XII
Hautepierre's Star
His examination—searching according to the science of the age—concluded, the physician did not for the moment commit himself. There was some pretence in his affectation of consulting a weighty tome, a suggestion of embarrassment in his moving hand. Few would have called de la Spina tender-hearted, but on that summer afternoon he experienced a pang at the necessity of telling the high-spirited young nobleman, whose name might have passed as a synonym for the brightest prospects in the world, that the shadow of death was even now across his path.
"You have already seen the worthy Malot, I understand?" he said at length. "Did he express any definite opinion, M. le Marquis?"
"The worthy Malot did not beat about the bush," replied the Marquis lightly. "In fewer words than I can compress myself into he assured me that I should be dead within six months."
Relief possessed de la Spina. Who would have guessed that this debonair gallant knew already. Truly, beneath all its airs and fripperies, this aristocracy bred its own peculiar virtues.
"You have had no other opinion?" he asked.
"Why, yes, in a manner," replied the Marquis slyly. "For then, at the pressing instance of His Excellency, I went to consult that great and mysterious man who calls himself Algerbi el Santo."
"Pest of God!" cried the physician with sudden heat; "is the city mad? Juggler, charm-trucker, miracle-monger, poison-dabbler! Does time hang so heavy on your hands, monsieur?"
"On the contrary," replied the young man languidly, "having only six months of it left, I thought that I had better begin making myself acquainted with the sights of which one hears so much."
De la Spina stared, took snuff, and then vouchsafed a laugh.
"Well, and how did the Mouthpiece-of-Light receive you?"
"Very shortly indeed," replied the Marquis. "Prefacing that he had expected me, he informed me that the stars promised me a long and untroubled life, and then excused himself further detail on the plea that a future so devoid of problems was quite destitute of interest to himself."
A saturnine grin flickered about de la Spina's swart features.
"A long and untroubled life?" he repeated musingly.
"So he interpreted the stars," said the Marquis gravely.
"Spent doubtless among them?"
It was Hautepierre's turn to smile.
"One may hope so," he replied. "It is a better prospect than your six months on earth."
"Depends. Not in Paris, I should wager some would say."
"Ah! that might imperil both."
"I can only answer for my department," said the physician, dropping the jest and leaning forward to give point to his emphasis. "And meaning by such-and-such—well, so-and-so, rest certain that it will. A single deviation from the straightest conservation of your strength might at any time be fatal. If you want to make sure, contrive to meet a sudden shock."
"So even the six months are strictly conditional? How would you spend them in my place, Spina?"
There was no hesitation about the answer.
"I should devote it to completing my treatise proving that the fish out of whose mouth St. Peter took the tribute-money was a gurnet and not a dory, as that mountain of pedantic ignorance, Gomez, and his trivial school contend."
Hautepierre was unable to suppress an indication of languid amusement.
"A worthy ambition," he murmured. "Yet might it not perhaps have been a gudgeon?"
De la Spina, who, as physician and confidant extraordinary to His Majesty the King, stood upon what ground he pleased, be it understood, frowned slightly.
"Do not jest with holy subjects, monsieur," he said reprovingly—"you, of all men, who are touched most closely. How, for that matter, will you prepare yourself? If by the accomplishment of no great work, in prayer at least?"
"Or the next place to it—in bed, doubtless," yawned the Marquis. "Must to Flambernard, then, that he finds another Keeper of the Routes. Within—six months or six weeks was it, did we say?"
Now at this point, illogically enough, the physician hesitated for a moment to confirm the death-sentence. Hautepierre, as both his friends and enemies well knew, was a gallant gentleman at heart, his airs and languors nothing but the mint-marks of his class in a time when all men took a pose. There were less amiable poses—de la Spina's, el Santo's, and that of his most benevolent Majesty, to exemplify—than that of disclaiming a virtue which one did possess.
"We are all in the hands" he began, with half a stammer, but the Marquis cut him short.
"Don't be afraid that your knife is too sharp, man," he said good-humouredly. "Fool, if I must needs hear it twice."
"There is no man more reliable than Malot in such a case. Six months, you say, was his last word?"
"And you?"
"Would add 'with care.'"
"And not forgetting el Santo?"
"Oh, eternity!"
A subject congenial to the jest, evidently. De la Spina's half-savage mirth followed Hautepierre down into the narrow street.
