บทที่ บทที่ 24 · AT MEUDON

. AT MEUDON

Later in the week he received a visit from Le Chapelier just before

noon.

“I have news for you, Andre. Your godfather is at Meudon. He arrived

there two days ago. Had you heard?”

“But no. How should I hear? Why is he at Meudon?” He was conscious of a

faint excitement, which he could hardly have explained.

“I don’t know. There have been fresh disturbances in Brittany. It may be

due to that.”

“And so he has come for shelter to his brother?” asked Andre-Louis.

“To his brother’s house, yes; but not to his brother. Where do you live

at all, Andre? Do you never hear any of the news? Etienne de Gavrillac

emigrated years ago. He was of the household of M. d’Artois, and he

crossed the frontier with him. By now, no doubt, he is in Germany with

him, conspiring against France. For that is what the emigres are

doing. That Austrian woman at the Tuileries will end by destroying the

monarchy.”

“Yes, yes,” said Andre-Louis impatiently. Politics interested him not at

all this morning. “But about Gavrillac?”

“Why, haven’t I told you that Gavrillac is at Meudon, installed in the

house his brother has left? Dieu de Dieu! Don’t I speak French or don’t

you understand the language? I believe that Rabouillet, his intendant,

is in charge of Gavrillac. I have brought you the news the moment I

received it. I thought you would probably wish to go out to Meudon.”

“Of course. I will go at once--that is, as soon as I can. I can’t to-day,

nor yet to-morrow. I am too busy here.” He waved a hand towards the

inner room, whence proceeded the click-click of blades, the quick moving

of feet, and the voice of the instructor, Le Duc.

“Well, well, that is your own affair. You are busy. I leave you now. Let

us dine this evening at the Café de Foy. Kersain will be of the party.”

“A moment!” Andre-Louis’ voice arrested him on the threshold. “Is Mlle.

de Kercadiou with her uncle?”

“How the devil should I know? Go and find out.”

He was gone, and Andre-Louis stood there a moment deep in thought.

Then he turned and went back to resume with his pupil, the Vicomte de

Villeniort, the interrupted exposition of the demi-contre of Danet,

illustrating with a small-sword the advantages to be derived from its

adoption.

Thereafter he fenced with the Vicomte, who was perhaps the ablest of his

pupils at the time, and all the while his thoughts were on the heights

of Meudon, his mind casting up the lessons he had to give that afternoon

and on the morrow, and wondering which of these he might postpone

without deranging the academy. When having touched the Vicomte three

times in succession, he paused and wrenched himself back to the present,

it was to marvel at the precision to be gained by purely mechanical

action. Without bestowing a thought upon what he was doing, his wrist

and arm and knees had automatically performed their work, like the

accurate fighting engine into which constant practice for a year and

more had combined them.

Not until Sunday was Andre-Louis able to satisfy a wish which the

impatience of the intervening days had converted into a yearning.

Dressed with more than ordinary care, his head elegantly coiffed--by one

of those hairdressers to the nobility of whom so many were being thrown

out of employment by the stream of emigration which was now flowing

freely--Andre-Louis mounted his hired carriage, and drove out to Meudon.

The house of the younger Kercadiou no more resembled that of the head

of the family than did his person. A man of the Court, where his brother

was essentially a man of the soil, an officer of the household of M.

le Comte d’Artois, he had built for himself and his family an imposing

villa on the heights of Meudon in a miniature park, conveniently

situated for him midway between Versailles and Paris, and easily

accessible from either. M. d’Artois--the royal tennis-player--had been

amongst the very first to emigrate. Together with the Condes, the

Contis, the Polignacs, and others of the Queen’s intimate council, old

Marshal de Broglie and the Prince de Lambesc, who realized that their

very names had become odious to the people, he had quitted France

immediately after the fall of the Bastille. He had gone to play tennis

beyond the frontier--and there consummate the work of ruining the French

monarchy upon which he and those others had been engaged in France. With

him, amongst several members of his household went Etienne de Kercadiou,

and with Etienne de Kercadiou went his family, a wife and four children.

