"Never! No, never! This is no mere caprice, as you must know. It
concerns the thing that has been the mainspring of my whole existence.
As for the authority in the name of which I forbid--you understand, I
forbid--this marriage, you can defy it and violate it. The shocking laws
of the present day allow you to do so; but if you dare, you will do a
worse thing than if you had broken in the door of Hugueville church the
other day. You will insult your father.--I prefer to believe," he
continued, after another silence, during which he had visibly striven to
control himself, "I prefer to believe that you will reflect. You
hesitated at Hugueville, and then the Claviers blood won the day over
the poison of modern ideas with which I cannot see how you have become
infected. This marriage out of your class is another case of revolt
against prejudices. If our ancestors had not had them, these prejudices,
for well-nigh eight hundred years, you and I would not be
Claviers-Grandchamps. If you choose, from weakness, from aberration of
mind, to cease to behave like one of them, an infamous code forbids me
to prevent you, but know this, that I shall die of despair!--Nothing! he
cares nothing for that!" he continued, rising and pacing the floor. "He
does not answer!--When I see you thus, speechless, obstinate, insensible
to my suffering, I do not believe my eyes. But answer me, pray! Speak to
me! Ask me for further time, at least, so that I may not go away upon
those horrible words, that threat against your father. For you did
threaten me. You said: 'I shall have to! I shall have to!'--Come,
Landri, say that you will regret those words, say that I have moved
you."
"You tear my heart," the young man replied. "But I have given my word. I
shall keep it. I shall marry Madame Olier."
"And I," exclaimed M. de Claviers, exasperated to the highest pitch by
this renewed resistance, "I give you my word that if you do, I will
never see you again.--Enough of this!" he continued in an imperious
tone. "For an hour past I have shown you all the affection, all the love
that I have in my heart for you, and all my grief as well, and you defy
me. God knows that I did not come here with the idea of speaking to you
as I am going to do. But you shall not defy the paternal majesty with
impunity!" And it was true that at that moment majesty did emanate from
him,--the majesty of the fathers of an earlier time who, as private
dispensers of justice, condemned their sons to imprisonment, and
sometimes to the galleys.[6] "You will ask my pardon, you understand,
for what you have presumed to say to me, or I will never see you again.
And to prove that this sentence of separation between us, if you do not
obey, is final on my part, I shall begin as soon as I reach Paris,
to-morrow morning, to segregate our property. We have been engaged of
late, Métivier and I, in adjusting my affairs which Chaffin's
improvidence had allowed to fall into an unfortunate condition. I shall
take advantage of the opportunity to surrender to you your power of
attorney and all your property. I will spare you the necessity of
demanding them."
"I?" cried Landri. "You cannot believe--"
The names of Chaffin and Métivier had suddenly reminded him of the
financial catastrophe the imminence of which had so alarmed him. He had
asked the notary to say nothing, and he was quite sure that his
correspondence with him was unknown to the marquis. So that he could not
have interpreted it as a step suggested by Valentine to obtain
possession of his fortune. But what if Métivier had been lacking in
professional discretion? What if that last little sentence signified
such a suspicion?
"I believe nothing," rejoined M. de Claviers, "except that on certain
roads one does not stop."--Then, to prove that he proposed to be just,
even in the execution of his sentence upon his rebellious son: "But as
you haven't yet reached that point, and as you may still have some
scruples, considering that I spoke to you about my burdens,--let me tell
you that my difficulties are all at an end, thanks to the devotion of a
friend. Charles Jaubourg had none but distant relations, of whom he had
reason to complain. He has left me his whole fortune by his will. I came
to tell you this news also," he added with a sigh, "and to read you the
provisions of the will. Nothing could be more lofty in sentiment, more
delicately expressed. I have accepted the legacy, in the first place,
because it's absolutely honest money: Charles's father was probity
itself; secondly, because I do not injure any one--his cousins are all
rich and he never saw them; and finally because I loved him as much as
he loved me. One can count the attachments in life that do not deceive
one.--However I need not tell you that, without this legacy, your
fortune was intact. I will order Métivier to communicate with you about
the settlement. As for me, when the day comes that you desire to recover
a father, you know the conditions.--Adieu."
