Clerambault Part 21

Clerambault was not the only one to feel the benefit of of Froment's energy, for at his bedside he was sure to find some friend who came, perhaps without admitting it, more to get comfort than to bring it.

Two or three of these were young, about Edme's age, the others, men over fifty, old friends of the family, or those who had known Froment before the war.

One of these had been his professor, an old h.e.l.lenist, with a sweet absent smile. Then there was a grey-haired sculptor, his face ploughed by deep tragic lines; a country gentleman, clean-shaved, red-cheeked, with the ma.s.sive head of an old peasant; and finally a doctor. He had a white beard, his face was worn and kind, and you were struck by the strange expression of his eyes; one seemed to look sharply at you, and the other was sad and dreamy.

There was little resemblance between these men who sometimes met at the invalid's house. All shades of thought could be found in the group, from the Catholic to the freethinker and the bolshevist--one of Froment's young friends professed to be of this opinion. In them you could find the traces of the most various intellectual ancestry; the ironic Lucian appeared in the old professor; the Count de Coulanges was wont to solace himself in the evenings on his estate with cattle and fertiliser, but also revelled in the gorgeous texture of Froissart's style, like cloth of gold, and the countrified, juicy talk of that rascal Gondi--the count certainly had the old French chroniclers in his veins. The sculptor wrinkled his brow in the effort to find metaphysics in Rodin and Beethoven; and Dr. Verrier had a streak of the marvellous in his disposition. This he satisfied by the hypotheses of biology, and the wonders of modern chemistry, though he would glance at the paradise of religion with the disenchanted smile of the man of science. He bore his part in the sad trials of the time, but the era of war with all its gory glory faded for him before the heroic discoveries of thought made by a new Newton, the German Einstein, in the midst of the general distraction.

These men all differed in the form of their minds and in their temperament; but they all agreed in this, they belonged to no party, each thought for himself, and each respected and loved liberty in himself or in others. What else mattered? In our day, all the old framework is broken down; religious, political, or social. It is but small progress if we call ourselves socialists, or republicans, rather than monarchists, if these castes accept nationalism of State, faith, or cla.s.s. There are now only two sorts of minds: those shut up behind bars, and those open to all that is alive, to the entire race of man, even our enemies. These men, few though they may be, compose the true "International" which rests on the wors.h.i.+p of truth and universal life. They know well that they are each too weak to embrace alone their great ideal, but it is infinite and can embrace them all. United in one object, they push on by their separate ways towards the unknown G.o.d.

These independent spirits were all drawn towards Edme Froment at this time, because they obscurely saw in him the point where they could meet, the clearing from which every path in the forest is visible.

Froment had not always tried to bring others together; as long as he was well and strong, he too had taken his own way, but since his course had been cut short, after a time of bitter despondency of which he said nothing, he had placed himself at the cross-roads. As he could not possibly act himself, he was better able to view the whole field and take part in spirit. He saw the different currents: country, revolution, contests between states and cla.s.ses, science and faith--like a stream's conflicting forces, with its rapids, whirlpools, and reefs; it may sometimes slacken, or turn its course, but it always flows on irresistibly (even reaction is carried forward). And he, the poor youth staked at his cross-roads, took all these currents unto him, the entire stream.

Edme reminded Clerambault sometimes of Perrotin, but he and Froment were worlds apart. The latter also denied nothing of what is, and wished to understand everything; but his was a fiery spirit, his whole soul was filled with ordered movement and feeling; with him all life and death went forward and upward. And his body lay there motionless.

It was a dark hour; the turn of the year 1917-18. In the foggy winter nights men waited for the supreme onslaught of the German armies, which rumour had foretold for months past; the Gotha raids on Paris had already begun. Those who wanted to fight to the end pretended confidence, the papers kept on boasting, and Clemenceau had never slept better in his life. But the tension showed in the increasing bitterness of feeling among civilians. The agonised public turned on the suspects among them, the defeatists and the pacifists, and for days at a time the baying of an accusing public pursued these miserable creatures and hunted them down. And spies swarmed of all sorts, patriotic denouncers, half-crazed witnesses. When towards the end of March the long-threatened great offensive against Paris began, the "sacred" fury between fellow-citizens reached its height, and there is no doubt that if the invasion had succeeded, before the Germans had arrived at the gates of the city, the gallows at Vincennes, that altar of the country's vengeance, would have known many victims, innocent or guilty, accused or condemned.

