against all the evidence, and say: 'Touch Grandchamp!--they'll not
dare!'--Or else he'll use the week in looking for money, enough to pay
the Altona gang. It may be that he'll find it, for, after all, the
tapestries and furniture and pictures and bronzes are here, and we know
they're worth at least four millions, as the other man offers that.
Well, then, Monsieur le Marquis finds the money. At what price? He
borrows at twenty, thirty, perhaps fifty per cent. And in a year we're
just where we are now, with this difference, that our two millions due
on those notes will have become two millions three hundred thousand, to
say nothing of getting four or five hundred thousand francs more to
continue during that year a sort of life that must at any price be
changed. You hear, Landri--it _must_! You have reproached me for
neglecting my duty. It is true that I haven't been able to say to your
father those horrible words: _you must_. Consider that all this wreck of
his vast fortune is due to the fact that he would never consent to say
to himself those two little words: _I must_. You ask me where that
fortune has gone. Why, in living at the rate of five hundred thousand
francs a year, when he and Madame la Marquise had four hundred
thousand--as you said just now--when they married. With a pencil and
paper and two columns, one of income, one of outgo, I will show you the
whole thing in a nutshell. The marquis was determined to keep up the
same establishment at Grandchamp that his father did with almost twice
his income, and his grandfather with three times as much. Madame your
aunt and madame your great-aunt carried the rest with them to the
Nançays and the Vardes. Monsieur le Marquis is always cursing the Civil
Code, and he is quite right. But it is the Civil Code, and it's stronger
than we are and than he is. He has kept up the château as if he were
your grandfather and great-grandfather. Do you know what that means? In
the first place, a hundred thousand francs for the park, gardens and
conservatories, plus sixty thousand for the hounds, forty thousand for
the shooting, thirty-five thousand for the stables. We have got to two
hundred and thirty-five thousand at once. And so with the rest. The
table? We have forty people at dinner to-night, and the marquis would
consider himself disgraced if his chef were not cited as one of the best
in Paris! The servants? You know how many there are, and you know too
that Monsieur le Marquis never dreams of parting with an old retainer
without giving him a pension. We had a discussion only yesterday about
young Mauchaussée. Twelve hundred francs to the father, and a house;
twelve hundred francs to the son. There are more than thirty others
taken care of in the same way. That makes forty thousand francs. And
there are demands all day to which Monsieur le Marquis makes but one
reply: 'Give.' And we give--for brotherhoods and sisterhoods, for
hospitals and churches, for schools, and for the elections. Without
counting the private alms, which don't pass through my hands. A hundred
thousand francs put in Monsieur de Lautrec's hand, without a receipt,
just when we are so straightened, to settle a gambling debt! I have the
proof of it. I spoke to Monsieur le Marquis about it. I had the
courage.--'If we don't help one another,' was his reply, 'who will help
us?'--That he should do such things the first or second year, in '66 and
'67, even down to the war, was natural. But when he saw the income of
the property decreasing, the mortgages growing bigger, the unpaid bills
piling up, that he did not try to stop is extraordinary. But it's the
fact. I understand it so well. Every economy was a degradation of the
house of Grandchamp, and degradation of a concrete sort, which he could
have seen with his eyes and touched with his hands. Economies, do I say?
There were the hedges trimmed every three years,--but in the interval?
the avenues not so well kept,--but after the rains?--Fewer flowers in
the beds, fewer horses in the stable, stag-hunting with fewer dogs and
fewer whippers-in! His heart was nearly broken. He went back the next
year. The debt increased. It whirled him off in its eddies. And then, he
has always hoped; yesterday, it was a fortunate investment,--Monsieur
Jaubourg had put him on the track of a good thing. He gained a hundred
and twenty thousand francs. A drop of water in the desert! Day, before
yesterday, one of your cousins. Monsieur de Nançay, died and left him a
hundred thousand francs. Another drop of water. These unexpected
windfalls misled him with a mirage which harmonized only too well with
his hereditary instinct. It would be easier for him to break off his
habits altogether, than to change--that is the conclusion at which I
have arrived. On that account, Landri, I look upon this offer of
Altona's as providential, you understand. Monsieur le Marquis must
accept it. Grandchamp once emptied of its furnishings, which are sacred
reliques to him, he will never want to come here again. No more gardens
_à la française_. At all events we will reduce the cost of keeping
them. No more stag-hunting, no more open house. With what is left he
will still have enough to live very handsomely. We will let the
shooting, the château perhaps. Then we will begin to redeem the
mortgages. The house of Claviers-Grandchamp will be shorn of its
splendor for a few years. But it will live up to its motto: _E tenebris
inclarescent_. It will not go down forever."