Landri had listened with, an indescribable mixture of fear and
disgust--fear of betraying his excessive emotion, disgust at the infamy
of which he was the helpless witness. This then was the ghastly means
devised by Jaubourg to leave his whole fortune to his son! And should
he, the son, permit that money to be accepted thus, with such touching
and confiding gratitude, by that nobleman, so proud and of such
magnificent moral integrity? If, by his silence concerning what he knew,
he should make himself an accomplice in that final act of treachery,
would he not cap the climax of the outrage by his false generosity? The
cry of protest was on his lips, and he did not utter it. There was
something more atrocious than the failure to warn that honorable and
terribly abused man, and that was for his wife's child to tell him what
that wife had been.
M. de Claviers had walked to the door. He seemed to await a word, a
gesture, a glance; and Landri stood silent, with downcast eyes. The
marquis himself started to turn back. Then, in face of the young man's
obstinate immobility, his dense eyebrows contracted, his eyes became
stern. He repeated:--
"Adieu. Do you understand that I am bidding you adieu?"
"Adieu," said Landri, without raising his eyes, while the dispenser of
justice, with a shrug of his powerful shoulders, left the room to avoid
giving way to the fresh wave of indignation that swept over his great
heart.
[Footnote 5: In French law, a _sommation respectueuse_ is an
extrajudicial document, which a young man of twenty-five or a young
woman of twenty-one, proposing to marry without parental consent, is
required to serve upon his or her parents, requesting advice concerning
the marriage.]
[Footnote 6: Merlin, _Répertoire de Jurisprudence_, "Puissance
Paternelle," Sect. III, § 1:--"Basset mentions a sentence pronounced by
a father in person, by the advice of his family, against his son. He
declared him to be unworthy to succeed, and sentenced him to the galleys
for twenty years. The procureur-général of the Parliament of Grenoble
appealed from this sentence as too light, and by decree of September 19,
1663, the son was sentenced to the galleys for life."]
VII
ALL SAVE HONOR
Four weeks had passed since the young man had listened to the Marquis de
Claviers-Grandchamp's wrathful stride through the reception-room of his
apartment, without calling him back to cry out the truth, to prevent
that deplorable injustice: the debts incurred by his imprudent but
generous and chivalrous prodigality paid with the money of his wife's
lover! After those twenty-nine days Landri found himself once more, in
the same place and at the same hour, surrounded by the same familiar
objects amid which his period of arrest had passed.
He was free now. On the preceding day he had been sentenced by the
court-martial at Châlons, by five votes against two, to a fortnight's
imprisonment, to date back to his original arrest. On his return from
Châlons to Saint-Mihiel, he had found in his room an official
communication, stating that "by presidential order, under date of this
day, Lieutenant de Claviers-Grandchamp is retired from active service on
half-pay." That sheet of paper was the veritable "Here lies" of the
soldier, rather than the letter that he had received from the colonel on
his return from the Hugueville expedition. Landri had crumpled it up and
thrown it aside, paying no further heed to it. All his attention was
given to a telegram which he read again and again, an indefinite number
of times, seated, with his head in his hands, at the same table and in
the same attitude as the marquis the other day, while his valet and the
orderly went in and out, packing his trunks.
Landri was to return to Paris by the night train. The telegram in which
he was so absorbed was from M. de Claviers' maître d'hôtel. It was a
reply to the only letter that he had written the marquis since their
interview. He had sent it on the adjournment of the court-martial, to
inform him of the verdict. It contained a careful but very distinct
allusion to his proposed marriage, and stated that he proposed to go to
Paris unless his "father"--he continued to call him by that name--should
see any objection to his doing so. He read and reread the despatch
acknowledging the receipt of that letter.
"Monsieur le Marquis, being obliged to leave for Grandchamp, instructs
me to say to Monsieur le Comte, in reply to his letter, that he will
expect him at Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré to-morrow.
GARNIER."
That M. de Claviers had not put aside his severity, this missive, so
deliberately impersonal and at such a time, was a sufficient proof.
"However, he is willing to see me!" said Landri to himself. "This
interview will be another very painful one, but I must not shirk it."
