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Lazarre by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

M >> Mary Hartwell Catherwood >> Lazarre




But gradually an uneasiness which cannot be imagined by one who has not
felt it, grew upon me. I wanted light. The absence of it was torture!
Light--to vivify the stifling air, which died as this man was dying--as
I should die--in blinding mirk!

Moisture broke out all over my body, and cold dew stood on my forehead.
How could human lungs breathe the midnight of blackening walls? The
place was hot with the hell of confinement. I said over and over--"O
God, Thou art Light!--in Thee is no darkness at all!"

This anguish seemed a repetition of something I had endured once before.
The body and spirit remembered, though the mind had no register. I
clawed at the walls. If I slept, it was to wake gasping, fighting upward
with both hands.

The most singular phase was that I reproached myself for not soaking up
more sun in the past. Oh, how much light was going to waste over wide
fields and sparkling seas! The green woods, the green grass--they had
their fill of sun, while we two perished!

I remembered creeping out of glare under the shadow of rocks, and
wondered how I could have done it! If I ever came to the sun again I
would stretch myself and roll from side to side, to let it burn me well!
How blessed was the tan we got in summer from steeping in light!

Looking at my cell-mate I could have rent the walls.

"We are robbed," I told his deaf ears. "The light, poured freely all
over the city, the light that belongs to you and me as much as to
anybody, would save you! I wish I could pick you up and carry you out
where the sun would shine through your bones! But let us be glad, you
and I, that there is a woman who is not buried like a whitening sprout
under this weight of stone! She is free, to walk around and take the
light in her gray eyes and the wind in her brown hair. I swear to God if
I ever come out of this I will never pass so much as a little plant
prostrate in darkness, without helping it to the light."

It was night by the loophole when our turnkey threw the door open. I
heard the priest and his sacristan joking in the corridor before they
entered carrying their sacred parcels. The priest was a doddering old
fellow, almost deaf, for the turnkey shouted at his ear, and dim of
sight, for he stooped close to look at the dying man, who was beyond
confession.

"Bring us something for a temporary altar," he commanded the turnkey,
who stood candle in hand.

The turnkey gave his light to the sacristan, and taking care to lock us
in, hurried to obey.

I measured the lank, ill-strung assistant, more an overgrown boy than a
man of brawn, but expanded around his upper part by the fullness of a
short white surplice. He had a face cheerful to silliness.

The turnkey brought a board supported by crosspieces; and withdrew,
taking his own candle, as soon as the church's tapers were lighted.

The sacristan placed the temporary altar beside the foot of the bed,
arrayed it, and recited the Confiteor.

Then the priest mumbled the Misereatur and Indulgentiam.

I had seen extreme unction administered as I had seen many another
office of the church in my dim days, with scarcely any attention. Now
the words were terribly living. I knew every one before it rolled off
the celebrant's lips. Yet under that vivid surface knowledge I carried
on as vivid a sequence of thought.

The priest elevated the ciborium, repeating,

"Ecce Agnus Dei."

Then three times--"Domine, non sum dignus."

I heard and saw with exquisite keenness, yet I was thinking,

"If I do not get out of here he will have to say those words over me."

He put the host in the parted mouth of the dying, and spoke--

"Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vetam
aeternam."

I thought how easy it would be to strip the loose surplice over the
sacristan's head. There was a swift clip of the arm around your
opponent's neck which I had learned in wrestling, that cut the breath
off and dropped him as limp as a cloth. It was an Indian trick. I said
to myself it would be impossible to use that trick on the sacristan if
he left the cell behind the deaf old priest. I did not want to hurt him.
Still, he would have a better chance to live after I had squeezed his
neck, than I should have if I did not squeeze it.

The priest took out of a silver case a vessel of oil, and a branch. He
sprinkled holy water with the branch, upon the bed, the walls, the
sacristan and me, repeating,

"Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem
dealbabor."

While I bent my head to the drops, I knew it was impossible to choke
down the sacristan, strip off his surplice, invest myself with it and
get out of the cell before priest or turnkey looked back. The sacrilege
of such an attack would take all the strength out of me.

The priest said the Exaudi nos, exhorted the insensible figure, then
recited the Credo and the Litany, the sacristan responding.

Silence followed.

