled near the bottom of the bed, telling her beads, the skirt of Miss Ruth who kneeled at the bed’s head, reading, the beard of the old Nundcumar who sat leaning forward on a sofa between these two.
Miss Vickery held under her eyes on the bed’s edge a Greek Bible from which with a poignancy and grieving in her voice she was translating, the gale battering anon great breaches in her speech in the ear of Lepsius.
“Nor be called masters ... but he that is greatest among you will be your servant ... and he that humbles himself is high.”
The bed was low and small, in the north-west corner of the chamber under a window—the window which was opposite the door where Lepsius waited, there being two doors in the length of the room (which was longish and narrow), and two great windows, under a groined roof; and though an Arabian boy, crouching on a rug in the south-west corner of the marble floor, made a fourth watcher in the chamber, there was an air of loneness in there, an odour of death. This little Arab, indeed, but increased this feeling: for, though kneeling, he was so doubled on himself, so stone-still, that he seemed to be dead, and a greenish sheen gloating on his cheek from the lamp-globe just above his head increased his appearance of death.
“And they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘You wait here, while I go to pray.’”
The light of the only lamp was somehow a local halo about itself, throwing the remainder of the room in some obscurity, so that the clicks of the nun’s rosary arose from shadows in which she was herself no more than a shadow; nor could Healy be seen, nothing but his toes sticking up beneath the clothes, though anon that keen ear of Lepsius could hear his throat croaking the death-ruckle, pouring it low, hurried, like a purring rolling; and, still more pressed with haste, rain-water outside struggling darkly down spouts, with gulps and sobs and goblin sounds; and again that poignancy and break in Miss Vickery’s voice....
“And he went a little onward, and dropped down upon the ground, and prayed, saying, ‘Abba (papa), take away this cup from me; still, not what I want, papa, but what thou.’”
Loudly from across the sea came the sound of the gale, flapping with the sound of a navy of argosies going down in some archipelago of gloom, with all their great sails whooping loose, and all their sailors wailing.
“And again he went away, and dropped down on the ground, and prayed, saying, ‘If it be possible, let this draught pass away from me; still, not what I want, papa, but what thou.’”
The hand of Lepsius tightened on the box that held the two pilules designed for Isabeau Thiéry’s breakfast; at the same time the death-ruckle on the bed came on a sudden to an end; the happy saint raised herself from the bedside with a smile and a light in her eyes; and during some moments nobody moved in the room, until now the crony Nundcumar rose to move to the bed’s head, and, bowed over the dead with a moving brow and body, crooning, he said, “He is dead. But his head is not yet thoroughly dead and done, and he lies reflecting dimly in himself, thinking: ‘I am dead: no more to view the sight of the sun, nor any light of the moon at night, nor all the stars: for I am dead, and this is death; and what I long saw falling upon others, and was long in awe of for myself, is fallen at last this day upon me, me, also: for I lie dead, and this is my day.’”
As for Lepsius, he was gone; not so swiftly as he had come.
When he got back to the hall where the duke awaited him, he halted two seconds betwixt two of the columns, struck with hesitancy: until, suddenly running, he muttered, “Forgive me for being longer than I meant; and now, to catch the train, you should be in haste”—he held out the pill-box.
The old man was very tremulous; his hand that rose to take the box hesitated midway. “I assume, monsieur, that the dose is not—is innocuous....”
Lepsius’ lip of disdain deigned no reply.
“I know it, of course,” remarked the old fop piteously in a flurry, “and asked only for form’s sake.... On those terms I am entirely at your service.”
“Rey-Drouilhet, be certain and deft,” said Lepsius impressively; and within eight minutes Rey-Drouilhet was on the way to the railway. Before 7.40 the following morning he sat, in the Rue de Rome, at Isabeau Thiéry’s bed’s head.
He pretended that pressing Serapis-gossip had thus brought him at the matin-gun; but he had hardly any need to invent the gossip, since by this time Thiéry could speak of nothing but Lepsius’ bribe.