Upon receipt of the despatch he had devoted all the energy of his mind
to looking at the impending meeting from the point of view that he had
constantly maintained during that month of almost absolute solitude. He
had passed the whole of it in trying to define his duty, and he had
always come at last to the twofold necessity: silence and separation,
separation and silence. During those interminable hours of reflection he
had not had one moment's doubt. Not for a moment, either, had he ceased
to suffer at the thought of Jaubourg's will, of the shocking abuse of
confidence committed for his benefit by his real father, and in which he
could not avoid being an accomplice, rather than commit a still more
shocking crime by breaking the heart of the most loyal of men, by
dishonoring his own mother. His grief finally took the shape of remorse
for his compulsory participation in this vilest of falsehoods. Every
time that he had remembered, during those four weeks, the petrifying
revelation, he had thought instantly of the method resorted to by the
dead man to leave him his fortune, and had shuddered with impotent
abhorrence.
Nothing that had happened had diverted his mind from that obsession:
neither the questions asked during the official inquiry, nor the
consultations with his counsel, nor his appearance before the judges,
nor the manifestations called forth by his act. Expressions of sympathy
had come to him by hundreds from every part of France, from superior
officers and comrades, even from privates. He had received also a great
number of letters and postal cards filled with low-lived insults. This
was a proof that the Marquis de Claviers was right, and that the fine
gesture of refusal before the door of the church to be burglarized,
since it exasperated the enemies of the army, evidently answered a
deep-rooted craving of the military conscience. But alas! it was only a
gesture, only a pretence. The officer had obeyed a sentiment which none
of his admirers or his insulters could even suspect. Praise and
criticism affected him no more than other impressions of the external
world. Madame Olier's letters alone had discovered the secret of
communicating to him a little of their tenderness. He had received one
each day. Evidently the dear woman realized that she had hurt him the
first day by speaking of M. de Claviers. Never after that, in the course
of those chats with pen in hand, did she so much as hint at the
marquis's existence. "Somebody has told her about the legacy," was
Landri's conclusion, "and she understands."
He had guessed aright. Madame Privat, who had come to Paris for
Jaubourg's funeral, had paid Valentine a visit. She had told her, with
the acerbity of a disinherited relation, about her cousin's will.
"You remember what I told you about his passion for Madame de
Claviers-Grandchamp? Now he leaves Monsieur de Claviers all his
property! Privat insists that he can't see anything wrong. He claims
that it's the surest proof that nothing ever happened.--You must
confess, my dear friend, that it has an evil look."
Madame Olier had made no reply. But her heart had overflowed with pity.
She had seen Landri as he was at their last meeting, in turn paralyzed
and convulsed by grief, and she had divined the terrible truth. Her
affection had assumed a gentler, more caressing phase, across the
distance, and on that afternoon preceding his return to Paris, as he
bent over that enigmatical despatch, the certain precursor of fresh
struggles, the convicted officer, to exorcise his troubles, evoked the
image of his only friend, his betrothed and his comforter.
"I shall see her to-morrow," he said to himself. "I shall be able to
keep the secret that honor commands me to keep, and she will read my
heart and pity me. She loves me! _He_ is going to ask me to give her up.
I had the strength to resist the first attack. I am sure of having still
more against the second.--But is that really what he wants to talk to me
about?--What else can it be?"
In this question which Landri asked himself, or rather, which asked
itself in his mind, in his own despite, another supposition was
comprised. If it were true that Madame Olier had heard of Jaubourg's
attentions to Madame de Claviers,--and of that he had no doubt,--others
must have heard of them, too, others would be talking of them. In the
first shock of the revelation that had been the son's first thought. The
reader will remember that, after he had started for his club on Rue
Scribe, after the scene on Rue de Solferino, he had fled wildly, like a
madman, with the terror of a culprit flying from a witness of his shame,
simply because he saw a member of the club cross the threshold. Charles
Jaubourg's will must have revived all the gossip, aroused anew the
slumbering malevolence. Who could say that the marquis had not received
anonymous letters, that his suspicions had not been awakened?
One fact had surprised Landri more than all the other incidents of those
four weeks. As he dwelt upon the hidden meaning of the despatch, his
mind reverted to that fact which suddenly assumed very great importance.
How was it that M. de Claviers had done nothing in respect to one of the
matters discussed in their interview--the choice of an advocate? The
motives that made him irreconcilable on the subject of the marriage to
Valentine were respect, worship, idolatry of his name. Would not those
same motives naturally have led him to persevere in his original
purpose? The heir to that name was summoned before a court-martial. That
was a public fact which had no connection with their private
disagreement. How was it that the "Émigré" had not insisted that the
accused should be defended--that was his own word--on the ground of the
principle to which he devoted his life: the honor of the noble? It was
not necessary to communicate with his son for that. It would have been
enough to send the young man a defender duly "instructed," according to
another expression of his. He had not done so. Why? Landri had had to
apply to Métivier the notary, who had sent down a kinsman of his, a
distinguished practitioner, but purely professional. The marquis and the
counsel had never met. Why? Did it mean that some new event had
intervened? What was it? The awakening of suspicion? Or was the wrath of
outraged paternal authority sufficient to explain his abstention?