I knew the end was approaching. My hands were as cold as the nerveless
one which would soon receive the candle. I told myself I should be a
fool to attempt it. There was not one chance in a hundred. I should not
squeeze hard enough. The man would yell. If I were swift as lightning
and silent as force, they would take me in the act. It was impossible.
But people who cannot do impossible things have to perish.

The priest dipped his thumb in oil, and with it crossed the eyes, ears,
nose, mouth, and hands of him who was leaving the use of these five
senses and instruments of evil.

Then he placed a lighted candle in the stiffened fingers, and ended
with--

"Accipe lampadem ardentem custodi unctionem tuam."

I said to myself--"I cannot do it! Nobody could! It is impossible!"

The sacristan now began to strip the altar and pack all the sacred
implements into their cases: preparing his load in the center of the
room.

The man was dead.

The sacristan's last office was to fix the two lighted altar candles on
the head and foot railing of the bed. They showed the corpse in its
appalling stillness, and stood like two angels, with the pit between
them.

The sacristan rapped upon the door to let the turnkey know it was time
to unlock.

I drew the thick air to my lung depths. The man who would breathe no
more was not as rigid as I stood. But there was no use in attempting
such a thing!

The turnkey opened a gap of doorway through which he could see the
candles and the bed. He opened no wider than the breadth of the priest,
who stepped out as the sacristan bent for the portables.

There was lightning in my arm as it took the sacristan around the neck
and let him limp upon the stones. The tail of the priest's cassock was
scarcely through the door.

"Eh bien! sacristan," called the turnkey. "Make haste with your load. I
have this death to report. He is not so pretty that you must stand
gazing at him all night!"

I had the surplice over the sacristan's head and over mine, and backed
out with my load, facing the room.

If my jailer had thrust his candle at me, if the priest had turned to
speak, if the man in the cell had got his breath before the bolt was
turned, if my white surplice had not appeared the principal part of me
in that black place--.

It was impossible!--but I had done it.




V


The turnkey's candle made a star-point in the corridor. He walked ahead
of the priest and I walked behind. We descended to the entrance where
the man with the big book sat taking stock of another wretch between
officers. I saw as I shaded my face with the load, that his inattentive
eye dwelt on my surplice, which would have passed me anywhere in France.

"Good-night, monsieur the cure," said the turnkey, letting us through
the outer door.

"Good-night, good-night," the priest responded.

"And to you, sacristan."

"Good-night," I muttered, and he came a step after me. The candle was
yet in his hand, showing him my bulk, and perhaps the small clothes he
had longed to vend. I expected hue and cry, but walked on after the
priest, and heard the heavy doors jar, and breathed again.

Hearkening behind and in front, on the right and the left, I followed
him in the direction of what I have since learned to call the Jardin des
Plantes. It is near Ste. Pelagie.

The priest, wearied by his long office, spoke only once about the
darkness; for it was a cloudy night; and did not attend to my muttered
response. I do not know what sympathy the excellent old man might have
shown to an escaped prisoner who had choked his sacristan, and I had no
mind to test it. He turned a corner, and with the wall angle between us,
I eased down the sacred furniture, drew off the surplice and laid that
upon it, and took to my heels up the left hand street; for the guard had
brought me across the river to Ste. Pelagie.

I had no hat, and the cut of my coat showed that I had lost a waistcoat.
Avoiding the little circles of yellowness made by lamp posts, I reached
without mishap of falling into the hands of any patrol, a bridge
crossing to an island point, and from the other side of the point to the
opposite shore. At intervals along the parapet dim lights were placed.

Compared to Lake George, which wound like a river, and the mighty St.
Lawrence as I remembered it, the Seine was a narrow stream. Some boats
made constellations on the surface. The mass of island splitting it into
two branches was almost the heart of Paris. There were other foot
passengers on the bridge, and a gay carriage rolled by. I did not see
any gendarmes, and only one foot passenger troubled me.

I was on the bridge above the left arm of the river when an ear trained
in the woods caught his footstep, pausing as mine paused, and hurrying
as mine hurried. If the sacristan had been found in Ste. Pelagie a
pursuer would not track me so delicately, and neither would Skenedonk
hold back on the trail. I stopped in the shade when we two were alone on
the second span, and wheeled, certain of catching my man under the
flare of a cresset. I caught him, and knew that it was Bellenger
following me.

My mind was made up in an instant. I walked back to settle matters with
him, though slaughter was far from my thoughts. I had done him no harm;
but he was my enemy, and should be forced to let me alone.