Clerambault was often shouted at in the streets, but he was not alarmed; perhaps because he did not realise the danger. One day Moreau found him in a group of people disputing with an excited young man who had spoken to him in a most insulting manner. While they were talking the sh.e.l.l from a "Big Bertha" exploded close by. Clerambault took no notice, and went on quietly explaining his position to the angry young man. There was something positively comic in this obstinacy, and the circle of listeners was quick to feel it, like true Frenchmen, and began to exchange jokes not entirely of a refined nature, but perfectly good-natured. Moreau caught hold of Clerambault's arm and tried to drag him away, but he stopped, and looking at the laughing crowd, the absurdity of the situation struck him in his turn, and he too burst out laughing.

"What an old fool I am!" said he to Moreau, who was still intent on getting him away.

"You had better look out, for you are not the only fool in this town," was the somewhat impertinent answer, but Clerambault would not understand what he meant.

The case against him had entered on a new phase; he was now accused of infraction of the law of the 5th of August, 1914--"An act to repress indiscretions in time of war." He was accused of pacifist propaganda among the working cla.s.ses, where it was said that Thouron had distributed Clerambault's writings with the consent of the author; but there was no foundation for this, as Thouron was in a position to testify that Clerambault had no knowledge of such propaganda, and had certainly not authorised it.

It appeared, however, singularly enough, that Thouron would not swear to anything of the sort. His att.i.tude was strange, for, instead of stating the facts, he equivocated as if he had something to hide; it almost looked as if he wished this to be noticed, which would have aroused suspicions if he had not been so careful. Unfortunately these suspicions seemed to glance at Clerambault, though he said nothing against him or against anyone; in fact he refused to tell anything, but he let it be understood that if he chose ... but he did not choose. Clerambault was confronted with him, and his att.i.tude was perfect, really chivalrous. He laid his hand on his heart and declared that be had the admiration of a son for the great "Master," and "Friend," and when Clerambault, getting impatient, begged him to state simply just what had pa.s.sed between them, the other would do nothing but protest his "undying devotion." He would rather say nothing more; he had nothing to add to his testimony; it was all his fault.

He left with an increased reputation, while Clerambault was supposed to have sheltered himself behind his devoted henchman. The press unhesitatingly accused Clerambault of cowardice, and meanwhile the case dragged on, Clerambault appearing every day to answer useless questions, with no decision in sight. It might have been supposed that a man accused without proofs, and subject for so long to injurious suspicions, would have been ent.i.tled to the sympathy of the public; but on the contrary everyone was more down on him than before; they blamed him because he was not already convicted. All sorts of absurd stories were in circulation about him; it was a.s.serted that experts had discovered through the shape of some letters misprinted in a pamphlet of Clerambault's that it had come from a German press, and this humbug was readily swallowed by men who were supposed to be intelligent, before the war,--only four years ago, but it seemed centuries.

So all these worthy folks pa.s.sed sentence on a fellow-citizen on the slightest information; it was not the first time, and it will not be the last. The best opinion was indignant that he should still be at liberty, and reactionary papers, fearing that their prey would escape, tried to intimidate justice by loud accusations, and demanded that the case should be removed from the civil court and brought before a court-martial. This excitement soon developed into one of those paroxysms which in Paris are generally brief but violent; for this sensible people does go crazy periodically. It may be asked why men who are kind for the most part, and naturally given to mutual tolerance, not to say indifference, should have these explosions of furious fanaticism, when they seem to lose all feeling as well as common-sense. Some will tell you that this people is feminine in its virtues, as well as in its vices, that the delicate nerves and fine sensibility which cause it to excel in matters of taste and art also make it susceptible to attacks of hysteria, but I am of opinion that any people is manly only by accident, if by a man you mean a reasonable creature--a flattering but baseless idea. Men only use their reason from time to time, and are soon worn out by the effort of thinking; so those do them a favour who act for them, encouraging them in the direction of the least effort, and not much is required to hate a new idea. Do not condemn them; the Friend of all who are persecuted has said with His heroic indulgence: "They know not what they do."

An active nationalist newspaper was eager in stirring up the evil instincts that lay below the surface. It lived on the exploitation of hatred and suspicion, which it called "working for the regeneration of France,"--France being reduced to this paper and its friends. It published "Cleramboche," a collection of sanguinary articles, like those which succeeded so well against Jaures; it roused people by declaring that the traitor owed his safety to occult influences, and that he would make his escape, if he were not carefully watched; and finally it appealed to popular justice.