Thus it was that the Seigneur de Gavrillac, glad to escape from a

province so peculiarly disturbed as that of Brittany--where the nobles

had shown themselves the most intransigent of all France--had come to

occupy in his brother’s absence the courtier’s handsome villa at Meudon.

That he was quite happy there is not to be supposed. A man of his almost

Spartan habits, accustomed to plain fare and self-help, was a little

uneasy in this sybaritic abode, with its soft carpets, profusion of

gilding, and battalion of sleek, silent-footed servants--for Kercadiou

the younger had left his entire household behind. Time, which at

Gavrillac he had kept so fully employed in agrarian concerns, here hung

heavily upon his hands. In self-defence he slept a great deal, and but

for Aline, who made no attempt to conceal her delight at this proximity

to Paris and the heart of things, it is possible that he would have beat

a retreat almost at once from surroundings that sorted so ill with his

habits. Later on, perhaps, he would accustom himself and grow resigned

to this luxurious inactivity. In the meantime the novelty of it fretted

him, and it was into the presence of a peevish and rather somnolent

M. de Kercadiou that Andre-Louis was ushered in the early hours of the

afternoon of that Sunday in June. He was unannounced, as had ever been

the custom at Gavrillac. This because Benoit, M. de Kercadiou’s old

seneschal, had accompanied his seigneur upon this soft adventure, and

was installed--to the ceaseless and but half-concealed hilarity of the

impertinent valetaille that M. Etienne had left--as his maitre d’hotel

here at Meudon.

Benoit had welcomed M. Andre with incoherencies of delight; almost had

he gambolled about him like some faithful dog, whilst conducting him to

the salon and the presence of the Lord of Gavrillac, who would--in the

words of Benoit--be ravished to see M. Andre again.

“Monseigneur! Monseigneur!” he cried in a quavering voice, entering a

pace or two in advance of the visitor. “It is M. Andre... M. Andre, your

godson, who comes to kiss your hand. He is here... and so fine that you

would hardly know him. Here he is, monseigneur! Is he not beautiful?”

And the old servant rubbed his hands in conviction of the delight that

he believed he was conveying to his master.

Andre-Louis crossed the threshold of that great room, soft-carpeted to

the foot, dazzling to the eye. It was immensely lofty, and its festooned

ceiling was carried on fluted pillars with gilded capitals. The door by

which he entered, and the windows that opened upon the garden, were of

an enormous height--almost, indeed, the full height of the room itself.

It was a room overwhelmingly gilded, with an abundance of ormolu

encrustations on the furniture, in which it nowise differed from what

was customary in the dwellings of people of birth and wealth. Never,

indeed, was there a time in which so much gold was employed decoratively

as in this age when coined gold was almost unprocurable, and paper money

had been put into circulation to supply the lack. It was a saying of

Andre-Louis’ that if these people could only have been induced to put

the paper on their walls and the gold into their pockets, the finances

of the kingdom might soon have been in better case.

The Seigneur--furbished and beruffled to harmonize with his

surroundings--had risen, startled by this exuberant invasion on the part

of Benoit, who had been almost as forlorn as himself since their coming

to Meudon.

“What is it? Eh?” His pale, short-sighted eyes peered at the visitor.

“Andre!” said he, between surprise and sternness; and the colour

deepened in his great pink face.

Benoit, with his back to his master, deliberately winked and grinned at

Andre-Louis to encourage him not to be put off by any apparent hostility

on the part of his godfather. That done, the intelligent old fellow

discreetly effaced himself.

“What do you want here?” growled M. de Kercadiou.

“No more than to kiss your hand, as Benoit has told you, monsieur my

godfather,” said Andre-Louis submissively, bowing his sleek black head.

“You have contrived without kissing it for two years.”

“Do not, monsieur, reproach me with my misfortune.”

The little man stood very stiffly erect, his disproportionately large

head thrown back, his pale prominent eyes very stern.

“Did you think to make your outrageous offence any better by vanishing

in that heartless manner, by leaving us without knowledge of whether you

were alive or dead?”

“At first it was dangerous--dangerous to my life--to disclose my

whereabouts. Then for a time I was in need, almost destitute, and my

pride forbade me, after what I had done and the view you must take of

it, to appeal to you for help. Later...”