The fellow who had appeared so feeble at his cabin that I opened the
door for him, and so poor-spirited that his intellect claimed pity,
stood up as firm as a bear at my approach, and met my eyes with perfect
understanding.

Not another thing do I remember. The facts are simply these: I faced
Bellenger; no blows passed; my mind flashed blank with the partial
return of that old eclipse which has fallen upon me after strong
excitement, in more than one critical moment. The hiatus seems brief
when I awake though it may have lasted hours. I know the eclipse has
been upon me, like the wing-shadow of eternity; but I have scarcely let
go of time.

I could not prove that Bellenger dragged me to the parapet and threw me
into the river. If I had known it I should have laughed at his doing so,
for I could swim like a fish, through or under water, and sit on the
lake bottom holding my breath until Skenedonk had been known to dive for
me.

When next I sensed anything at all it was a feeling of cold.

I thought I was lying in one of the shallow runlets that come into Lake
George, and the pebbles were an uneasy bed, chilling my shoulders. I was
too stiff to move, or even turn my head to lift out of water the ear on
which it rested. But I could unclose my eyelids, and this is what I
saw:--a man naked to his waist, half reclining against a leaning slab of
marble, down which a layer of water constantly moved. His legs were
clothed, and his other garments lay across them. His face had sagged in
my direction. There was a deep slash across his forehead, and he showed
his teeth and his glassy eyes at the joke.

Beyond this silent figure was a woman as silent. The ridge of his body
could not hide the long hair spread upon her breast. I considered the
company and the moisture into which I had fallen with unspeakable
amazement. We were in a low and wide stone chamber with a groined
ceiling, supported by stone pillars. A row of lamps was arranged above
us, so that no trait or feature might escape a beholder.

That we were put there for show entered my mind slowly and brought
indignation. To be so helpless and so exposed was an outrage against
which I struggled in nightmare impotence; for I was bare to my hips
also, and I knew not what other marks I carried beside those which had
scarred me all my conscious life.

Now in the distance, and echoing, feet descended stairs.

I knew that people were coming to look at us, and I could not move a
muscle in resentment.

I heard their voices, fringed with echoes, before either speaker came
within my vision.

"This is the mortuary chapel of the Hotel Dieu?"

"Yes, monsieur the marquis, this is the mortuary chapel."

"Um! Cheerful place!"

"Much more cheerful than the bottom of the river, monsieur the marquis."

"No doubt. Never empty, eh?"

"I have been a servant of the Hotel Dieu fourteen years, monsieur the
marquis, and have not yet seen all the marble slabs vacant."

"You receive the bodies of the drowned?"

"And place them where they may be seen and claimed."

"How long do you keep them?"

"That depends. Sometimes their friends seek them at once. We have kept a
body three months in the winter season, though he turned very green."

"Are all in your present collection gathering verdure?"

"No, monsieur. We have a very fresh one, just brought in; a big stalwart
fellow, with the look of the country about him."

"Small clothes?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Buckle shoes?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Hair light and long?"

"The very man, monsieur the marquis."

"I suppose I shall have to look at him. If he had to make himself
unpleasant he should have stayed at the chateau where his mother could
identify him. He is one of my peasants, come to Paris to see life! I
must hold my nose and do it."

"It is not necessary to hold the nose, monsieur."

"After fourteen years, perhaps not."

I heard the snap of a snuff-box lid as the marquis fortified himself.

My agony for the woman who was to be looked at turned so sharp that I
uttered a click in my throat. But they passed her, and merely glanced at
my next neighbor.

The old marquis encountered my fixed stare. Visibly it shocked through
him. He was all gray, and curled and powdered, instead of being clipped
close and smooth in the style of the Empire; an exquisite, thin-featured
man, high of nose and eyebrows, not large, but completely turned out as
ample man and bright spirit. The slightest fragrance of scent was in his
presence, and a shade of snuff on his upper lip appeared fine
supercilious hairs.

I did not look at the servant of the Hotel Dieu. The old noble and I
held each other with unflinching gaze.

"Do you recognize him, monsieur?"

"I do," the old noble deliberately answered. "I should know this face
anywhere. Have him taken to my carriage directly."

"Your carriage, monsieur! He can be sent--"

"I said take him to my carriage."