Victor Vaucoux hated Clerambault; not that he knew him at all; it is not necessary to know a man in order to hate him; but if he had known him he would have detested him still more. He was his born enemy before he even knew that Clerambault existed. There are races among minds more antagonistic to each other, in all countries, than those divided by a different skin or uniform.

He was a well-to-do _bourgeois_ from the west of France and belonged to a family of former servants of the Empire who had been sulking for the last forty years in a sterile opposition. He had a small property in the Charente, where he spent the summer, and pa.s.sed the rest of the time in Paris. Having instincts for government which he could not satisfy, he laid the blame for this on his family and on life, and thus thwarted, his character had grown tyrannical so that he acted the despot unconsciously to those nearest to him, as a right and duty that could not be disputed. The word tolerance had no meaning for him; for _he could not make a mistake_. Nevertheless he possessed intelligence, and moral vigour; he even had a heart, but all wrapped about and knotted like an old tree-trunk till such forces of expansion as he had within him were stunted. He could absorb nothing from the outside; when he read or travelled he saw everything with hostile eyes, his one wish was to go home; and as the bark was too thick to be penetrated, all his sap came from the foot of the tree--from the _dead_.

He was the type of that portion of the race which, stubborn but outworn, has not life enough to spread itself abroad, and shrinks into a sentiment of aggressive self-defence. This looks with suspicion and antipathy on the young forces which overflow around it, at home and abroad; growing nations and cla.s.ses, all the pa.s.sionate awkward attempts at social and moral improvement. Like poor Barres, and his dwarfed hero,[1] such people want walls and barriers, frontiers, and enemies. In this state of siege Vaucoux lived, and his family was forced to live in the same way. His wife who was a sweet, sad, effaced kind of person, found the only method of escape--and died. Left alone with his grief--of which he made a kind of rampart, as of everything about him--having only one son thirteen years of age, he had mounted guard before his youth and brought him up to do the same; strange that a man should bring a son into the world to fight against the future!

Perhaps the boy, if let alone, would have found out life by instinct, but in the father's shut-up house, a sort of jail, he was his father's prey. They had few friends, few books, few, or rather one, newspaper whose petrified principles corresponded to Vaucoux' need for conservation, in the corpse-like meaning of the word. As his son, or his victim, could not get away from him, he inoculated him with all his own mental diseases; like those insects which deposit their eggs in the living bodies of others. And when the war broke out, he took him at once to a recruiting station and made him enlist. For a man of his sort, "Country" was the n.o.blest of things--the holy of holies; he did not need to breathe the thrilling suggestion of the crowd, his head was already turned, and, besides, he never went with the crowds; he carried "Country" about with him;--The Country and The Past,--The Eternally Past.

[Footnote 1: "Simon and I then understood our hatred of strangers and barbarians, and our egotism, in which we included ourselves and our entire small moral family.--_The first care of him who would wish to live must be to surround himself with high walls; but even in his closed garden he must introduce only those who are guided by the same feelings, and interests a.n.a.logous to his own_." "A Free Man."

In three lines, three times, this "free man" expresses the idea of "shutting-up," "closing," and "surrounding with walls."]

His son was killed, like Clerambault's son, and the sons of millions of other fathers, for the faith and the ideals of those fathers in which they did not believe.

Vaucoux had none of Clerambault's doubts; he did not know the meaning of the word, and if he could have permitted himself such a feeling he would have despised the idea. Hard man as he was, he had loved his son pa.s.sionately, though he had never shown it; and he could think of no better way to prove it now than by a ferocious hatred for those who had killed him; not, of course, reckoning himself among the number.

There were not many methods of revenge open to a man of his age, rheumatic and stiff in one arm; but he tried to enlist and was rejected. He felt that something must be done, and all that he had left was his brain. Alone in his deserted house with the memory of his dead wife and child, he sat for hours brooding on these vindictive thoughts; and like a beast shaking the bars of its cage, waiting for the chance to spring, his mind raged furiously against the inhibitions the war put upon him with its iron circle of the trenches.

