CHAPTER XV. SAFE-CONDUCT
Across the body of that convulsively sobbing woman, the mother of oneand the mistress of the other, the eyes of those mortal enemies met,invested with a startled, appalled interest that admitted of no words.
Beyond the table, as if turned to stone by this culminating horror ofrevelation, stood Aline.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr was the first to stir. Into his bewildered mindcame the memory of something that Mme. de Plougastel had said ofa letter that was on the table. He came forward, unhindered. Theannouncement made, Mme. de Plougastel no longer feared the sequel, andso she let him go. He walked unsteadily past this new-found son of his,and took up the sheet that lay beside the candlebranch. A long momenthe stood reading it, none heeding him. Aline's eyes were all onAndre-Louis, full of wonder and commiseration, whilst Andre-Louis wasstaring down, in stupefied fascination, at his mother.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr read the letter slowly through. Then very quietlyhe replaced it. His next concern, being the product of an artificial agesternly schooled in the suppression of emotion, was to compose himself.Then he stepped back to Mme. de Plougastel's side and stooped to raiseher.
"Therese," he said.
Obeying, by instinct, the implied command, she made an effort to riseand to control herself in her turn. The Marquis half conducted, halfcarried her to the armchair by the table.
Andre-Louis looked on. Still numbed and bewildered, he made no attemptto assist. He saw as in a dream the Marquis bending over Mme. dePlougastel. As in a dream he heard him ask:
"How long have you known this, Therese?"
"I... I have always known it... always. I confided him to Kercadiou. Isaw him once as a child... Oh, but what of that?"
"Why was I never told? Why did you deceive me? Why did you tell me thatthis child had died a few days after birth? Why, Therese? Why?"
"I was afraid. I... I thought it better so--that nobody, nobody, not evenyou, should know. And nobody has known save Quintin until last night,when to induce him to come here and save me he was forced to tell him."
"But I, Therese?" the Marquis insisted. "It was my right to know."
"Your right? What could you have done? Acknowledge him? And then? Ha!"It was a queer, desperate note of laughter. "There was Plougastel; therewas my family. And there was you... you, yourself, who had ceased tocare, in whom the fear of discovery had stifled love. Why should I havetold you, then? Why? I should not have told you now had there beenany other way to... to save you both. Once before I suffered just suchdreadful apprehensions when you and he fought in the Bois. I was on myway to prevent it when you met me. I would have divulged the truth, asa last resource, to avert that horror. But mercifully God spared me thenecessity then."
It had not occurred to any of them to doubt her statement, incrediblethough it might seem. Had any done so her present words must haveresolved all doubt, explaining as they did much that to each of herlisteners had been obscure until this moment.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr, overcome, reeled away to a chair and sat downheavily. Losing command of himself for a moment, he took his haggardface in his hands.
Through the windows open to the garden came from the distance the faintthrobbing of a drum to remind them of what was happening around them.But the sound went unheeded. To each it must have seemed that herethey were face to face with a horror greater than any that might betormenting Paris. At last Andre-Louis began to speak, his voice leveland unutterably cold.
"M. de La Tour d'Azyr," he said, "I trust that you'll agree that thisdisclosure, which can hardly be more distasteful and horrible to youthan it is to me, alters nothing, since it effaces nothing of allthat lies between us. Or, if it alters anything, it is merely to addsomething to that score. And yet... Oh, but what can it avail to talk!Here, monsieur, take this safe-conduct which is made out for Mme. dePlougastel's footman, and with it make your escape as best you can. Inreturn I will beg of you the favour never to allow me to see you or hearof you again."
"Andre!" His mother swung upon him with that cry. And yet again thatquestion. "Have you no heart? What has he ever done to you that youshould nurse so bitter a hatred of him?"
"You shall hear, madame. Once, two years ago in this very room I toldyou of a man who had brutally killed my dearest friend and debauched thegirl I was to have married. M. de La Tour d'Azyr is that man."
A moan was her only answer. She covered her face with her hands.
The Marquis rose slowly to his feet again. He came slowly forward, hissmouldering eyes scanning his son's face.
"You are hard," he said grimly. "But I recognize the hardness. Itderives from the blood you bear."
"Spare me that," said Andre-Louis.
