into that ill-omened street. This time, men were engaged in taking away
the straw from before the house; it was useless now and would deaden no
more the loud rumbling of the carriages. Landri's heart contracted, then
beat fast again, when, having entered the lodge to ask for details, he
was informed by the concierge, with the stilted manner of a man of the
people who announces bad news, feeling that he has a share in its
importance:--
"Monsieur Jaubourg died about one o'clock, almost immediately after
Monsieur le Comte went away. It seems that he did not suffer. He knew
nothing at all afterward. His head had gone. To think of that being
possible--such an intelligent gentleman! If Monsieur le Comte cares to
go up, he will find Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers there."
"My father?" exclaimed the young man. One does not unlearn in a few
moments a habit contracted at the awakening of one's earliest
affections. He heard himself utter that exclamation, and shuddered,
while the other continued:--
"Monsieur le Marquis arrived half an hour ago. He knew nothing. It was I
who informed him of the unfortunate event. He was like one
thunderstruck. He could not believe it. 'If I had come this morning,' he
said, 'I should have seen him. I could have bade him adieu.'--Oh! he was
terribly grieved. It will do him good to see Monsieur le Comte."
This perfunctory mourner's chatter might have gone on for a long while.
Landri was not listening. He was looking at the foot of the monumental
staircase, and at the broad stone stairs which he could no more avoid
ascending than a condemned man those of the scaffold. This man who
informed him of M. Jaubourg's death knew M. de Claviers and himself too
well. The half-familiarity of his speech proved it. To fail to join the
marquis at once, under such circumstances and under the watchful eyes of
that liveried witness, would be cowardly. It would have been less
cowardly to pour his distress into Valentine's ear! On the other hand,
would he have the courage to meet M. de Claviers at that moment and in
that place, especially if any suspicion had shaken his long-abused
confidence? It was a most improbable supposition, but had not Landri
himself had his eyes opened by an overwhelming and absolutely unexpected
revelation? What was the meaning of this sudden appearance of the
châtelain of Grandchamp, after the telegram announcing an improvement
in the invalid's condition?
The young man asked himself that question, another source of anxiety
added to all the rest, as he climbed the stairs. How he wished that
there were more of them!--He was on the landing. He rang. He passed
through the reception room and the library. He entered that bedroom
where, a few hours earlier, the terrible scene was enacted. On the bed
where he had left Jaubourg writhing in pain and uttering unforgettable
words, lay a motionless form, prepared for the coffin. The dead man, in
evening dress, with white cravat, silk socks, and low shoes, had resumed
the conventional mask which the paroxysms of the death-agony had torn
from his face in his last moments--and before whom! Mademoiselle de
Charlus's epigram was justified by the presence of the crucifix between
those hands, joined even then by no prayer, no repentance. The delicate,
sad face, with its closed eyes and lips, its yellow forehead, and its
cheeks of a waxy pallor, as if smoothed of their wrinkles, no longer
told aught of the mystery so many years hidden.
Nor did the impassive countenance of Joseph, the maître-d'hôtel, who
was walking about the room on tip-toe, betray any of the secrets that he
might have surprised. He was engaged in overlooking the final
arrangement of the sick-room, which was to be transformed into a salon
for the last visits to be paid to Jaubourg-Saint-Germain, by his "fine
friends," before he was laid in the ground.
Pierre Chaffin, whose glance would have been so painful to Landri, was
no longer there. The son might have believed that he had dreamed it all,
that an hallucination had deceived his eyes and his ears, that he had
never seen what he had seen, never heard what he had heard, had it not
been for his trembling when he saw another human figure, kneeling at the
bedside, and alive. It was the Marquis de Claviers, a truly touching
figure in his sincere grief and his childlike faith. He was praying,
with all the strength of his old Christian heart, for his friend--for
him whom he deemed his friend! His absorption was so complete that he
knelt there several minutes without observing the presence of his
son--of him whom he deemed his son. And he, one of the two beneficiaries
of that magnanimous delusion, stood as if paralyzed by an embarrassment
bordering closely on remorse, as if, by keeping silent, he made himself
an accomplice in the insult inflicted on that proud man.