“Destitute?” The Seigneur interrupted. For a moment his lip trembled.

Then he steadied himself, and the frown deepened as he surveyed this

very changed and elegant godson of his, noted the quiet richness of his

apparel, the paste buckles and red heels to his shoes, the sword hilted

in mother-o’-pearl and silver, and the carefully dressed hair that he

had always seen hanging in wisps about his face. “At least you do not

look destitute now,” he sneered.

“I am not. I have prospered since. In that, monsieur, I differ from the

ordinary prodigal, who returns only when he needs assistance. I return

solely because I love you, monsieur--to tell you so. I have come at the

very first moment after hearing of your presence here.” He advanced.

“Monsieur my godfather!” he said, and held out his hand.

But M. de Kercadiou remained unbending, wrapped in his cold dignity and

resentment.

“Whatever tribulations you may have suffered or consider that you may

have suffered, they are far less than your disgraceful conduct deserved,

and I observe that they have nothing abated your impudence. You think

that you have but to come here and say, ‘Monsieur my godfather!’ and

everything is to be forgiven and forgotten. That is your error. You have

committed too great a wrong; you have offended against everything by

which I hold, and against myself personally, by your betrayal of my

trust in you. You are one of those unspeakable scoundrels who are

responsible for this revolution.”

“Alas, monsieur, I see that you share the common delusion. These

unspeakable scoundrels but demanded a constitution, as was promised them

from the throne. They were not to know that the promise was insincere,

or that its fulfilment would be baulked by the privileged orders. The

men who have precipitated this revolution, monsieur, are the nobles and

the prelates.”

“You dare--and at such a time as this--stand there and tell me such

abominable lies! You dare to say that the nobles have made the

revolution, when scores of them, following the example of M. le Duc

d’Aiguillon, have flung their privileges, even their title-deeds, into

the lap of the people! Or perhaps you deny it?”

“Oh, no. Having wantonly set fire to their house, they now try to put

it out by throwing water on it; and where they fail they put the entire

blame on the flames.”

“I see that you have come here to talk politics.”

“Far from it. I have come, if possible, to explain myself. To understand

is always to forgive. That is a great saying of Montaigne’s. If I could

make you understand...”

“You can’t. You’ll never make me understand how you came to render

yourself so odiously notorious in Brittany.”

“Ah, not odiously, monsieur!”

“Certainly, odiously--among those that matter. It is said even that you

were Omnes Omnibus, though that I cannot, will not believe.”

“Yet it is true.”

M. de Kercadiou choked. “And you confess it? You dare to confess it?”

“What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess--unless he is a

coward.”

“Oh, and to be sure you were very brave, running away each time after

you had done the mischief, turning comedian to hide yourself, doing more

mischief as a comedian, provoking a riot in Nantes, and then running

away again, to become God knows what--something dishonest by the affluent

look of you. My God, man, I tell you that in these past two years I have

hoped that you were dead, and you profoundly disappoint me that you

are not!” He beat his hands together, and raised his shrill voice to

call--“Benoit!” He strode away towards the fireplace, scarlet in the

face, shaking with the passion into which he had worked himself. “Dead,

I might have forgiven you, as one who had paid for his evil, and his

folly. Living, I never can forgive you. You have gone too far. God alone

knows where it will end.

“Benoit, the door. M. Andre-Louis Moreau to the door!” The tone argued

an irrevocable determination. Pale and self-contained, but with a queer

pain at his heart, Andre-Louis heard that dismissal, saw Benoit’s

white, scared face and shaking hands half-raised as if he were about

to expostulate with his master. And then another voice, a crisp, boyish

voice, cut in.

“Uncle!” it cried, a world of indignation and surprise in its pitch,

and then: “Andre!” And this time a note almost of gladness, certainly of

welcome, was blended with the surprise that still remained.

Both turned, half the room between them at the moment, and beheld Aline

in one of the long, open windows, arrested there in the act of entering

from the garden, Aline in a milk-maid bonnet of the latest mode, though

without any of the tricolour embellishments that were so commonly to be

seen upon them.