To note the young Marquis a few hours later, as he entered the playhouse by the Watergate and exchanged elaborate greetings with his friends, none could have guessed; but a rose-water stoicism was the mode, and Hautepierre was too correct to show such originality as a display of natural feeling. By consent, he was neither quite a talker nor quite a listener, but between the two, as an irresponsible commenter, he affected to be consumed by boredom and dropped epigrams that seldom failed to bite a little. Malot and de la Spina might have their say, but it was not for François Vivian, Marquis d'Hautepierre, to reform his whole scheme of life for so trifling an incident as death.
The play was The Catalonian Shepherdess, a forgotten comedy, or only remembered in connection with the appalling holocaust accompanying its production; for on this night, when arcadian sentiments were swaying the rose-water sympathies of the house, and danger, as Hautepierre afterwards plaintively remarked, seemed as remote as real sheep and real shepherdesses, the demoralising cry of "Fire!" suddenly rang out upon a startled pause. Hard upon the word a tracery of flame showed through the flimsy representation of a sylvan glade, as though the cry had been the cue for its appearance; and at the sight and the sound of its ominous crackle the audience rose and swept back under a single maddened impulse.
There could, from the first moment, be only one ending in such a death-trap to a panic so sudden and complete. Those who escaped, escaped in the three minutes of grace. The perfumed stoicism of the aristocracy and the steady common sense of the bourgeoisie shared a kindred fate, and before each narrow door it was a horrid swarm of frenzied animals, robbed of every resourceful instinct and outside the boundaries even of humanity, that fought murderously for life. Even when the doors could be opened a solid phalanx of dead and living wedged the passage beyond the hope of extrication. Some mercifully lost consciousness and never woke; others, less happy, endured the various forms of madness, and by their excesses lent an added horror to the short and lurid scene.
In all the house there were two persons only who did not join in the wild stampede. From his place Hautepierre watched the earlier part of the wholesale tragedy with emotion indeed but almost in outward calmness. He saw that the situation was desperate, but he already knew that death was very near to him. Despite the pose, during the past few hours he had thought continually of the prospect, and he had come to regard the inevitable at least without despair. Now death took another and a sharper form; that was all.
It was thus that he became aware of the other who had remained. On the stage was a solitary shepherdess, stayed by a very different reason. It had been the part of this one nymph to be bound to a tree until released by her favourite swain, but at the first alarm the stage was cleared in a twinkling, the faithful shepherd showing a remarkably clean pair of heels as he led the van. A half-circle of increasing fire now surrounded her; hot embers and burning tags of gauze and paper began to fill the air, but it was still possible to reach her, and in a sudden compassion for her pathetic isolation Hautepierre climbed up to the stage and gained her side. So far she had been silent, either through terror or a resolution equal to his own, but seeing him come towards her she cried out piteously.
"Hush, mademoiselle," he said gently, "do not break down, you who have been so brave. I cannot save you, but I will stay with you to the end."
"I cannot die bound," she cried. "Cut this rope with your sword, for the love of heaven."
His sword was useless: one cannot cut silk thread with a needle, and to his unaccustomed fingers the simple knots were formidable, put as he gradually unwound the coils she grew calm again.
"Is there no escape that way, monsieur?" she demanded, indicating the reeking auditorium. "But it was noble of you to come! I do thank you."
"The outlets are all blocked," he replied. "One could not breathe for ten seconds in that air now." It was true: by one of the peculiarities that mark great catastrophes, the burning stage formed the only refuge-ground in the whole theatre, for the volume of smoke, carried high above their heads, lay in a solid bank beyond, where it had already obliterated not only every sign of life but every sound. The shrieks, the prayers and all the pandemonium of terror that had reigned a few short minutes before were smothered down, and nothing punctuated the constant bull-roaring of the flame but the intermittent undernote of crackling wood.
Twice her flimsy garments had caught fire beneath the rain of sparks, but he had crushed it out. He wrapped his cloak around her and led her to the very edge of the stage, but it seemed as though the boards they stood on must burst into flame beneath the scorching breath that licked across them.
"Why did you come to me, monsieur?" she demanded. "You might surely have escaped, perhaps."
"There was no escape," he replied; "and—one does not. You were alone and I thought it might be less to you if you had someone."
"You are very brave and strong. I did not know that men were like that now. Will it be very painful when it comes, monsieur?"
"No," he replied; "we need not suffer that. One must not throw away one's life, but when the moment comes I will carry you down into the smoke beyond, and very soon it will be as though we fell asleep."