At last the marquis raised his head. He showed his imposing face,
whereon the tears had left their trace. He rose to his feet, to his full
great height, and enveloped in a last glance the dead man, over whom his
hand drew the sign of the Cross.--What a gesture from him to that other!
When his loyal fingers touched that brow, Landri could have cried out.
M. de Claviers espied the young man, and, with another movement no less
pathetic, put his arm about his neck, as if to lean upon him in that
bitter hour. They passed thus into the study, where the betrayed friend
began to speak in an undertone, with the respect which even the most
indifferent assume in the presence of death. In his case it was not a
pose. He reproached himself for having, on the previous day and again
that morning, postponed a last visit to the dying man in favor of his
passionate fondness for hunting.
"It was your despatch that made me come," he said. "I divined that you
didn't telegraph the truth--from what? From one little detail. It began:
'Don't be alarmed.' I thought: 'My poor Landri is disturbed. He thinks
of his old father's grief first of all. Jaubourg is worse.'--And then I
wasn't content with myself. I was angry with myself for having enjoyed
myself too much yesterday, and again this morning, riding that fine
horse and shooting partridges. It is almost criminal, at my age, to love
life so dearly!--However, Charlus and Bressieux took the train at
Clermont at three o'clock. I had taken them to the station. I jumped
into the carriage with them. It was too late.--I should have been so
happy to speak to him again!--But you saw him. Did he know you? What did
he say?"
"He had already lost his reason," Landri replied, averting his eyes. He
had believed that afternoon that he had touched the bottom of the
deepest depths of suffering. He had not foreseen this tête-à-tête,
nor these confidences, fraught with such heart-rending significance to
him now. Each of them was destined to add a new chapter to the shocking
tale of deceit. The lover's son recognized therein everything--the
heedless, but lofty-minded security of the nobleman; the loyalty which,
having placed his honor in the hands of his wife and his friend,
had distrusted neither; the wiles of the wife, and the seductive
charm of the friend; and, too, the explanation, if not the excuse
of their sin. That life of parade and magnificence, in which the
"Émigré" had swallowed up his fortune that the glory of the name of
Claviers-Grandchamp might not fade, he had not been able to lead without
an accompaniment of idle associates. Love is the engrossing occupation
of such coteries of luxury and pomp and pleasure. Madame de Claviers was
very pretty. She was romantic, too. The stern and manly poesy of the
marquis's nature did not satisfy a sentimentalism to which a nature more
complex, more subtle, more corrupt perhaps, had appealed more strongly.
And Landri was born of that sin, inevitable and deplorable. But what a
crying shame that a man of so noble and rare a soul should have been
made a mock of at his own fireside!
"So it is true," he continued, "that he did not know that he was dying?
Ah! Landri, may the good Lord preserve us from ending so, without being
able to make our last sacrifice! I dread but one form of death--that is,
sudden death. Jaubourg did not deserve it. But Charlus was quite
right--he was not religious. Still, if I had been here, I would have
sent for a priest; but Joseph did not dare to go beyond his orders. I
should have paid no heed to that, and who can say if God would not have
granted him the privilege of recovering consciousness for a moment! But
God is the nobleman of heaven, as somebody said, I don't know who. I
imagine that the amplitude of his indulgence surpasses our poor feeble
judgments. He pardons much to one who has always been sincere and kind;
and Jaubourg was so kind! How many times your mother has told me of
secret charitable deeds of his, and of his considerate words! And she
was rather prejudiced against him.--My dear Landri, it does me good to
have you here! I understand, you came back on my account. You wanted to
be posted, so that you could prepare me for the worst at need. I know
that you and Charles didn't always understand each other. However, I
assure you that he was very fond of you. But he was of another
generation, and he didn't enjoy himself much with the newcomers. 'It
makes me feel too old,' he used to say to me.--'It makes me younger,' I
always said.--He was never reconciled to being more than thirty years
old. You see, he had been such a pretty fellow, such a dandy, and so
fashionable! And it didn't spoil him. I can see him now, in '73, when I
made his acquaintance. It was at the Élysée, in the poor Marshal's
day. That was yesterday, and it was the time of promise. We hoped for so
many things that have never come to pass, and we hoped for them
joyously, too joyously perhaps.--Too joyously," he repeated, and added:
"And now look."