"It shall be done. His eyes have opened since he came in. But they
sometimes look as if they would speak! Their faces change constantly.
This other man who is grinning to-night may be quite serious to-morrow."

"And by the end of the month sorry enough, eh?"

The servant of the Hotel Dieu tittered amiably, and I knew he was going
for help to lift me off the slab, when he uttered a cry of surprise. The
old marquis wheeled sharply, and said:

"Eh, bien! Is this another of them, promenading himself?"

I felt the Oneida coming before his silent moccasins strode near me. He
did not wait an instant, but dragged me from the wet and death cold
marble to the stone floor, where he knelt upon one knee and supported
me. O Skenedonk! how delicious was the warmth of your healthy body--how
comforting the grip of your hunter arms! Yet there are people who say an
Indian is like a snake! I could have given thanks before the altar at
the side of the crypt, which my fixed eyes encountered as he held me.
The marble dripped into its gutter as if complaining of my escape.

"Oh, my dear friend!" cried the servant.

Skenedonk answered nothing at all.

"Who is this gentleman," the marquis inquired, "that seems to have the
skin of a red German sausage drawn tight over his head?"

"This is an American Indian, monsieur the marquis."

"An Indian?"

"Yes, monsieur; but he understands French."

"Thank you for the hint. It may save me from having a German sausage
drawn tight over my head. I have heard that American Indians practice
giving their friends that appearance. How do you know he understands
French?"

"I think it is the man who used to come to the Hotel Dieu years ago,
when I was new in its service. He was instructed in religion by
churchmen in Paris, and learned the language. Oh, my dear monsieur--I
think it is Iroquois that he is called--I am aware the Americans have
different manners, but here we do not go into the mortuary chapel of the
Hotel Dieu and disarrange the bodies without permission!"

Skenedonk's eyes probably had less of the fawn in them than usual. I
felt the guttural sound under his breast.

"I have found him, and now I will take him."

"But that is the marquis' servant!"

"The marquis is his servant!"

"Oh, my dear monsieur the Indian! You speak of a noble of France, the
Marquis du Plessy! Be satisfied," pleaded the servitor of the Hotel
Dieu, "with this other body, whom no one is likely to claim! I may be
permitted to offer you that, if you are determined--though it may cost
me my place!--and after fourteen years' service! It you would appease
him, monsieur the marquis--though I do not know whether they ever take
money."

"I will appease him," said the old noble. "Go about your errand and be
quick."

The servant fled up the stairs.

"This man is not dead, my friend," said the Marquis du Plessy.

Skenedonk knew it.

"But he will not live long in this cursed crypt," the noble added. "You
will get into my carriage with him, we will take him and put him in hot
sheets, and see what we can do for him."

I could feel Skenedonk's antagonism giving way in the relaxing of his
muscles.

But maintaining his position the Oneida asserted:

"He is not yours!"

"He belongs to France."

"France belongs to him!" the Indian reversed.

"Eh, eh! Who is this young man?"

"The king."

"We have no king now, my friend. But assuming there is a man who should
be king, how do you know this is the one?"

If Skenedonk made answer in words it was lost to me. The spirit sank to
submergence in the body, I remember combating motion like a drugged
person.

Torpor and prostration followed the recurring eclipse as that followed
excitement and shock. I was not ill; and gathered knowledge of the
environment, which was different from anything I had before experienced.
De Chaumont's manor was a wilderness fortress compared to this private
hotel of an ancient family in the heart of Paris.

I lay in a bed curtained with damask, and looked through open glass
doors at a garden. Graveled walks, bosky trees and masses of flowers,
plats of grass where arbored seats were placed, stretched their vista to
a wall clothed in ivy, which proved to be the end of a chapel. For high
over the curtain of thick green shone a rose window. The afternoon sun
laid bare its fine staining, but only in the darkness when the church
was illuminated and organ music rolled from it, did the soul of that
window appear struck through with light.

Strange servants and Doctor Chantry by glimpses, and the old noble and
the Oneida almost constantly, were about me. Doctor Chantry looked
complacently through the curtains and wished me good-morning. I smiled
to see that he was lodged as he desired, and that his clothes had been
renewed in fine cloth, with lawn to his neck and silk stockings for his
shrunk calves. My master was an elderly beau; and I gave myself no care
that he had spent his money--the money of the expedition--on foppery.