Engrossed by the heat of his demonstration, Chaffin had made a false
step. He had changed his tone as he dwelt upon the figures,--a terrible
commentary on the harangue delivered by the marquis to his son in the
forest two hours earlier, on the splendor of the name! To be sure, the
heartless jubilation of the ascent of the staircase no longer gleamed
threateningly in his yellow eyes; but his despicable sentiments toward
his imprudent and magnanimous employer made themselves manifest in the
pitiless clearness with which he thought and spoke of the disaster. He
thought that he knew Landri well, knowing him to be eminently
impressionable, and having formerly contributed, by dint of
surreptitious criticism, to detach him from his _milieu_. He had seen
how he stood out against the marquis on the subject of Saint-Cyr.
Moreover, was it not now a question of the swallowing-up of his future
inheritance? He was aware neither of the extent of the young man's
unselfishness nor how deeply the genuine poesy of M. de Claviers'
character stirred the chords of that tender heart. That poesy the brutal
draftsman of the balance-sheet of ruin did not even suspect. His picture
of the marquis's life, so foolishly ill-ordered but so generous, his
indictment rather, wherein he had emphasized the _grand seigneur's_
craze for appearances, without sufficiently setting forth his idealism
and his charity, was strangely at variance with the attitude of a
faithful and growling watch-dog which he ordinarily affected. Landri
felt the difference, by instinct only. The revelation of the impending
catastrophe impressed him much too painfully. It was enough, however,
for him to feel an unconquerable longing to identify himself with his
father, and he replied:--
"What? You entertain that idea, you, Chaffin? The furniture of
Grandchamp sold? The treasures that our grandmother rescued so
heroically in '93, dispersed? My father driven from his house by that
vile crew? Never! I would rather sacrifice my own fortune!"
"Well!" insinuated Chaffin, "ask him for it."
"Don't tell me that it is swallowed up, like--" exclaimed the young man.
He did not finish the sentence, but said emphatically: "I know that's
not true!"
"It isn't true, in fact," rejoined the secretary. "Monsieur le Marquis
still has a capital much larger than the fifteen hundred thousand francs
that you inherited from Madame de Claviers. After he rendered his
accounts as guardian, you gave him a general power of attorney which
included the right to sell and to mortgage. You did it because he
inherited a fourth of your mother's property, say five hundred thousand
francs. That property consisted in part of houses. You insisted that it
should remain undivided. It is sufficient, therefore, for him to be all
straight with you, that he should turn over to you the fifteen hundred
thousand francs, the income of which he has always paid you in full; he
can do it, but on one condition, and that is a _sine qua non_: he must
sell the personal property at Grandchamp,--the only thing that he can
realize on. The lands and buildings are so loaded down with mortgages
and so hard to turn into cash,--we need not talk of that. How long
should you have to wait, do you suppose? And you would not be a
privileged creditor. You have come of yourself to the point to which I
was trying to bring you. That is the whole motive of my action, Landri.
You can get Monsieur de Claviers out of this cul-de-sac, you and nobody
else, and you can do it by demanding your fortune."
"I? of him?"
"Yes, you, and by withdrawing your power of attorney. He will not
choose, that you should for a second suspect him of having misused it.
He won't have any peace until he has restored it all to you, on the
spot. If Altona's four million is offered him at that moment, he'll
accept it. Grandchamp stripped of its treasures is horrible to think of,
I agree. But one can refurnish a dismantled château. One can not
reconstruct a squandered fortune, and with five years more of this life
yours is gone, forever. I owed you the truth. I have told it to you.
Make up your mind."