The thin lips of Andre’s long mouth twisted into a queer smile. Into his

mind had flashed the memory of their last parting. He saw himself again,

standing burning with indignation upon the pavement of Nantes, looking

after her carriage as it receded down the Avenue de Gigan.

She was coming towards him now with outstretched hands, a heightened

colour in her cheeks, a smile of welcome on her lips. He bowed low and

kissed her hand in silence.

Then with a glance and a gesture she dismissed Benoit, and in her

imperious fashion constituted herself Andre’s advocate against that

harsh dismissal which she had overheard.

“Uncle,” she said, leaving Andre and crossing to M. de Kercadiou, “you

make me ashamed of you! To allow a feeling of peevishness to overwhelm

all your affection for Andre!”

“I have no affection for him. I had once. He chose to extinguish it.

He can go to the devil; and please observe that I don’t permit you to

interfere.”

“But if he confesses that he has done wrong...”

“He confesses nothing of the kind. He comes here to argue with me about

these infernal Rights of Man. He proclaims himself unrepentant. He

announces himself with pride to have been, as all Brittany says, the

scoundrel who hid himself under the sobriquet of Omnes Omnibus. Is that

to be condoned?”

She turned to look at Andre across the wide space that now separated

them.

“But is this really so? Don’t you repent, Andre--now that you see all the

harm that has come?”

It was a clear invitation to him, a pleading to him to say that he

repented, to make his peace with his godfather. For a moment it almost

moved him. Then, considering the subterfuge unworthy, he answered

truthfully, though the pain he was suffering rang in his voice.

“To confess repentance,” he said slowly, “would be to confess to a

monstrous crime. Don’t you see that? Oh, monsieur, have patience

with me; let me explain myself a little. You say that I am in part

responsible for something of all this that has happened. My exhortations

of the people at Rennes and twice afterwards at Nantes are said to have

had their share in what followed there. It may be so. It would be beyond

my power positively to deny it. Revolution followed and bloodshed. More

may yet come. To repent implies a recognition that I have done wrong.

How shall I say that I have done wrong, and thus take a share of the

responsibility for all that blood upon my soul? I will be quite frank

with you to show you how far, indeed, I am from repentance. What I did,

I actually did against all my convictions at the time. Because there

was no justice in France to move against the murderer of Philippe de

Vilmorin, I moved in the only way that I imagined could make the evil

done recoil upon the hand that did it, and those other hands that had

the power but not the spirit to punish. Since then I have come to see

that I was wrong, and that Philippe de Vilmorin and those who thought

with him were in the right.

“You must realize, monsieur, that it is with sincerest thankfulness

that I find I have done nothing calling for repentance; that, on the

contrary, when France is given the inestimable boon of a constitution,

as will shortly happen, I may take pride in having played my part in

bringing about the conditions that have made this possible.”

There was a pause. M. de Kercadiou’s face turned from pink to purple.

“You have quite finished?” he said harshly.

“If you have understood me, monsieur.”

“Oh, I have understood you, and... and I beg that you will go.”

Andre-Louis shrugged his shoulders and hung his head. He had come there

so joyously, in such yearning, merely to receive a final dismissal. He

looked at Aline. Her face was pale and troubled; but her wit failed to

show her how she could come to his assistance. His excessive honesty had

burnt all his boats.

“Very well, monsieur. Yet this I would ask you to remember after I am

gone. I have not come to you as one seeking assistance, as one driven to

you by need. I am no returning prodigal, as I have said. I am one who,

needing nothing, asking nothing, master of his own destinies, has come

to you driven by affection only, urged by the love and gratitude he

bears you and will continue to bear you.”

“Ah, yes!” cried Aline, turning now to her uncle. Here at least was an

argument in Andre’s favour, thought she. “That is true. Surely that...”

Inarticulately he hissed her into silence, exasperated.

“Hereafter perhaps that will help you to think of me more kindly,

monsieur.”

“I see no occasion, sir, to think of you at all. Again, I beg that you

will go.”

Andre-Louis looked at Aline an instant, as if still hesitating.

She answered him by a glance at her furious uncle, a faint shrug, and a

lift of the eyebrows, dejection the while in her countenance.

It was as if she said: “You see his mood. There is nothing to be done.”

