第42章 THE MAN AT THE DOOR.(1)

There are some things,not shameful in themselves,which it shames one to remember,and among these I count the succeeding hurry and perturbation of that night:the vain search,without hope or clue,to which passion impelled me,and the stubborn persistence with which I rushed frantically from place to place long after the soberness of reason would have had me desist.

There was not,it seems to me,looking back now,one street or alley,lane or court,in Blois which I did not visit again and again in my frantic wanderings;not a beggar skulking on foot that night whom I did not hunt down and question;not a wretched woman sleeping in arch or doorway whom I did not see and scrutinise.I returned to my mother's lodging again and again,always fruitlessly.I rushed to the stables and rushed away again,or stood and listened in the dark,empty stalls,wondering what had happened,and torturing myself with suggestions of this or that.And everywhere,not only at the North-gate,where Iinterrogated the porters and found that no party resembling that which I sought had passed out,but on the PARVIS of the Cathedral,where a guard was drawn up,and in the common streets,where I burst in on one group and another with my queries,I ran the risk of suspicion and arrest,and all that might follow thereon.

It was strange indeed that I escaped arrest.The wound in my chin still bled at intervals,staining my doublet;and as I was without my cloak,which I had left in the house in the Rue Valois,I had nothing to cover my disordered dress.I was keenly,fiercely anxious.Stray passers meeting me in the glare of a torch,or seeing me hurry by the great braziers which burned where four streets met,looked askance at me and gave me the wall;while men in authority cried to me to stay and answer their questions.I ran from the one and the other with the same savage impatience,disregarding everything in the feverish anxiety which spurred me on and impelled me to a hundred imprudences,such as at my age I should have blushed to commit.Much of this feeling was due,no doubt,to the glimpse I had had of mademoiselle,and the fiery words she had spoken;more,I fancy,to chagrin and anger at the manner in which the cup of success had been dashed at the last moment from my lips.

For four hours I wandered through the streets,now hot with purpose,now seeking aimlessly.It was ten o'clock when at length I gave up the search,and,worn out both in body and mind,climbed the stairs at my mother's lodgings and entered her room.

An old woman sat by the fire,crooning softly to herself,while she stirred something in a black pot.My mother lay in the same heavy,deep sleep in which I had left her.I sat down opposite the nurse (who cried out at my appearance)and asked her dully for some food.When I had eaten it,sitting in a kind of stupor the while,the result partly of my late exertions,and partly of the silence which prevailed round me,I bade the woman call me if any change took place;and then going heavily across to the garret Simon had occupied,I lay down on his pallet,and fell into a sound,dreamless sleep.

The next day and the next night I spent beside my mother,watching the life ebb fast away,and thinking with grave sorrow of her past and my future.It pained me beyond measure to see her die thus,in a garret,without proper attendance or any but bare comforts;the existence which had once been bright and prosperous ending in penury and gloom,such as my mother's love and hope and self-sacrifice little deserved.Her state grieved me sharply on my own account too,seeing that I had formed none of those familiar relations which men of my age have commonly formed,and which console them for the loss of parents and forbears;Nature so ordering it,as I have taken note,that men look forward rather than backward,and find in the ties they form with the future full compensation for the parting strands behind them.I was alone,poverty-stricken,and in middle life,seeing nothing before me except danger and hardship,and these unrelieved by hope or affection.This last adventure,too,despite all my efforts,had sunk me deeper in the mire;by increasing my enemies and alienating from me some to whom I might have turned at the worst.In one other respect also it had added to my troubles not a little;for the image of mademoiselle wandering alone and unguarded through the streets,or vainly calling on me for help,persisted in thrusting itself on my imagination when I least wanted it,and came even between my mother's patient face and me.

I was sitting beside Madame de Bonne a little after sunset on the second day,the woman who attended her being absent on an errand,when I remarked that the lamp,which had been recently lit,and stood on a stool in the middle of the room,was burning low and needed snuffing.I went to it softly,and while stooping over it,trying to improve the light,heard a slow,heavy step ascending the stairs.The house was quiet,and the sound attracted my full attention.I raised myself and stood listening,hoping that this might be the doctor,who had not been that day.

The footsteps passed the landing below,but at the first stair of the next flight the person,whoever it was,stumbled,and made a considerable noise.At that,or it might be a moment later,the step still ascending,I heard a sudden rustling behind me,and,turning quickly with a start,saw my mother sitting up in bed.

Her eyes were open,and she seemed fully conscious;which she had not been for days,nor indeed since the last conversation I have recorded.But her face,though it was now sensible,was pinched and white,and so drawn with mortal fear that I believed her dying,and sprang to her,unable to construe otherwise the pitiful look in her straining eyes.

'Madame,'I said,hastily passing my arm round her,and speaking with as much encouragement as I could infuse into my voice,'take comfort.I am here.Your son.'