While Chaffin was formulating these suggestions Landri looked at him in
such a way that the other had to avert his eyes. For the first time the
former pupil of the dishonest steward asked himself this question: "Is
this really the same man?" In the flare of a sudden intuition he caught
a glimpse of the dangerous plot woven about the ancient estate, one of
the artisans of which was this man who advised him--to do what? To
commit moral parricide, in view of M. de Claviers' character. But it was
only a gleam. This cruel advice might, after all, have been suggested to
the steward, at his wits' end, by the desperation born of one of those
crises in affairs in which humanity vanishes before the implacability of
figures. However that might be, Landri had been wounded too deeply in
his instinctive delicacy, and a restrained indignation trembled in his
reply.
"I will not do that," he said. "I prefer anything to losing his heart.
My first impulse was the true one. I must tell him everything, and
instantly. The future of the family is at stake, and he is its head. It
is for him to decide, not me. Let us go."
"I have done all that I can," said Chaffin. "You refuse. Let us go."
He opened the door, and instantly the two men found themselves face to
face with Landri's valet. The man was waiting in the corridor, ready to
go in as soon as his master should be free.
"Was he listening?" said Chaffin to himself. "Bah! they've known it all
for a long while."
He slandered the man, who was the son of one of the old lamp-men of the
château. Grandchamp was lighted throughout by oil, and it required
three men specially assigned for that service!--This valet had a message
to deliver, the mysterious nature of which disturbed him. Such was the
exceedingly simple explanation of his standing sentry.
"A person wishes to speak with Monsieur le Comte at once. It is very
urgent and very important, but it's only for a word. The person is
waiting in Monsieur le Comte's bedroom."
"If it's only for a word," said Landri, himself astonished, even in his
trouble, by that message and the messenger's insistence, "I will go. I
will return in a moment, Chaffin, wait for me. Do you, Jean, go and find
where Monsieur le Marquis is just now."
"Landri will tell Monsieur de Claviers nothing," repeated the former
tutor when he was left alone. That meeting of their glances, a few
moments before, had revealed to him an unsuspected energy and
perspicacity in his pupil. He had accepted without further remonstrance
the proposition to tell the marquis the truth, for fear of arousing
suspicion. He answered it in anticipation, mentally: "But then, let him
tell him all. What does it matter to me? My accounts are all straight. I
have never acted without written authority.--No. He won't tell him
anything. No one can speak to that man. Landri will think better of it.
He's going to Paris to-morrow. He'll take advice. Advice? From whom?
Jaubourg perhaps. No, he doesn't like him, and he loves, yes, adores,
the marquis! The voice of the blood is like their wonderful Race; what
an excellent joke!" Chaffin sneered. In thought he insulted his master
twice over, in his person and in his ideas. "Landri will go and see
Métivier, the notary, it's more likely. Yes, that's the better way.
Métivier will send for me. When he knows the situation of affairs,
he'll agree with me. This Altona offer means, at one per cent, forty
thousand francs for me. By the same token, for them it means salvation."
The cunning calculator hardly suspected that if, resorting to the
degrading practice of which he had instantly accused the valet, he had
placed his ear against the door of the next room, he would have heard
arrangements made for one of the very interviews that he had imagined.
The "person"--as Jean discreetly said--who was awaiting Landri was the
maître d'hôtel of the invalid on Rue de Solferino, who had come all
the way from Paris to say to the young man:--
"When Monsieur Jaubourg learned that Monsieur le Comte had called to
inquire for him without going upstairs, he was very much put out--more
than put out, distressed. I must needs take the first train for
Clermont. He is absolutely determined to see Monsieur le Comte. I am to
insist that Monsieur le Comte come to-morrow if he passes through Paris
again.--Monsieur Jaubourg is so ill, Monsieur le Comte! If he lasts two
or three days, the skies will fall! He was very particular to tell me
not to show myself, so that Monsieur le Marquis should not know of my
coming. He was afraid of disturbing him too much. However, here I am."
"Tell Monsieur Jaubourg I will come to-morrow at eleven o'clock,"
replied Landri. The care taken by a dying man to spare his old friend a
pang touched him. He felt the delicacy of it all the more keenly because
his heart was frozen, as it were, by the deferential brutality of formal
respect, so cruel in reality, of his former tutor. At any other time,
the peculiarity of the proceeding, sending this servant a two hours'
journey by railway, would have puzzled him; but a too genuine and too
present anxiety suspended in him all morbid labor of the imagination,
and while he was going down the stairs with Chaffin, it mattered little
to him what Jaubourg's reasons were for desiring so earnestly to see
him, or whether it was or was not for the purpose of insisting on his
marriage to Marie de Charlus.