He bowed with that singular grace the fencing-room had given him and

went out by the door.

“Oh, it is cruel!” cried Aline, in a stifled voice, her hands clenched,

and she sprang to the window.

“Aline!” her uncle’s voice arrested her. “Where are you going?”

“But we do not know where he is to be found.”

“Who wants to find the scoundrel?”

“We may never see him again.”

“That is most fervently to be desired.”

Aline said “Ouf!” and went out by the window.

He called after her, imperiously commanding her return. But

Aline--dutiful child--closed her ears lest she must disobey him, and

sped light-footed across the lawn to the avenue there to intercept the

departing Andre-Louis.

As he came forth wrapped in gloom, she stepped from the bordering trees

into his path.

“Aline!” he cried, joyously almost.

“I did not want you to go like this. I couldn’t let you,” she explained

herself. “I know him better than you do, and I know that his great soft

heart will presently melt. He will be filled with regret. He will want

to send for you, and he will not know where to send.”

“You think that?”

“Oh, I know it! You arrive in a bad moment. He is peevish and

cross-grained, poor man, since he came here. These soft surroundings

are all so strange to him. He wearies himself away from his beloved

Gavrillac, his hunting and tillage, and the truth is that in his mind he

very largely blames you for what has happened--for the necessity, or at

least, the wisdom, of this change. Brittany, you must know, was becoming

too unsafe. The chateau of La Tour d’Azyr, amongst others, was burnt to

the ground some months ago. At any moment, given a fresh excitement, it

may be the turn of Gavrillac. And for this and his present discomfort he

blames you and your friends. But he will come round presently. He will

be sorry that he sent you away like this--for I know that he loves you,

Andre, in spite of all. I shall reason with him when the time comes. And

then we shall want to know where to find you.”

“At number 13, Rue du Hasard. The number is unlucky, the name of the

street appropriate. Therefore both are easy to remember.”

She nodded. “I will walk with you to the gates.” And side by side now

they proceeded at a leisurely pace down the long avenue in the June

sunshine dappled by the shadows of the bordering trees. “You are looking

well, Andre; and do you know that you have changed a deal? I am glad

that you have prospered.” And then, abruptly changing the subject before

he had time to answer her, she came to the matter uppermost in her mind.

“I have so wanted to see you in all these months, Andre. You were the

only one who could help me; the only one who could tell me the truth,

and I was angry with you for never having written to say where you were

to be found.”

“Of course you encouraged me to do so when last we met in Nantes.”

“What? Still resentful?”

“I am never resentful. You should know that.” He expressed one of his

vanities. He loved to think himself a Stoic. “But I still bear the scar

of a wound that would be the better for the balm of your retraction.”

“Why, then, I retract, Andre. And now tell me.”

“Yes, a self-seeking retraction,” said he. “You give me something that

you may obtain something.” He laughed quite pleasantly. “Well, well;

command me.”

“Tell me, Andre.” She paused, as if in some difficulty, and then went

on, her eyes upon the ground: “Tell me--the truth of that event at the

Feydau.”

The request fetched a frown to his brow. He suspected at once the

thought that prompted it. Quite simply and briefly he gave her his

version of the affair.

She listened very attentively. When he had done she sighed; her face was

very thoughtful.

“That is much what I was told,” she said. “But it was added that M.

de La Tour d’Azyr had gone to the theatre expressly for the purpose of

breaking finally with La Binet. Do you know if that was so?”

“I don’t; nor of any reason why it should be so. La Binet provided him

the sort of amusement that he and his kind are forever craving...”

“Oh, there was a reason,” she interrupted him. “I was the reason.

I spoke to Mme. de Sautron. I told her that I would not continue to

receive one who came to me contaminated in that fashion.” She spoke

of it with obvious difficulty, her colour rising as he watched her

half-averted face.

“Had you listened to me...” he was beginning, when again she interrupted

him.