He pointed to the bedroom door, then put his hand over his eyes. But in
a moment, manfully shaking his head as if determined not to abandon
himself to these melancholy recollections, he continued:--
"I return to Grandchamp by the ten o'clock train. You take the nine
o'clock. Our stations are not far apart, and I'll see you on board. We
will dine on the way.--Let us walk a little, to recover our
equilibrium,--what do you say? How many times I have called for Charles
at this time in the afternoon, when chance brought me to this quarter!
Why, only last Wednesday he spoke to me about this project of marriage
with the Charlus girl. It was in this room that he said to me: 'I am
entrusted with a message to you. It's about Landri.'--But let us go.
Joseph will let me know the precise hour of the funeral ceremony. It
will depend on the distant cousins he has left. You must ask for leave
of absence. I must have you with me."
"I don't know whether I can get it," Landri replied. The prospect of
that fresh trial, of following that funeral procession under the eyes of
so many people who would surely know the truth, made his flesh creep. At
all events he had a pretext for avoiding it. "Our new colonel isn't very
obliging in that respect. And then, you know, he's of the Left, very
strong, and not very well disposed to us."
"When shall you make up your mind to shut the door in the face of those
rascals?" asked M. de Claviers. They were going downstairs, he first, so
that he could not see the intensity of distress depicted on his
companion's face while he persisted: "I am not disturbed; they'll drive
you to it, and, it may be, before very long. On the train Bressieux
showed me a newspaper in which something was said about resuming the
taking of inventories in the Saint-Mihiel region.--'What will Landri do,
if he gets into that?' he asked me.--'What you would do,' I replied.--I
confess that I should be happy to see you take your leave with a fine
gesture. Besides it's high time that a gentleman should say something
that hasn't yet been said. Among the officers who have resigned as a
protest against shameful orders there have been several of noble birth.
They have all talked about their consciences, their religious
principles.--Conscience? I don't care much for that word. It has served
too often as a solemn label for anarchy.--Religious principles? That's
better. That's an appeal to a discipline that does not adapt itself to
people's whims. But for the noble there's still another duty, that of
not disregarding the call of honor. And one does disregard it when one
acts in opposition to the will of the ancestors from whom he is
descended, of those deceased ancestors who in their lifetime served a
Catholic France. We, their progeny, owe it to them to serve the same
France. France without the Church is not the France of which our houses
are a part. For a noble to serve this France is to renounce his
nobility. Such renunciations are the suicide of honor, of that honor
which a great bishop called the safeguard of justice, the glorious
supplement of the laws. That is what I would like to hear proclaimed to
the faces of those curs, by a Claviers-Grandchamp."
They were in the street now. The marquis gazed at his supposititious son
with those piercing blue eyes which were no longer dimmed by a tear. It
was the very climax of tragedy,--of the internal tragedy which life
evolves simply by the interplay of its secret contrasts,--this
quasi-feudal profession of faith, enounced upon that threshold, before
the child born of treachery, by the bitterly outraged nobleman who knew
nothing of the outrage.
The arrival of one of their club friends, who came to inscribe his name
at Jaubourg's, and who stopped a moment on the sidewalk to exchange a
few words of condolence with them, enabled Landri to avoid replying.
When, three hours later, he at last found himself alone in his
compartment of the Saint-Mihiel train, he was sorely exhausted, terribly
broken by that murderous day, the hardest of his whole life. Before,
during and after the dinner, which they ate tête-à-tête, M. de
Claviers had said many other things the unconscious cruelty of which had
kept the young man on the rack. But as he lay back in the carriage,
lulled by the monotonous clamor of the train, which translated itself
into distinct syllables, it was those declarations on the stairway,
those words concerning the inventories, which recurred to his mind,
endlessly. In them were combined his melancholy premonitions of the
hours preceding the terrible crisis and the drama which was already
resulting from that crisis itself.