Jean had returned to say that M. de Claviers-Grandchamp was in the
dining-room. And it was there that the son and the secretary found the
improvident owner of the treasures coveted by the Altona band. The
_grand seigneur_ still wore his hunting costume. He had not had a
quarter of an hour to himself since his return. He was engaged now with
his major-domo--another example of his grand manner--in arranging the
seats around the enormous table, which was all laid and ready.
Innumerable lighted candles already shone upon the silver plate engraved
by Roëttiers. The flat dishes displayed their edges of interlaced
ribbons on the brilliant whiteness of the cloth, around the central
épergne, a masterpiece signed by Germain. It represented the abduction
of Europa, on a large _rocaille pedestal_. Wainscoting rebuilt in the
eighteenth century, in the style of Gabriel, covered the walls of the
octagonal room. Eight pillars at the eight angles, fluted, and topped by
Corinthian capitals, imparted a majestic aspect, which was enlivened by
four high Gobelin tapestries, of Oudry's hunting series, alternating
with mirrors. On occasions like this these panels prolonged on the walls
the day's amusement, as did the hunting-horns surrounded by
laurel-branches, chefs-d'œuvre of Gonthière, which could be
distinguished in the decorations. The cream-white tone of the woodwork
harmonized with that of the cane-seated dining-chairs, and with the
reflection of the central chandelier, of Venetian glass,--a caprice of
one of the châtelaines of former days, the wife of the restorer of
Grandchamp, whose portrait by Parrocel was set into the wall over the
white marble chimneypiece. He was on horseback and wore the uniform of a
lieutenant-general,--which he had earned by being wounded at
Fontenoy,--the cuirass under the light blue coat, the white scarf, the
red ribbon, and held in his hand the baton of a general.
This ensemble, with the soft and vivid hues of the flowers, blended with
the glistening of the glasses, imparted a touch of grace amid all the
magnificence, which suddenly assumed a tragic aspect in the young man's
eyes. The figures set forth by Chaffin appeared on the walls as
distinctly as the Mene-Tekel-Upharsin of the Biblical feast; and as
suddenly he was conscious of that impossibility which the other had
foreseen--the impossibility of inflicting the pain of a similar vision
upon the impoverished and superb "Émigré," whose last joy this
sumptuous entertainment might prove to be--a childish joy, but heartfelt
and earnest in its bountiful outflow.
"Forty!" he cried as soon as he saw his son: "there will surely be forty
of us. An Academy!--I made up the number by inviting our neighbors the
Sicards, and some friends they have with them, the Saint-Larys. Two
charming couples! I will indulge my old eyes with their youthful
happiness.--Well, Chaffin, was I right in ordering dinner for forty? You
won't accuse me of wastefulness again." And he laughed his frank, hearty
laugh. "Look at our Parrocel, Landri. Hasn't he a look of the place? To
think that I shall never see you dressed like that, even if you're a
general some day and I am still in this world! Ah! the fine bright
uniforms of the old days! And the spruce young officers who went into
battle as to a fête, in those colors! Everything is sad with us, even
heroism. But you must help me. I was seating my company. First of all I
had placed Madame de Férussac opposite me, and you over here, beside--"
He showed his son a card on which was written the name of Mademoiselle
de Charlus. "I am putting them all awry. You are the one to sit opposite
me."
"Why, no, father," said Landri hastily, "I beg you to leave me where you
had put me. I assure you that I prefer that."
"Really? do you mean it?" said M. de Claviers. There was so much artless
gratitude in his expression, that preoccupation about a change of seats
at the table disclosed such a loving regard for the susceptibilities of
the young man's heart, that the tears came to his eyelids, and when his
father asked him,--
"Well, what is it? Why were you looking for me?"
"To ask you if I shall see you to-morrow before I go," he replied.
Already he was preparing to postpone the revelation which he had
insisted should be made instantly.
