Across the body of that convulsively sobbing woman, the mother of one
and 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 of
revelation, stood Aline.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr was the first to stir. Into his bewildered mind
came the memory of something that Mme. de Plougastel had said of
a letter that was on the table. He came forward, unhindered. The
announcement made, Mme. de Plougastel no longer feared the sequel, and
so 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 moment
he stood reading it, none heeding him. Aline’s eyes were all on
Andre-Louis, full of wonder and commiseration, whilst Andre-Louis was
staring down, in stupefied fascination, at his mother.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr read the letter slowly through. Then very quietly
he replaced it. His next concern, being the product of an artificial age
sternly schooled in the suppression of emotion, was to compose himself.
Then he stepped back to Mme. de Plougastel’s side and stooped to raise
her.
“Therese,” he said.
Obeying, by instinct, the implied command, she made an effort to rise
and to control herself in her turn. The Marquis half conducted, half
carried her to the armchair by the table.
Andre-Louis looked on. Still numbed and bewildered, he made no attempt
to assist. He saw as in a dream the Marquis bending over Mme. de
Plougastel. 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. I
saw 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 that
this child had died a few days after birth? Why, Therese? Why?”
“I was afraid. I... I thought it better so--that nobody, nobody, not even
you, 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; there
was my family. And there was you... you, yourself, who had ceased to
care, in whom the fear of discovery had stifled love. Why should I have
told you, then? Why? I should not have told you now had there been
any other way to... to save you both. Once before I suffered just such
dreadful apprehensions when you and he fought in the Bois. I was on my
way to prevent it when you met me. I would have divulged the truth, as
a last resource, to avert that horror. But mercifully God spared me the
necessity then.”
It had not occurred to any of them to doubt her statement, incredible
though it might seem. Had any done so her present words must have
resolved all doubt, explaining as they did much that to each of her
listeners had been obscure until this moment.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr, overcome, reeled away to a chair and sat down
heavily. Losing command of himself for a moment, he took his haggard
face in his hands.
Through the windows open to the garden came from the distance the faint
throbbing of a drum to remind them of what was happening around them.
But the sound went unheeded. To each it must have seemed that here
they were face to face with a horror greater than any that might be
tormenting Paris. At last Andre-Louis began to speak, his voice level
and unutterably cold.
“M. de La Tour d’Azyr,” he said, “I trust that you’ll agree that this
disclosure, which can hardly be more distasteful and horrible to you
than it is to me, alters nothing, since it effaces nothing of all
that lies between us. Or, if it alters anything, it is merely to add
something 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. de
Plougastel’s footman, and with it make your escape as best you can. In
return I will beg of you the favour never to allow me to see you or hear
of you again.”
“Andre!” His mother swung upon him with that cry. And yet again that
question. “Have you no heart? What has he ever done to you that you
should nurse so bitter a hatred of him?”
“You shall hear, madame. Once, two years ago in this very room I told
you of a man who had brutally killed my dearest friend and debauched the
girl 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, his
smouldering eyes scanning his son’s face.
“You are hard,” he said grimly. “But I recognize the hardness. It
derives from the blood you bear.”
“Spare me that,” said Andre-Louis.
The Marquis inclined his head. “I will not mention it again. But I
desire that you should at least understand me, and you too, Therese. You
accuse me, sir, of murdering your dearest friend. I will admit that the
means employed were perhaps unworthy. But what other means were at my
command to meet an urgency that every day since then proves to have
existed? M. de Vilmorin was a revolutionary, a man of new ideas that
should overthrow society and rebuild it more akin to the desires of such
as himself. I belonged to the order that quite as justifiably desired
society 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 is
better so for all the world; that, indeed, no other conceivable society
is possible. Every human society must of necessity be composed of
several strata. You may disturb it temporarily into an amorphous whole
by a revolution such as this; but only temporarily. Soon out of the
chaos which is all that you and your kind can ever produce, order must
be restored or life will perish; and with the restoration of order comes
the restoration of the various strata necessary to organized society.