“My friend, what was the amount?” the duke questioned with a screwed countenance.
“It was two millions, monsieur.”
“_De Dieu de Dieu!_... I who am no more a youth would undoubtedly have refused it without difficulty, but how could you, a young man?”
“Ah, mon cher ami, noblesse oblige,” remarked Isabeau Thiéry in an absent mutter.
He was now about to get out of bed to get on his clothes, when his _gouvernante_ bore him in his coffee and little loaf; and during the minutes that he took to fling on his things, the coffee stood cooling on a commode close to the duke. The flesh of the duke’s face during this became very blanched and aged, his manners nervous and fluttered; but, though he had the two pills in his hand, and had many opportunities of dropping them into the coffee during Thiéry’s dressing, he did not. He now thought to himself, “No, Thiéry must be out of the room,” and presently he passed the remark that he had not breakfasted.
“My friend, pardon me!” cried out Thiéry, and darted out half-dressed to order another cup of coffee.
Now was the duke’s opportunity. Yet he did not drop the pills into Thiéry’s coffee. He started! First athwart the whirl of his thoughts flushed Isabeau Thiéry’s words, “_noblesse oblige_,” the example of that generous blood: and away he rushed, bent, from the coffee; and then back to it he rushed, fleet and thievish, to dash in the pills; and away from it afresh, without having dashed them in. And now he was casting his arms on high, his rickety eyes, distracted; and now he was creeping on his knees, sneakingly, to drop the two pills into a pot beneath the bed; and now he was at Thiéry’s bread, sneakingly kneading two pills out of the pith; and _these_ he dropped into Thiéry’s coffee....
Later that forenoon he misquoted Shakespeare, despatching to Lepsius, in English, the telegram, “The deed is done.”
Nor did Lepsius need the coming of this telegram to be perfectly certain that the deed was done, though he could scarcely still have been ignorant that very many threads congregate to make the mental texture of modern men. Anyway, till late in the day he was securely acting upon the fact that the duke could not fail; and then, suddenly, he knew—too late....
The next night, the second of the Exhibition, was the night on which men had been given to hope that a strange glory would change the look of the skies: but no such glory arose upon the eyes.
And now more in number than the messengers of Job crowded upon Lepsius the recorders of his downfall; French laws and procedures were tortured in order to reach him swiftly; during the midnight of the ninth the offices of the moon in the Rue St. Honoré, as well as the offices of several newspapers in his pay, were wrecked; on the 11th the troops of the 67th, posted to protect his palace in the Elysées, could not prevent it from being sacked and burned; by the 13th he had been accused, and had been convicted by the Sixth Tribunal, of fermenting civil strife; by the 15th the decree of his banishment from French land, posted in every commune, had been gaped at as old and usual, and glared from the gates of Serapis.
Lepsius smiled, but bitterly. He was lying on his belly on a bed of straw, reading the life of Jesus of Nazareth in the book of Matthew when the news of the destruction of the moon-offices reached him; and at once, throwing away the book to run out with a reddened brow, he said within himself, “I will blot out this name of France.” During the rage and deluge of the few days following, he yet more hardened his heart. To Miss Ruth Vickery he refused an interview, and to Miss Eve Vickery, who wrote “I am sorry for you,” and entreated him to be meek, to cease from scheming, and to bend his head before the tempest, he condescended to send no answer.
Indeed, he was now too busy to heed anything but what he was now about to do. In his resentment he had resolved to stretch out his arm in terror, of each and all of his enemies to make a clean sweep in one heap, and immediately to leap into a throne, some months before he had previously proposed. Of the Army, which regarded him as its hope of glory, he was still certain; and on the morning of the 15th the first of his thunderbolts bewildered the world, when from his rostrum at the Bourse, Monsieur Fautras roundly denounced the downfall of the moon-structure as due to the schemings of paltry politicians, and to the treachery of the engineer Schuré. He was authorised, he said, by Monsieur Lepsius, to present as a loan to the company a sum of a milliard and a half of francs, not to be repaid till ordinary shares should be earning a dividend of 8 per cent.; and, further, he was authorised by Monsieur Lepsius, who was prepared to finance the concern entirely from his private purse, to purchase back, if desired, every ordinary share at par from that morning; and, further, he had to say that by midday of the 17th instant Monsieur Lepsius proposed to be in Paris....