“M. de Sautron conveyed my decision to him, and afterwards represented

him to me as a man in despair, repentant, ready to give proofs--any

proofs--of his sincerity and devotion to me. He told me that M. de La

Tour d’Azyr had sworn to him that he would cut short that affair, that

he would see La Binet no more. And then, on the very next day I heard

of his having all but lost his life in that riot at the theatre. He

had gone straight from that interview with M. de Sautron, straight from

those protestations of future wisdom, to La Binet. I was indignant. I

pronounced myself finally. I stated definitely that I would not in any

circumstances receive M. de La Tour d’Azyr again! And then they pressed

this explanation upon me. For a long time I would not believe it.”

“So that you believe it now,” said Andre quickly. “Why?”

“I have not said that I believe it now. But... but... neither can I

disbelieve. Since we came to Meudon M. de La Tour d’Azyr has been here,

and himself he has sworn to me that it was so.”

“Oh, if M. de La Tour d’Azyr has sworn...” Andre-Louis was laughing on a

bitter note of sarcasm.

“Have you ever known him lie?” she cut in sharply. That checked him.

“M. de La Tour d’Azyr is, after all, a man of honour, and men of honour

never deal in falsehood. Have you ever known him do so, that you should

sneer as you have done?”

“No,” he confessed. Common justice demanded that he should admit that

virtue at least in his enemy. “I have not known him lie, it is true. His

kind is too arrogant, too self-confident to have recourse to untruth.

But I have known him do things as vile...”

“Nothing is as vile,” she interrupted, speaking from the code by which

she had been reared. “It is for liars only--who are first cousin to

thieves--that there is no hope. It is in falsehood only that there is

real loss of honour.”

“You are defending that satyr, I think,” he said frostily.

“I desire to be just.”

“Justice may seem to you a different matter when at last you shall

have resolved yourself to become Marquise de La Tour d’Azyr.” He spoke

bitterly.

“I don’t think that I shall ever take that resolve.”

“But you are still not sure--in spite of everything.”

“Can one ever be sure of anything in this world?”

“Yes. One can be sure of being foolish.”

Either she did not hear or did not heed him.

“You do not of your own knowledge know that it was not as M. de La Tour

d’Azyr asserts--that he went to the Feydau that night?”

“I don’t,” he admitted. “It is of course possible. But does it matter?”

“It might matter. Tell me; what became of La Binet after all?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” She turned to consider him. “And you can say it with

that indifference! I thought... I thought you loved her, Andre.”

“So did I, for a little while. I was mistaken. It required a La

Tour d’Azyr to disclose the truth to me. They have their uses, these

gentlemen. They help stupid fellows like myself to perceive important

truths. I was fortunate that revelation in my case preceded marriage. I

can now look back upon the episode with equanimity and thankfulness

for my near escape from the consequences of what was no more than an

aberration of the senses. It is a thing commonly confused with love. The

experience, as you see, was very instructive.”

She looked at him in frank surprise.

“Do you know, Andre, I sometimes think that you have no heart.”

“Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence. And what of

yourself, Aline? What of your own attitude from the outset where M. de

La Tour d’Azyr is concerned? Does that show heart? If I were to tell you

what it really shows, we should end by quarrelling again, and God knows

I can’t afford to quarrel with you now. I... I shall take another way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, nothing at the moment, for you are not in any danger of marrying

that animal.”

“And if I were?”

“Ah! In that case affection for you would discover to me some means of

preventing it--unless...” He paused.

“Unless?” she demanded, challengingly, drawn to the full of her short

height, her eyes imperious.

“Unless you could also tell me that you loved him,” said he simply,

whereat she was as suddenly and most oddly softened. And then he added,

shaking his head: “But that of course is impossible.”

“Why?” she asked him, quite gently now.

“Because you are what you are, Aline--utterly good and pure and adorable.

Angels do not mate with devils. His wife you might become, but never his

mate, Aline--never.”

They had reached the wrought-iron gates at the end of the avenue.

Through these they beheld the waiting yellow chaise which had brought

Andre-Louis. From near at hand came the creak of other wheels, the beat

of other hooves, and now another vehicle came in sight, and drew to a

stand-still beside the yellow chaise--a handsome equipage with polished

mahogany panels on which the gold and azure of armorial bearings flashed

brilliantly in the sunlight. A footman swung to earth to throw wide the

gates; but in that moment the lady who occupied the carriage, perceiving

Aline, waved to her and issued a command.