Those that were yesterday at the top may in the new order of things find
themselves dispossessed without any benefit to the whole. That change
I resisted. The spirit of it I fought with whatever weapons were
available, whenever and wherever I encountered it. M. de Vilmorin was
an incendiary of the worst type, a man of eloquence full of false ideals
that misled poor ignorant men into believing that the change proposed
could make the world a better place for them. You are an intelligent
man, and I defy you to answer me from your heart and conscience that
such a thing was true or possible. You know that it is untrue; you know
that it is a pernicious doctrine; and what made it worse on the lips
of M. de Vilmorin was that he was sincere and eloquent. His voice was
a danger that must be removed--silenced. So much was necessary in
self-defence. In self-defence I did it. I had no grudge against M. de
Vilmorin. 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 some
beast of the jungle flinging itself upon its natural prey. That has
been your error from the first. I did what I did with the very heaviest
heart--oh, spare me your sneer!--I do not lie, I have never lied. And I
swear to you here and now, by my every hope of Heaven, that what I say
is true. I loathed the thing I did. Yet for my own sake and the sake of
my order I must do it. Ask yourself whether M. de Vilmorin would have
hesitated for a moment if by procuring my death he could have brought
the Utopia of his dreams a moment nearer realization.
“After that. You determined that the sweetest vengeance would be to
frustrate my ends by reviving in yourself the voice that I had silenced,
by yourself carrying forward the fantastic apostleship of equality that
was M. de Vilmorin’s. You lacked the vision that would have shown you
that God did not create men equals. Well, you are in case to-night to
judge which of us was right, which wrong. You see what is happening here
in Paris. You see the foul spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land
fallen into confusion. Probably you have enough imagination to conceive
something of what must follow. And do you deceive yourself that out of
this filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal form of society? Don’t
you understand that society must re-order itself presently out of all
this?
“But why say more? I must have said enough to make you understand the
only thing that really matters--that I killed M. de Vilmorin as a matter
of duty to my order. And the truth--which though it may offend you should
also convince you--is that to-night I can look back on the deed with
equanimity, without a single regret, apart from what lies between you
and 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 me
I must have killed you too. I am, as you may know, a man of quick
passions. Yet I curbed the natural anger you aroused in me, because
I could forgive an affront to myself where I could not overlook a
calculated 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 less
assurance. “In the matter of Mlle. Binet I was unfortunate. I wronged
you through inadvertence. I had no knowledge of the relations between
you.”
Andre-Louis interrupted him sharply at last with a question: “Would it
have made a difference if you had?”
“No,” he was answered frankly. “I have the faults of my kind. I cannot
pretend 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 very
much for that?”
“All things considered, monsieur, I am rapidly being forced to the
conclusion that it is impossible to blame any man for anything in this
world; 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’ to
this 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 to
Mme. de Plougastel. “If a wrong I have to admit in my life, a wrong
that I must bitterly regret, it is the wrong that I have done to you, my
dear...”
“Not now, Gervais! Not now!” she faltered, interrupting him.
“Now--for the first and the last time. I am going. It is not likely that
we shall ever meet again--that I shall ever see any of you again--you who
should have been the nearest and dearest to me. We are all, he says, the
sport 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 betrayal
I begot unknown to me a son who, whilst as ignorant as myself of our
relationship, has come to be the evil genius of my life, to cross
and thwart me, and finally to help to pull me down in ruin. It is
just--poetically just. My full and resigned acceptance of that fact is
the 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 iron
self-control.
She rose and clung to him a moment, unashamed before them. The ashes of
that dead romance had been deeply stirred this night, and deep down some
lingering embers had been found that glowed brightly now before their
final extinction. Yet she made no attempt to detain him. She understood
that 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 kissed
her and put her from him. Standing erect, and outwardly calm again, he
looked 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 gift
to you, and certainly the last gift I should ever have thought of making
you--the gift of life. In a sense it makes us quits. The irony, sir, is
not 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 lean
face confronting him, so sternly set. He thrust the paper into his
bosom, and then abruptly, convulsively, held out his hand. His son’s
eyes asked a question.
“Let there be peace between us, in God’s name,” said the Marquis
thickly.
Pity stirred at last in Andre-Louis. Some of the sternness left his
face. He sighed. “Good-bye, monsieur,” he said.
“You are hard,” his father told him, speaking wistfully. “But perhaps
you are in the right so to be. In other circumstances I should have been
proud 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 each
other. And then M. de La Tour d’Azyr bowed to Mlle. de Kercadiou in
utter silence, a bow that contained something of utter renunciation, of
finality.
That done he turned and walked stiffly out of the room, and so out of
all their lives. Months later they were to hear of him in the service of
the Emperor of Austria.