The clamours of the press drew his attention to Clerambault's articles which were intensely distasteful to him. The idea of s.n.a.t.c.hing his precious hatred away from between his teeth! From the slight acquaintance that he had with Clerambault before the war, he felt an antipathy for him; as a writer, on account of the new form of his art, and as a man for numerous reasons: his love of life, and other men, his democratic ideals, his rather silly optimism, and his European aspirations. At the very first glance, with the instinct of a rheumatic in mind and body, Vaucoux had cla.s.sed Clerambault as one of those pestilent persons who open doors and windows and make a draught in that closed house, his Country. That is, as he understood the term, in his mind there could be no other. After this there was no need for the vociferations of the papers; in the author of "The Appeal to the Living," and the "Pardon from the Dead," he saw at once an agent of the enemy, and with his thirst for revenge, he knew the opportunity had come.

Nothing can be more convenient than to detest those who differ from you, especially when you do not understand them; but poor Clerambault had not this resource, for he did understand perfectly. These good people had had to bear injuries from the enemy; of course because they were struck by them, but also frankly, because of Injustice with a capital I; for in their short-sightedness it filled the field of vision. The capacity to feel and judge is very limited in an ordinary man; submerged as he is in the species, he clings to any driftwood; and just as he reduces the infinite number of shades in the river of light to a few colours, the good and evil that flow in the veins of the world are only perceptible to him when he has bottled a few samples, chosen among those around him. All good and bad then he has in his flask, and on these he can expend his whole power of liking or repulsion; witness the fact that to millions of excellent people the condemnation of Dreyfus, or the sinking of the "Lusitania," remains the crime of the century. They cannot see that the path of social life is paved with crime, and that they walk over it in perfect unconsciousness, profiting by injustices that they make no effort to prevent. Of all these, which are the worst? Those which rouse long echoes in the conscience of mankind, or those which are known alone to the stifled victim? Naturally, our worthy friends have not arms long enough to embrace all the misery of the world; they can only reach one perhaps, but that they press close to their heart; and when they have chosen a crime, they pour out upon it all the pent-up hatred within them;--when a dog has a bone to gnaw, it is wiser not to touch him.

Clerambault had tried to take his bone away from the dog, and if he was bitten he had no right to complain; in point of fact he did not do so. Men are in the right to fight injustice wherever they see it; perhaps it is not their fault if they often see no more than its big toe, like Gulliver's at Brobdignag. Well, we must each do what we can; and these people could bite.

It was Good Friday, and the rising tide of invasion swept up towards the Ile de France. Even this day of sacred sorrow had not stopped the ma.s.sacre, for the lay war knows nothing of the Truce of G.o.d. Christ had been bombarded in one of His churches, and the news of the murderous explosion at St. Gervais that afternoon spread at nightfall through the darkened city, wrapped in its grief, its rage, and its fear.

The sad little group of friends had gathered at Froment's house; each one had come hoping to meet the others, without previous appointment.

They could see nothing but violence all about them; in the present as well as in the future, in the enemy's camp, in their own, on the side of revolutionists, and reactionaries as well. Their agony and their doubts met in one thought. The sculptor was saying:

"Our holiest convictions, our faith in peace and human brotherhood rest in vain on reason and love; is there any hope then that they can conquer men? We are too weak."

Clerambault, half-unconsciously, as the words of Isaiah came to his mind, uttered them aloud:

"Darkness covers the earth, And the cloud envelops the people...."

He stopped, but from the faintly-lighted bed came Froment's voice, continuing:

"Rise, for on the tops of the mountains The light s.h.i.+neth forth...."

"Yes, the light will dawn," said Madame Froment; she was sitting on the foot of the bed in the dark near Clerambault; he leaned forward and took her hand. It was as if a thrill widened through the room, like a ripple over water.

"Why do you say that?" asked the Count de Coulanges.

"Because I see _Him_ plainly."

"I can see _Him_ too," said Clerambault.

"Him? Whom do you mean?" asked Doctor Verrier. But before the answer could come, they all knew the word that would be said:

"He who bears the light, the G.o.d who will conquer...."

"Are you waiting for a G.o.d?" said the old professor. "Do you believe in miracles?"

"We are the miracle, for is it not one that in this world of perpetual violence we have kept a constant faith in the love and the union of men?"

"Christ is expected for centuries," said Coulanges bitterly, "and when He comes, He is neglected, crucified, and then forgotten except by a handful of poor ignorant wretches, good if you like, but narrow. The handful grows larger, and for the s.p.a.ce of a man's life, faith is in flower, but afterwards it is spoiled and betrayed by success, by ambitious disciples, by the Church; and so on for centuries ...

_Adveniat regnum tuum_ ... Where is the kingdom of G.o.d?"