"You will hold me in your arms, monsieur? I fear that I may be a coward at the last, but I feel braver near you."
"I will hold you to the end, mademoiselle. Do not fear for yourself; I gather courage from you."
"I thank the kind God for sending you," she said earnestly. "I made my prayers while I was bound. Have you yet prepared, monsieur?"
"I have—thought of things differently," he replied. "You shall pray for me, if you will."
"I shall not cease to do so to the end. Farewell upon earth, dear friend."
The moment of their immolation had arrived. Hautepierre, half-blind and tottering, bent forward, when suddenly the ground opened at his feet. He had a confused thought that the stage was breaking up, but the next moment out of the abyss there rose a face—scorched, torn, and soiled beyond recognition—while the accompanying voice never ceased or paused from bellowing stentorianly:
"Berthe! Berthe! Art thou here? Call, littlest one, before I go mad! Berthe! Berthe! Art thou here? Where art thou, Berthe, Berthette?"
"Louis!" shrieked Berthe, rushing to the edge of the trap-door. "Hast thou come?"
"Mary!" exclaimed the man with a mighty breath; "throw yourself down, Berthe. Do not hesitate; I catch you. And you too, monsieur, leap if you love life.
"Quickly," continued their rescuer, as he hurried them along. "The roof must fall, and then if we are beneath the stage" He turned into what appeared to be a passage as he spoke, though to Hautepierre, fresh from the glare above, all was blackness. A rumble ending in a crash sounded behind them. "A near thing!" exclaimed their guide. "Ah, littlest, another minute at my work"
"But," cried Hautepierre, becoming conscious of an increasing heat and light in spite of his temporary blindness, "are we not approaching the fire again? Is there a safe way out?"
"Not that way," replied Louis, stretching out a shaking hand. "I singed my wings in trying it myself. But it was not for nothing that I played at brigands in these caves a dozen years ago. Gently here, monsieur; we go slowly for a little while and pick our way." He lifted up Berthe as he spoke, and Hautepierre, stumbling across a spade, found that a mass of fresh loose earth and rubble-stone was strewn about the path. "Through here," cried Louis, and seemed to melt away into the wall. The Marquis groped his way through a rough, low aperture and passed into an atmosphere of Stygian dark and noisome damp.
"Faugh!" he exclaimed, "but this drama carries us through sharp contrasts, friend. Where are we now?"
"Among the dead," replied Louis; "and in sight of life once more."
"Ah," said the Marquis, "I remember hearing of these labyrinths from time to time. So yours, my friend, is a love which has indeed broken through the grave!"
"Truly, you may say so in a way, monsieur," he replied. "And there," he continued, as they passed into a larger shaft, "there before us lies the blessed light of day."
••••••••••
In the interests of science, de la Spina had besought the Marquis to give him facilities for following the course of his disease systematically. So clear and well-defined a case was rare, he had said. The profession would be stirred, humanity at large would benefit, and, in short, the young man would be acting selfishly if he kept the good thing to himself. Hautepierre had amiably concurred, and thus it came about that two days later he was again ushered into the physician's room.
Heavy but alert, de la Spina was to-day the iron man of science, the momentary gleam of sentiment or compassion put aside. His greeting was business-like; his preparation to the point; and throwing open his record-book he proceeded to test the characteristic symptoms of the case—to test, and then to re-test, to mutter in his teeth and, fuming, test again.
"I am afraid that you are finding me not up to your expectations," remarked Hautepierre, looking round. "But I can assure you that I feel no worse."
"It is credible, M. le Marquis," replied de la Spina grimly. "And the growing pain here, of which you spoke?"
"Why, to tell the truth, I have not thought of it to-day. In fact, I do not feel it now."
"So one might assume. Then as regards the sense of dying as you started up from sleep?"
"That has not troubled me the last two nights, as I now recall it."
"Not unnaturally."
"But I protest to you, monsieur, that I feel much better on the whole."
"You have every reason to do so."
"In what way?"
"In every way. There is nothing the matter with you!"
"You jest, surely. The positive symptoms"
"Have all disappeared."
"Why?"
"One cannot say."
"Is it in consequence of anything?"
"I do not know."
"Then I shall not die?"
"Yes—of old age."
"And the worthy Malot?"
"Can only bear me out in every detail."
"But that scourge of humanity, Algerbi el Santo?"
"May go to the father of all his tribe in Hades!" exclaimed de la Spina with great heartiness.
Hampton Hill, 1906.