"But wherein has anything changed in my situation, so far as that
possibility is concerned?" he asked himself. "Didn't I know how he felt
on that point, and that he would be immovable? But yes, there is a
difference. Before I learned what I have learned, his theory of the duty
of the noble had some meaning to me. It has none now. I am not a
Claviers-Grandchamp, I am not a noble. The things that are valuable to
them have no value to the son of a Jaubourg! He talked to me about
honor! Honor! To me! But what I ought most of all to long for, is to be
mixed up in one of these affairs, to have to execute an order contrary
to all his ideas, and to act as I had made up my mind to act--before. He
will curse me? So much the better! So much the better! We shall never
meet again? So much the better! I could not stand such conversations as
that of this evening. I should betray myself. Indeed, this one went
beyond my strength. I love him too dearly! And who wouldn't love him? He
is so worthy of being loved!"
The physical and moral personality of the marquis was reproduced before
his mind with the accuracy and distinctness which long-continued
familiar intercourse produces. Handsome, intellectual, generous,
affectionate, entertaining, so kindly-natured and so perfect a type of
the _grand seigneur_, the "Émigré" had prestige, he had charm, and he
had been subjected to the atrocious outrage! That infamous deed provoked
an outburst of revolt from the son of the culprit.
"How could any one betray such a man? And prefer to him--whom? O mother!
mother!"
Landri was alone now. He could give free vent to the emotion that was
suffocating him. Lying prone on the cushions of the carriage, he wept at
last, and for a long, long while. All the tears that he had not shed
during the day he shed now,--those that he had forced back in
Valentine's presence, by an heroic effort of his will; those that he had
forbade himself to display to the indifferent curiosity of the
passers-by during his mad rush across Paris, and those that he had not
let fall when he was talking with M. de Claviers, within two yards of
the death-bed and later at the restaurant. And at the same time that his
heart found relief in tears a reaction took place in his mind. For the
first time since the dying man had begun to speak to him, he tried to
doubt.
"But she is my mother!" he sobbed. "And I believed that of her
instantly! Instantly, without inquiry, without proof!"
Inquiry! Alas! is there need of inquiry to make one believe what is
visible, what is before one's eyes?--Proof?--But a fact is itself a
proof, and the dying man was that evidence, that proof, that fact. His
face, his movements, his voice returned to Landri's memory. As plainly
as he saw the cushions of that commonplace compartment in their gray
coverings, the lamp in the ceiling, and the nocturnal landscape flitting
past the windows, he had seen a father die, bidding his son a despairing
farewell. He had seen a woman's lover haunted, possessed, deluded by the
memory of that woman. The dying man's outcries were not evidence: they
were reality, unquestionable, undeniable,--the fact, the indestructible
fact.--Doubt? No, Landri could not doubt. One by one he reviewed the
details of that scene, which had been so short--as short as the time
required to swallow a glass of poison, which, once it has passed into
the veins, freezes the very well-spring of life.
Among these details there was one, the threatening nature of which had
not made itself manifest to him until that moment, adding a new terror
to his agony. "The child shall have everything, everything," the sick
man had groaned; and, addressing his imaginary enemies: "You sha'n't
prevent that. I have found a way." Did these words mean that Jaubourg
had left Landri his whole fortune by his will? It was not possible that
that man, prudent as he was, and so intent upon concealing his paternity
that he had forbidden himself ever to embrace his son, should have
contradicted the whole tenor of his life, in cold blood, by such a step!
Was the way that he had found, a gift through a third person?
"Whatever it may be," said the young man to himself, "I shall refuse it,
that's all. I, too, shall know how to find a way to avoid touching that
money. It's quite enough that I am obliged to share in their falsehood,
in spite of myself, quite enough to inflict on a man I love and admire
and revere this daily affront. I take his name, his affection, when I am
not entitled to either. It is this sort of rebound that makes certain
forms of treachery so culpable. They fall too heavily on the innocent.
For, after all, I am innocent of this sin, and now it strikes at me
after thirty years. And I must deceive as they did, renew and prolong
their perfidy, conceal the truth from their victim, even at the price of
my blood!"