The Marquis inclined his head. "I will not mention it again. But Idesire that you should at least understand me, and you too, Therese. Youaccuse me, sir, of murdering your dearest friend. I will admit that themeans employed were perhaps unworthy. But what other means were at mycommand to meet an urgency that every day since then proves to haveexisted? M. de Vilmorin was a revolutionary, a man of new ideas thatshould overthrow society and rebuild it more akin to the desires of suchas himself. I belonged to the order that quite as justifiably desiredsociety to remain as it was. Not only was it better so for me and mine,but I also contend, and you have yet to prove me wrong, that it isbetter so for all the world; that, indeed, no other conceivable societyis possible. Every human society must of necessity be composed ofseveral strata. You may disturb it temporarily into an amorphous wholeby a revolution such as this; but only temporarily. Soon out of thechaos which is all that you and your kind can ever produce, order mustbe restored or life will perish; and with the restoration of order comesthe restoration of the various strata necessary to organized society.Those that were yesterday at the top may in the new order of things findthemselves dispossessed without any benefit to the whole. That changeI resisted. The spirit of it I fought with whatever weapons wereavailable, whenever and wherever I encountered it. M. de Vilmorin wasan incendiary of the worst type, a man of eloquence full of false idealsthat misled poor ignorant men into believing that the change proposedcould make the world a better place for them. You are an intelligentman, and I defy you to answer me from your heart and conscience thatsuch a thing was true or possible. You know that it is untrue; you knowthat it is a pernicious doctrine; and what made it worse on the lipsof M. de Vilmorin was that he was sincere and eloquent. His voice wasa danger that must be removed--silenced. So much was necessary inself-defence. In self-defence I did it. I had no grudge against M. deVilmorin. He was a man of my own class; a gentleman of pleasant ways,amiable, estimable, and able.
"You conceive me slaying him for the very lust of slaying, like somebeast of the jungle flinging itself upon its natural prey. That hasbeen your error from the first. I did what I did with the very heaviestheart--oh, spare me your sneer!--I do not lie, I have never lied. And Iswear to you here and now, by my every hope of Heaven, that what I sayis true. I loathed the thing I did. Yet for my own sake and the sake ofmy order I must do it. Ask yourself whether M. de Vilmorin would havehesitated for a moment if by procuring my death he could have broughtthe Utopia of his dreams a moment nearer realization.
"After that. You determined that the sweetest vengeance would be tofrustrate my ends by reviving in yourself the voice that I had silenced,by yourself carrying forward the fantastic apostleship of equality thatwas M. de Vilmorin's. You lacked the vision that would have shown youthat God did not create men equals. Well, you are in case to-night tojudge which of us was right, which wrong. You see what is happening herein Paris. You see the foul spectre of Anarchy stalking through a landfallen into confusion. Probably you have enough imagination to conceivesomething of what must follow. And do you deceive yourself that out ofthis filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal form of society? Don'tyou understand that society must re-order itself presently out of allthis?
"But why say more? I must have said enough to make you understand theonly thing that re
ally matters--that I killed M. de Vilmorin as a matterof duty to my order. And the truth--which though it may offend you shouldalso convince you--is that to-night I can look back on the deed withequanimity, without a single regret, apart from what lies between youand me.
"When, kneeling beside the body of your friend that day at Gavrillac,you insulted and provoked me, had I been the tiger you conceived meI must have killed you too. I am, as you may know, a man of quickpassions. Yet I curbed the natural anger you aroused in me, becauseI could forgive an affront to myself where I could not overlook acalculated attack upon my order."
He paused a moment. Andre-Louis stood rigid listening and wondering.So, too, the others. Then M. le Marquis resumed, on a note of lessassurance. "In the matter of Mlle. Binet I was unfortunate. I wrongedyou through inadvertence. I had no knowledge of the relations betweenyou."
Andre-Louis interrupted him sharply at last with a question: "Would ithave made a difference if you had?"
"No," he was answered frankly. "I have the faults of my kind. I cannotpretend that any such scruple as you suggest would have weighed with me.But can you--if you are capable of any detached judgment--blame me verymuch for that?"