Never did Lepsius loom so hugely upon the universal world, luminous as some angel of the welkin, as that afternoon, France, for her part, casting upon her head the ashes of contrition. As for the foes of Lepsius, they saw only instant loss of place and power, only ruin, degradation, disgrace, knowing that now the decree of banishment against him was nothing but a dead letter. Hence the Count de Courcy took a hurried trip down into Brittany that day, and contrived to talk a little with the prattler Nundcumar outside the walls of Serapis....
At five on the morning of the 17th all was in order for the departure for Paris, and Lepsius, not having slept through the night, went to lie a little in his bath, his big dog, Argo, and the old Nundcumar, going also with him. As he locked the door, he noticed that the dog, going up to a coffer of cedarwood, in which it was usual to keep towels, etc., sniffed at it; the dog, however, did not growl, and, as his head was now crowded with cares, he gave it no heed. It was an apartment of marble with a row of round windows in one wall up near the ceiling, and in the centre of it a sort of well or cistern, with a tower of marble about it as light and beautiful as a flower, whose whiteness bloomed again down in the water’s gloom, and it had a bell in it; otherwise the apartment was without any ornament, except for the coffer in one corner, and the bath in the corner opposite, this being a mass of augite and gold, so big that one might swim a little, with lumps of ice floating in the water that almost filled it. Lepsius’ pieces of raiment dropped from him, he was in immediately, dived, and remained under a long while. Argo, the dog, was walking uneasily to and fro, but if one had looked narrowly at him, the dog might have been seen to be not quite himself, to be drunk or drugged. Nundcumar, for his part, stood by the side of the bath, his knees weak beneath him, but with no sign of this to be seen in his lean looks; and the air in there seemed to wait for somewhat, and to wait, a dusk air, for though it was now fully day outside, in there the light was scarce.
At the moment when Lepsius went under the water for the second time, Nundcumar, suddenly grabbing the dog by the collar, coughed twice: and the next moment the dog broke roaring from his grasp to drag down a woman who rose out of the coffer and flew through the room.... Lepsius, hearing the row, reared up his head, and even as the woman went down under the hound, received vitriol about his brows....
He at once dived....
Later in the day he discovered that one of his sandals, in a chamber of which he kept a little key, was missing. It was the Abbé Sauriau who told him so, kneeling over Lepsius on his bed of straw, as the gloaming began to grow deep. “It is intended that your hoards shall be distributed among charitable institutions,” the abbé said; and he cried accusingly, his body convulsed with sobs, “Lepsius, you are blind! and it is I who have been the cause of this.”
Lepsius lay with a band covering his eyes, his limbs cast all asprawl at random, tossing for ease; and presently he bleated, “I am blind!”
And now Isabeau Thiéry, waiting for hours at the far end of the chamber, dashed both his palms to his ears to shut out the sound of that bleat, which each three minutes was repeated, and rushed with the stare of a maniac away.
Lepsius could get no rest, for though the ravage of the vitriol (thanks to the rush of the dog and to the bath-water) was local about the brows, and he was hardly at all disfigured in his face, yet the agony was great, and the heat of the atmosphere every moment growing greater, since a reign of licence and riot had kept carnival during all the afternoon, and at several places Serapis was flaring.
“You must not stay here much longer,” blubbed the Abbé Sauriau, with two big tears streaming on his cheeks.... “I have a little cottage in Chantilly, and thither you will come to abide until my death by my side. You are poor, you are many millions in debt, you are utterly destitute, naught can be more utter, more boundless, than your downfall. So you will come, my friend, to my breast, and in the cottage we shall be, we two, dwelling in a shaded leisure and seclusion of literature, for I shall be reading my books to you, and you will be dictating books to me, which I shall write for you.”