And as the names of the stations succeeded one another in the
darkness, interrupting with their unfeeling summons this inward
lamentation--Châlons--Vitry--Bar-le-Duc:--"How unfortunate I deemed
myself when I travelled over this road day before yesterday!" he
reflected. "And I should be so happy to go back to that night! One would
say that I had a presentiment of the catastrophe toward which I was
going, when I tried so hard to concentrate all my thoughts, all my
reasons for living, upon those two ideas: Valentine and the Army, the
Army and Valentine. I did not foresee, however, that I should so very
soon have nothing else, really, to live for. Now is the time when I
could honestly say to her: 'You and my profession, my profession and
you.'--To her, at least, I am bound, from this day, forever. We have
exchanged promises. We should be no more firmly bound to each other if
we were married.--The Army is my refuge. If I should leave it now, where
should I go?"
His refuge! That word, which represented the only succor that he could
expect from life at that moment, returned to the poor fellow's lips,
when, at the end of that sorrowful night, he saw through the carriage
windows about five o'clock the dark and mist-enfolded mass of the houses
of Saint-Mihiel against a sky in which the stars shone feebly. They were
crowded about the ancient abbey church, where, in the baptismal chapel,
may be seen the two children playing with skulls, the chef-d'œuvre
wherein Ligier Richier has represented, by that simple symbolism, the
whole destiny of man. The flame of the lamps barely lighted the waters
of the Meuse, winding rapidly through the damp shadows. The platform of
the station, when the young man alighted, was deserted and gloomy. So of
the streets through which passed the rickety, jolting vehicle found at
the station. But for him there issued from those shuttered houses the
sensation which is produced in us by the return to a round of daily
habits after a violent moral shock.
As his cab turned into Rue du Rempart he recognized the wall of the
garden where, on one of the paths, he had told Madame Olier of his love
three years before. His heart, exhausted by excess of grief, was amazed
to feel a sort of painful relaxation of its tension at sight of those
streets where he had so often fed upon his lover's dreams, had performed
for so many months his military duties. So he had guessed aright. He
could live--a hard and bitter life, it is true--by fastening himself
upon, by clinging desperately to those two last resources, hope and
activity, which fate had left to him; and it was with an impatience, not
happy surely but very manful, that, having donned his uniform, he
awaited the hour to go to headquarters and resume his daily occupations.
Although he had hardly slept during the night, his step was brisk as he
walked toward the barracks. If he was no longer conscious of what he had
called in his conversation with Valentine the joy of the uniform,--that
word joy would have no meaning to him for a long, long time!--he felt
its manly courage. He gazed at the high gateway with a strange
excitement in his eyes, ringed by tears and sleeplessness.
"I still have this, too," he said, using precisely the same form of
words as on the day before, when he left his dear friend on Rue
Monsieur; and as if in haste to resume the actual contact with that
stern but healthy and manly life, he quickened his pace, to enter the
courtyard the sooner.
It was barely eight o'clock. Gusts of a cold wind, the bitter northeast
wind that constantly sweeps the high plateaus between the Meuse and the
Moselle, lashed the white caps of the men engaged in grooming horses
before the stable doors. Subaltern officers, wrapped in their cloaks,
were overlooking them. In a corner, at the door of the kitchen, other
men, sheltered under an awning, were peeling potatoes. Others were
marching off in a squad to perform some task. Everything spoke of the
energetic and organized activity which makes a well-ordered barracks a
very noble human thing.
There, Landri was no longer, as at Grandchamp, the sole heir of a
nobleman on parade, himself a nobleman. He was Lieutenant de Claviers,
who was obeyed, but who obeyed. It will be remembered that he had called
that sensation too a joy. In what fashion he exerted his authority, the
glances of the men who saluted him according to rule, touching the vizor
with the open hand, told clearly enough. And he looked at them with the
watchful and kindly eye of the leader to whom every detail has its
importance. He noticed one whose slightly unhealthy pallor indicated
recent illness.
"So you have come back to duty, Teilhard? Since when?"
"Since yesterday, lieutenant."
"You are quite sure it was not too soon? Are you entirely cured of your
bronchitis?"
"Entirely cured, lieutenant."
"And your father? Did you spend your furlough with him?"
"Yes, lieutenant. In fact, I meant to come to see you, to tell you that
his business has picked up. He expects to pay a little of his debt next
month."
"Write him that there's no hurry, my good Teilhard," replied Landri
affectionately, motioning to the dragoon to move on. He saw a captain in
undress uniform approaching--no other than Despois, the husband of
Madame Olier's friend.