"All things considered, monsieur, I am rapidly being forced to theconclusion that it is impossible to blame any man for anything in thisworld; that we are all of us the sport of destiny. Consider, monsieur,this gathering--this family gathering--here to-night, whilst out there...O my God, let us make an end! Let us go our ways and write 'finis' tothis horrible chapter of our lives."
M. le La Tour considered him gravely, sadly, in silence for a moment.
"Perhaps it is best," he said, at length, in a small voice. He turned toMme. de Plougastel. "If a wrong I have to admit in my life, a wrongthat I must bitterly regret, it is the wrong that I have done to you, mydear..."
"Not now, Gervais! Not now!" she faltered, interrupting him.
"Now--for the first and the last time. I am going. It is not likely thatwe shall ever meet again--that I shall ever see any of you again--you whoshould have been the nearest and dearest to me. We are all, he says, thesport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force,moving with purpose. In life we pay for the evil that in life we do.That is the lesson that I have learnt to-night. By an act of betrayalI begot unknown to me a son who, whilst as ignorant as myself of ourrelationship, has come to be the evil genius of my life, to crossand thwart me, and finally to help to pull me down in ruin. It isjust--poetically just. My full and resigned acceptance of that fact isthe only atonement I can offer you."
He stooped and took one of madame's hands that lay limply in her lap.
"Good-bye, Therese!" His voice broke. He had reached the end of his ironself-control.
She rose and clung to him a moment, unashamed before them. The ashes ofthat dead romance had been deeply stirred this night, and deep down somelingering embers had been found that glowed brightly now before theirfinal extinction. Yet she made no attempt to detain him. She understoodthat their son had pointed out the only wise, the only possible course,and was thankful that M. de La Tour d'Azyr accepted it.
"God keep you, Gervais," she murmured. "You will take the safe-conduct,and... and you will let me know when you are safe?"
He held her face between his hands an instant; then very gently kissedher and put her from him. Standing erect, and outwardly calm again, helooked across at Andre-Louis who was proffering him a sheet of paper.
"It is the safe-conduct. Take it, monsieur. It is my first and last giftto you, and certainly the last gift I should ever have thought of makingyou--the gift of life. In a sense it makes us quits. The irony, sir, isnot mine, but Fate's. Take it, monsieur, and go in peace."
M. de La Tour d'Azyr took it. His eyes looked hungrily into the leanface confronting him, so sternly set. He thrust the paper into hisbosom, and then abruptly, convulsively, held out his hand. His son'seyes asked a question.
"Let there be peace between us, in God's name," said the Marquisthickly.
Pity stirred at last in Andre-Louis. Some of the sternness left hisface. He sighed. "Good-bye, monsieur," he said.
"You are hard," his father told him, speaking wistfully. "But perhapsyou are in the right so to be. In other circumstances I should have beenproud to have owned you as my son. As it is..." He broke off abruptly,and as abruptly added, "Good-bye."
He loosed his son's hand and stepped back. They bowed formally to eachother. And then M. de La Tour d'Azyr bowed to Mlle. de Kercadiou inutter silence, a bow that contained something of utter renunciation, offinality.
That done he turned and walked stiffly out of the room, and so out ofall their lives. Months later they were to hear of him in the service ofthe Emperor of Austria.
CHAPTER XVI. SUNRISE
Andre-Louis took the air next morning on the terrace at Meudon. The hourwas very early, and the newly risen sun was transmuting into diamondsthe dewdrops that still lingered on the lawn. Down in the valley, fivemiles away, the morning mists were rising over Paris. Yet early as itwas that house on the hill was astir already, in a bustle of preparationfor the departure that was imminent.
Andre-Louis had won safely out of Paris last night with his mother andAline, and to-day they were to set out all of them for Coblenz.
To Andre-Louis, sauntering there with hands clasped behind him and headhunched between his shoulders--for life had never been richer in materialfor reflection--came presently Aline through one of the glass doors fromthe library.
"You're early astir," she greeted him.
"Faith, yes. I haven't been to bed. No," he assured her, in answer toher exclamation. "I spent the night, or what was left of it, sitting atthe window thinking."
"My poor Andre!"
"You describe me perfectly. I am very poor--for I know nothing,understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it isrealized. Then..." He threw out his arms, and let them fall again. Hisface she observed was very drawn and haggard.