“I am blind!” bleated the blind boy to his obscurity, neither heeding nor hearing him.
It was at this point that the blind boy’s father arrived after a voyage from London; and, lying on the straws, the old man rubbed his cheek on his son’s cheek silently, a sob in his throat keeping him from speaking; whereat the Abbé Sauriau and some others who were there stole away; and presently, when he had wept plenteously, Dr. Lepsius said to his son, who kept shrinking from his touch, “You have yet your yacht at anchor yonder in the bay; let’s cut back to Shunter! you and me; only no Shan any more, no Shan: back out of the dirty world, to listen to the waups whistling, what? Don’t you remember the old castle? And the old coble-boat on the north coast? And the long, low old shed, centuries old, all encrusted with peat-smoke, which we could see from the east castle-turret far off in the heugh of the crags? And all the gulls, and the bog, and the hags of water with the buckies in ’em, can’t you recall it all, and the sea? Say that you are coming....”
“I shall never run again!” complained Lepsius to his gloom.
“You may! You do not know yet! God may will to give you back your eyes, or one of them! But say that you will come this night with me.”
“Are you not still against me?” asked Lepsius in pain.
“What, against my own? Was I ever really against _you_, do you dream? Oh, fie, hard heart, to let yourself utter those words!”
Lepsius now turned a little to put his arm about the old man’s shoulder, and water washed with a whey of blood wound all down one side of his nose, while the old man moaned.
“So, then,” the old man said, “you will come, for I feel that it will do you good, and I’ll go at once to see to it.”
He stood up; and he had scarcely gone away when with eager feet Miss Eve Vickery came in, and fifteen feet from Lepsius stood looking at him, her father halting far off near the pillars, his eyes all alight with excitement. Having come for his daughters, he had ordered them both into a brougham, and they had started to roll away in it through the ruelles and courts of Serapis, lurid at this time with conflagrations glaring in the gloomy night, where groups of distinguished men from Paris and elsewhere stood to watch the flames and fumes, and, like devils in fire, troops of luxurious rioters roved with uproars to and fro. But when about to pass out of this scene, Miss Eve had seen a wing of the north palace in passing near it, and had leapt up. Nor could anything stay her. “I will see him once,” she had said over her shoulder: whereon her father, ordering his other daughter to remain where she was, had followed Miss Eve’s speeding feet; and Miss Eve came, and stood, and looked at Lepsius.
“Eve, I am blind!” bleated Lepsius aloud, perhaps having caught and known the sound of her walk, or probably invoking her without any knowledge that she was present; and what pen of poet or seer of the soul can disclose the olio of her whole emotion then, sketching with what fiendishness of hell-spite her whitened lip touched her lower teeth, as she flung at him, “You should have been good!” and then again how the bowels of her woman’s ruth moved and rued, beholding him so low, when he rose on his elbow, but tumbled back, calling, “Eve! you are here!”
“Lepsius, I am going for good from you!”
“Eve, do not leave me!”
“Eve!” her father now called out in a sort of whisper.
She crammed her mouth with her handkerchief to bite on, and letting fall her arm behind her toward the bed of straws, wafting it a good-bye, tried to get away toward her father, but half-way gave up, smiling, her knees going feeble beneath her, and lapsed, seated, upon the floor; whereat Mr. Vickery came, raised, and carried her away to their carriage.