Skenedonk also had new toggery in scarfs and trinkets which I did not
recognize, and his fine buckskins were cleaned. The lackeys appeared
subservient to him, and his native dignity was never more impressive
than in that great house. I watched my host and my servant holding
interviews, which Skenedonk may have considered councils, on the benches
in the garden, and from which my secretary, the sick old woman, seemed
excluded. But the small interest of seeing birds arrive on branches, and
depart again, sufficed me; until an hour when life rose strongly.

I sat up in bed, and finding myself alone, took advantage of an
adjoining room where a marble bath was set in the floor. Returning
freshened from the plunge, with my sheet drawn around me, I found one of
those skilled and gentle valets who seem less men than he-maids.

"I am to dress monsieur when monsieur is ready," said this person.

"I am ready now," I answered, and he led me into a suite of rooms and
showed me an array which took my breath: dove-colored satin knee
breeches, and a long embroidered coat of like color, a vest sprigged
with rosebuds, cravat and lace ruffles, long silk stockings and shoes to
match in extravagance, a shirt of fine lawn, and a hat for a nobleman.

"Tell your master," I said to the lackey, "that he intends me great
kindness, but I prefer my own clothes."

"These are monsieur's own clothes, made to his order and measure."

"But I gave no order, and I was not measured."

The man raised his shoulders and elbows with gentlest dissent.

"These are only a few articles of monsieur's outfit. Here is the key. If
monsieur selects another costume he will find each one complete."

By magic as it seemed, there was a wardrobe full of fineries provided
for my use. The man displayed them; in close trousers and coats with
short fronts, or knee breeches and long tails; costumes, he said, for
the street, for driving, riding, traveling, for evening, and for
morning; and one white satin court dress. At the marquis' order he had
laid out one for a ball. Of my old clothes not a piece was to be seen.

The miracle was that what he put upon me fitted me. I became transformed
like my servant and my secretary, and stood astonished at the result.




VI


"Enter the prince of a fairy tale," said the Marquis du Plessy when the
lackey ushered me into the garden.

It was a nest of amber at that time of sunset, and he waited for me at a
table laid for supper, under a flat canopy of trees which had their tops
trained and woven into a mat.

I took his hand to kiss, but he rose up and magnificently placed me in a
chair opposite himself.

"Your benefits are heavy, monsieur," I said. "How shall I acknowledge
them?"

"You owe me nothing at all," he answered; "as you will see when I have
told you a true story. It would sound like a lie if anything were
incredible in these fabulous times."

"But you do not know anything about me."

"I am well instructed in your history, by that charming attendant in
fringed leather breeches, who has been acquainted with you much longer
than you have been acquainted with yourself."

"Yet I am not sure of deserving the marquis' interest."

"Has the marquis admitted that he feels any interest in you? Though this
I will own: few experiences have affected me like your living eyes
staring out of the face of my dead king!"

We met each other again with a steady gaze like that in the mortuary
chapel.

"Do you believe I am ----?"

"Do I believe you are ----? Who said there was such a person in
existence?"

"Louis Philippe."

"The Duke of Orleans? Eh, bien! What does he know of the royal family?
He is of the cadette branch."

"But he told me the princess, the dauphin's sister, believes that the
dauphin was taken alive from the Temple and sent to America."

"My dear Lazarre, I do not say the Duke of Orleans would lie--far be it
from me--though these are times in which we courageously attack our
betters. But he would not object to seeing the present pretender ousted.
Why, since his father voted for the death of Louis XVI, he and his are
almost outlawed by the older branch! Madame Royal, the Duchess of
Angouleme, cannot endure him. I do not think she would speak to him!"

"He is my friend," I said stoutly.

"Remember you are another pretender, and he has espoused your cause. I
think him decent myself--though there used to be some pretty stories
told about him and the fair sentimentalist who educated him--Madame de
Genlis. But I am an old man; I forget gossip."

My host gave lively and delicate attention to his food as it was
brought, and permitted nothing to be overheard by his lackeys.

The evening was warm, and fresh with the breath of June; and the garden,
by a contrivance of lamps around its walls, turned into a dream world
after sunset faded.

It was as impossible to come to close terms with this noble of the old
regime as with a butterfly. He alighted on a subject; he waved his
wings, and rose. I felt a clumsy giant while he fluttered around my
head, smiling, mocking, thrusting his pathos to the quick.

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