She paced with him along the old granite balustrade over which thegeraniums flung their mantle of green and scarlet.
"Have you decided what you are going to do?" she asked him.
"I have decided that I have no choice. I, too, must emigrate. I am luckyto be able to do so, lucky to have found no one amid yesterday's chaosin Paris to whom I could report myself as I foolishly desired, elseI might no longer be armed with these." He drew from his pocket thepowerful passport of the Commission of Twelve, enjoining upon allFrenchmen to lend him such assistance as he might require, and warningthose who might think of hindering him that they did so at their ownperil. He spread it before her. "With this I conduct you all safely tothe frontier. Over the frontier M. de Kercadiou and Mme. de Plougastelwill have to conduct me; and then we shall be quits."
"Quits?" quoth she. "But you will be unable to return!"
"You conceive, of course, my eagerness to do so. My child, in a day ortwo there will be enquiries. It will be asked what has become of me.Things will transpire. Then the hunt will start. But by then we shall bewell upon our way, well ahead of any possible pursuit. You don't imaginethat I could ever give the government any satisfactory explanation of myabsence--assuming that any government remains to which to explain it?"
"You mean... that you will sacrifice your future, this career upon whichyou have embarked?" It took her breath away.
"In the pass to which things have come there is no career for me downthere--at least no honest one. And I hope you do not think that I couldbe dishonest. It is the day of the Dantons, and the Marats, the day ofthe rabble. The reins of government will be tossed to the populace, orelse the populace, drunk with the conceit with which the Dantons and theMarats have filled it, will seize the reins by force. Chaos must follow,and a despotism of brutes and apes, a government of the whole by itslowest parts. It cannot endure, because unless a nation is ruled by itsbest elements it must wither and decay."
"I thought you were a republican," said she.
"Why, so I am. I
am talking like one. I desire a society which selectsits rulers from the best elements of every class and denies the right ofany class or corporation to usurp the government to itself--whether itbe the nobles, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. Forgovernment by any one class is fatal to the welfare of the whole. Twoyears ago our ideal seemed to have been realized. The monopoly of powerhad been taken from the class that had held it too long and too unjustlyby the hollow right of heredity. It had been distributed as evenly asmight be throughout the State, and if men had only paused there, allwould have been well. But our impetus carried us too far, the privilegedorders goaded us on by their very opposition, and the result is thehorror of which yesterday you saw no more than the beginnings. No,no," he ended. "Careers there may be for venal place-seekers, foropportunists; but none for a man who desires to respect himself. It istime to go. I make no sacrifice in going."
"But where will you go? What will you do?"
"Oh, something. Consider that in four years I have been lawyer,politician, swordsman, and buffoon--especially the latter. There isalways a place in the world for Scaramouche. Besides, do you know thatunlike Scaramouche I have been oddly provident? I am the owner of alittle farm in Saxony. I think that agriculture might suit me. It is ameditative occupation and when all is said, I am not a man of action. Ihaven't the qualities for the part."
She looked up into his face, and there was a wistful smile in her deepblue eyes.
"Is there any part for which you have not the qualities, I wonder?"
"Do you really? Yet you cannot say that I have made a success of anyof those which I have played. I have always ended by running away. Iam running away now from a thriving fencing-academy, which is likely tobecome the property of Le Duc. That comes of having gone into politics,from which I am also running away. It is the one thing in which I reallyexcel. That, too, is an attribute of Scaramouche."
"Why will you always be deriding yourself?" she wondered.
"Because I recognize myself for part of this mad world, I suppose. Youwouldn't have me take it seriously? I should lose my reason utterly if Idid; especially since discovering my parents."
"Don't, Andre!" she begged him. "You are insincere, you know."
"Of course I am. Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is thevery keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled init, we live by it; and we rarely realize it. You have seen it rampantand out of hand in France during the past four years--cant and hypocrisyon the lips of the revolutionaries, cant and hypocrisy on the lips ofthe upholders of the old regime; a riot of hypocrisy out of which inthe end is begotten chaos. And I who criticize it all on this beautifulGod-given morning am the rankest and most contemptible hypocrite of all.It was this--the realization of this truth kept me awake all night. Fortwo years I have persecuted by every means in my power... M. de La Tourd'Azyr."