"I think not," replied the marquis. "You take the train at Clermont,
don't you? At ten o'clock? In that case, surely not."--And Landri did
not protest!--"You passed the night on the railway, and you are
travelling again to-morrow. You must have a good rest. And I have to go
and see one of my farmers, a long way off, who is asking for some
repairs. You know, Chaffin, Père Chabory. He won't get them, I promise
you. I will be immovable. There's no claim in his case. I shall take
advantage of the errand to try my new roan a bit. A splendid beast that
Régie Ardrahan sent me from Dublin--another Toby. But the English have
never learned to teach a horse to trot. I shall start at half after
seven, so as to have returned when my guests wake.--No, we shall not see
each other again. And this evening doesn't count! We will make up for it
at your next visit. I was going up to your room to urge you to call at
Jaubourg's when you go through Paris, and to see him yourself, if you
can. You can telegraph me how you found him."
"Landri will do as he pleases," Chaffin interjected, "but I have a
despatch already--from my son--received just now, and which I came to
tell you of. Monsieur Jaubourg is better, much better."
"Ah! that's good news!" exclaimed M. de Claviers. "You take a weight off
my heart, Chaffin. The fête will be perfect then. This morning a
ten-branched stag"; and he hummed the refrain:--
"Un dix cors jeunement.
Qui débûche à l'instant.
"And to-night a dinner of the sort that Lardin knows how to
serve."--Lardin was his cook.--He hummed another hunting-song, La
Bourbon:--
"La chasse, la vin, et les belles
C'était le refrain de Bourbon.
"But we must go and dress, my dear Landri, so that we may be on hand
when they arrive, these 'belles'!"
"You see," said Chaffin to Landri in an undertone, as they left the
dining-room behind the marquis, "you didn't speak to him, you couldn't.
To-morrow you won't be able to any better. You felt it. I was sure you
would. Look the situation in the face. You will do what I have advised.
It's the only way. I shall wait forty-eight hours more before I tell
him."
He walked away in the direction of his office before Landri had found a
word to reply. He felt humiliated by the consciousness that he had
justified, by his own attitude, the silence for which he had warmly
rebuked his former tutor. He realized fully, however, that the motive of
passionate affection to which he yielded in postponing the awakening
from that blissful dream on the brink of an abyss had nothing in common
with the obscure schemes of a decidedly double-faced personage. Landri
had received this impression anew when the other spoke of the despatch
alleged to have been sent during the day by his son. The message that he
had himself received a half hour before contradicted this improvement,
which was clearly fabricated by Chaffin. For what purpose? As a chance
shot, and to diminish the probabilities of a consultation with the
shrewd Jaubourg concerning the course to be pursued. The young man was
unable to divine this reason. But it was equally true that he could no
longer tell himself in good faith that it was "to spare my father
anxiety." The first shock of surprise was past. His new-born reflections
revealed too many riddles in the performance, and first of all this
persistent abandonment of the contest, this acceptance of an event which
should have been the outcome of nothing less than a desperate
resistance. But in that case Chaffin was not loyal? This supposition
opened horizons so dark that Landri rejected it. His memories of
childhood and youth cried out against it. "He has warned me," he said to
himself. "What forced him to do it? My God! how I wish I knew the truth,
and above all things what my duty is!"
What was his duty? He had no sooner propounded that question than it
occupied the whole field of his thought. How gladly he would have asked
advice of some one! But of whom? As he passed through his library again,
after he had dressed, on his way down to the salons on the ground floor,
his glance fell upon a portrait of his mother, and he stopped to gaze at
it, as if the face of the dead might take on life to sustain him, to
give him a hint. Alas! to no purpose would his filial piety have
questioned for days and days the delicate and deceitful features which
had been those of the beautiful Madame de Claviers. He would have
derived nothing but doubts concerning her, had the denunciator carried
to the end his confidences concerning the secret sorrows of the family.
That portrait was of 1878. Landri was just born, and Madame de Claviers
was thirty years old. She was painted sitting down, in a red velvet
evening gown, which left bare her lovely arms, her supple shoulders, her
neck, a trifle long, about which gleamed a row of enormous pearls. She
had a very small head, with an abundance of chestnut hair, a mouth of
sinuous shape, upon which flickered a smile, but impersonal and
seemingly forced. The eyes, whose expression was at once dreamy and
observing, passionate and guarded, contradicted the artificial
banality of that smile. It was the image of a woman, very sweet
and very simple at first glance, very complex at the second, and quite
unintelligible,--a happy woman, but whose happiness was of that
deep-seated and perturbed sort that never comes to fruition, being
condemned, by sin, to remain concealed.