The carriage then went on its way toward the station two miles distant through a dark night unlighted by one star in the sky, with wild winds blowing. But they had not advanced half a mile when the driver suddenly halted, having noticed lying right athwart the road a woman whom, but for the light radiating from the blazing of Serapis, he must have driven over. Mr. Vickery, getting out, gave a hand to raising her up: and now, to his consternation, she turned out to be his old servant, Jeanne Auvache. The woman, her life-work now performed, was now all maudlin, and desired to die—hence had thrown herself on the road. She instantly dashed into chattering (against the grain of her hearers) as to the various phases of the day, on her face a rain of tears, Miss Ruth and her father induced to hear, Miss Eve, for her part, reclining in swoon with her lips parted like the dying, not appearing to hear. One piece of the chatter, however, appeared to pierce to her consciousness; and now her eyes unclosed, she sat up. It was when Jeanne Auvache was recounting how she had been arrested at St. Brieuc, and how at about 3 p.m. she had been brought back to Serapis in order to be presented to, and identified by, Lepsius, the officers not then knowing that Lepsius was entirely sightless. “He is good, he is very good,” the hag groaned, “so that I regret at the actual moment to have done it, and have a desire to die. He lay there on his bed of straws, all solitary, calling to nobody ‘I am blind’; and when the two officers asked him if he was able to say whether I was the woman, he answered them, ‘Let her say something’; so I said, ‘Monsieur Lepsius!’ and I said again, ‘Monsieur Lepsius!’ and he gave no answer to the two men for some time, but lay still, frowning, passing his palm over his brow and his bandage; and he then said gently, ‘No, it was not she; it was not a woman who did it,’ and then——”
Now, however, a crazy stare was gazing out of the carriage window, Miss Eve leaning out, saying, “Do you say, woman, that he forgave you? Oh, tell me the God’s truth!”
“Why, yes, since you see me here——” the hag began to say: but now Miss Eve was gone.
“Eve!” howled her father after her, “remember your vow to——?”
Miss Eve threw her hand backward without looking round, and went fluttering on her way, her frocks quarrelling with the winds; nor was it possible to pursue her with the brougham, since she took a shortcut path through a meadow; and though her father and Miss Ruth ran after her, calling, her youth and long legs soon got them pretty far behind, she slipping back to Serapis like a spring which, pressed the wrong way, is of a sudden sprung free. In some fifteen minutes she lay on her love’s bed, shuddering on his breast, her teeth chattering feverishly into his ear “for ever,” and anew “for ever.”
“Eve, you are here!” he called to her in that voice of the blind which has lost its way like a lambkin bleating in the void of the night; and she in the fever of her joy said to him, “Here, you can feel it, the half coin: where should I be but in you, but interned in your heart, my eternal? I who eternities since yearned at the altar with you.”
But now Dr. Lepsius walked actively in to announce that everything was ready as to the vessel; and about half an hour after this, a small crowd consisting of Dr. Lepsius, Lepsius, Miss Eve, Miss Ruth, Mr. Vickery, a Dr. Proudhomme of Serapis, the Abbé Sauriau, Isabeau Thiéry, Saïd Pasha, and Mr. E. Reader Meade, paced to the quay of the little bay named Petit Bazaine. Yonder on the sea the yacht’s three lights glared tiny in a darkness made rather Tartarian by the conflagration of Serapis, the glows from which, glaring on the slopes of the billows’ blackness in dabblements, gave to the bay the goriness of Aceldama. A boat lay at the end of the quay; but as the sea was very rough, and trouble was looked for in embarking Lepsius, all the party went forward to see the boat, leaving him seated alone on a block of stone. The boatmen, who lay on their oars, called that they would wait for a calmer moment; so it was some minutes ere Miss Eve ran back to bring Lepsius, and then to her amazement, met him on his knees—the roar of the breakers and of the gale in his ears, the sprays raining on his face, or his engrossment, may be, in his prayer, preventing him from hearing her approach. She with an uplifted hand, stood hushed a little, listening, catching some words, the bursting of his sobs.... “Who hearest, but dost not heed, the bleatings of brutes ... yet if just one human wish for once may move thee ... let no speck of grit ever prick her eyes to agonise her; oh, I was sick and she visited me pelt her; I am reft, despoiled, and she makes choice of me ... chase, infest her every hour with fresh showers and astonishments of joy——”
She touched him, saying, “Come.”