He paused before uttering the name, paused as if hesitating how to speakof him.
"And in those two years I have deceived myself as to the motive that wasspurring me. He spoke of me last night as the evil genius of his life,and himself he recognized the justice of this. It may be that he wasright, and because of that it is probable that even had he not killedPhilippe de Vilmorin, things would still have been the same. Indeed,to-day I know that they must have been. That is why I call myself ahypocrite, a poor, self-duping hypocrite."
"But why, Andre?"
He stood still and looked at her. "Because he sought you, Aline.Because in that alone he must have found me ranged against him, utterlyintransigeant. Because of that I must have strained every nerve to bringhim down--so as to save you from becoming the prey of your own ambition.
"I wish to speak of him no more than I must. After this, I trust neverto speak of him again. Before the lines of our lives crossed, I knew himfor what he was, I knew the report of him that ran the countryside.Even then I found him detestable. You heard him allude last night to theunfortunate La Binet. You heard him plead, in extenuation of his fault,his mode of life, his rearing. To that there is no answer, I suppose. Heconforms to type. Enough! But to me, he was the embodiment of evil, justas you have always been the embodiment of good; he was the embodimentof sin, just as you are the embodiment of purity. I had enthroned you sohigh, Aline, so high, and yet no higher than your place. Could I, then,suffer that you should be dragged down by ambition, could I suffer theevil I detested to mate with the good I loved? What could have come ofit but your own damnation, as I told you that day at Gavrillac? Becauseof that my detestation of him became a personal, active thing. Iresolved to save you at all costs from a fate so horrible. Had youbeen able to tell me that you loved him it would have been different.I should have hoped that in a union sanctified by love you would haveraised him to your own pure heights. But that out of considerations ofworldly advancement you should lovelessly consent to mate with him...Oh, it was vile and hopeless. And so I fought him--a rat fighting alion--fought him relentlessly until I saw that love had come to take inyour heart the place of ambition. Then I desisted."
"Until you saw that love had taken the place of ambition!" Tearshad been gathering in her eyes whilst he was speaking. Now amazementeliminated her emotion. "But when did you see that? When?"
"I--I was mistaken. I know it now. Yet, at the time... surely, Aline,that morning when you came to beg me not to keep my engagement with himin the Bois, you were moved by concern for him?"
"For him! It was concern for you," she cried, without thinking what shesaid.
But it did not convince him. "For me? When you knew--when all the worldknew what I had been doing daily for a week!"
"Ah, but he, he was different from the others you had met. Hisreputation stood high. My uncle accounted him invincible; he persuadedme that if you met nothing could save you."
He looked at her frowning.
"Why this, Aline?" he asked her with some sternness. "I can understandthat, having changed since then, you should now wish to disown thosesentiments. It is a woman's way, I suppose."
"Oh, what are you saying, Andre? How wrong you are! It is the truth Ihave told you!"
"And was it concern for me," he asked her, "that laid you swooning whenyou saw him return wounded from the meeting? That was what opened myeyes."
"Wounded? I had not seen his wound. I saw him sitting alive andapparently unhurt in his caleche, and I concluded that he had killed youas he had said he would. What else could I conclude?"
He saw light, dazzling, blinding, and it scared him. He fell back,a hand to his brow. "And that was why you fainted?" he askedincredulously.
She looked at him without answering. As she began to realize how muchshe had been swept into saying by her eagerness to make him realize hiserror, a sudden fear came creeping into her eyes.
He held out both hands to her.
"Aline! Aline!" His voice broke on the name. "It was I..."
"O blind Andre, it was always you--always! Never, never did I thinkof him, not even for loveless marriage, save once for a little while,when... when that theatre girl came into your life, and then..." Shebroke off, shrugged, and turned her head away. "I thought of followingambition, since there was nothing left to follow."
He shook himself. "I am dreaming, of course, or else I am mad," he said.
"Blind, Andre; just blind," she assured him.
"Blind only where it would have been presumption to have seen."
"And yet," she answered him with a flash of the Aline he had known ofold, "I have never found you lack presumption."
M. de Kercadiou, emerging a moment later from the library window, beheldthem holding hands and staring each at the other, beatifically, as ifeach saw Paradise in the other's face.
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