Landri was so desirous to believe the latter that he went to the trunk
in which his books were already packed, and took out the work wherein
the marquis's ideas were collected and marshalled: "The History and
Genealogy of the House of Claviers-Grandchamp." The mere title made
Landri tremble, but he remembered having read a note, which he must find
at any price. When he had found it, he spelled out all the syllables,
word by word, in a low voice. He longed to read therein an explanation
of the attitude of the Feudalist, thwarted in one of his most firmly
rooted convictions. It was a fragment of a discourse delivered by the
eloquent Duveyrier before the Parliament of Paris, in 1783. M. de
Claviers had cited the passage apropos of the severity of one of his
ancestors toward a younger son, with enthusiastic approval and
emphasizing the last lines as if to make them his own.
In this argument Duveyrier was supporting a father's denunciation of his
own daughter to the authorities.
"Can we," he said, "can we, without distress, reflect upon the immense
interval that separates us from those who handed our laws down to us? By
what steps of progressive enfeeblement we have substituted for that
mental energy, for the power of genuine virtue, a factitious sensibility
which takes fright at the slightest effort; not the healthy sensibility,
inseparable from kindness of heart, which has compassion for the
criminal while punishing the crime, but that flexibility of character,
that flabbiness of heart which leads us to purchase the indulgence of
others by our own indulgence, and which we call sensibility in order to
legitimize our weakness, to ennoble it, indeed, if that were possible!
In the last days of the Republic, when discord was ushering in
depravity, Aulus Fulvius deserted Rome to follow Catiline. His father
called him back. That citizen, a rebel against his country, was still a
dutiful son. He obeyed. He submitted to the sentence of death pronounced
by his father. Our ancestors admired this example of sublime virtue. We
deem it harsh. Our grandsons will call it barbarous. _We are beginning
to be surprised that a father should exercise the right that the law
gives him, to avenge his betrayed honor, his contemned authority. We
shall end by depriving him of that right. From the impossibility of
punishing the children will result contempt for the father,
insubordination rebellion, and universal anarchy_."
"That's his way of thinking, and he's profoundly in earnest about it,"
thought Landri, as he closed the bulky volume. "That's enough to make my
opposition exasperate him, so that he won't have anything more to do
with me until I have given way.--Where were my wits? He wants to see me
to-morrow about those same matters that he had Métivier write me about.
Must I imagine, too, that he has mysterious reasons for dividing our
property? He told me in this very room of his purpose to do that. That
alone proves how much weight he attaches to my offence against him. In
his eyes it's a crime. I ought to congratulate myself that he is so
rigid in his convictions."
This explanation was very plausible. But it did not allay the vague
anxiety that the telegram had caused Landri. For this reason: Maître
Métivier had sent him numerous papers to sign, about a fortnight
before, accompanying them with a long letter, of a more personal sort.
He said in it that he strongly approved of this segregation of the
property of the father and son, and that he saw therein good augury for
the future. He added that M. de Claviers had, upon his advice, entrusted
the liquidation of his indebtedness to a former clerk of his,
Métivier's, one M. Cauvet, an advocate who made a specialty of notarial
practice. This Cauvet had discovered a serious irregularity almost
immediately. Chaffin had been dismissed. "Perhaps Monsieur le Marquis
was a little severe," observed the cautious Métivier. "Although the
fraud was highly probable, it was not absolutely certain."
"So I was right," was Landri's instant thought, "Chaffin too was a
traitor." And he had gone no farther. In his present reflections matters
assumed a different aspect. Such violence under excitement was certainly
a pronounced feature of M. de Claviers' temperament. No other reason was
necessary to explain it than the discovery of a breach of trust. But the
consequences? Landri remembered that the son of the steward thus
summarily dismissed was Pierre Chaffin, the physician who had watched at
the bedside of the dying Jaubourg. Suppose that that fellow had repeated
to his father what he had unquestionably overheard? And suppose that the
father, to revenge himself, had in his turn repeated that secret?
Suppose that he had written to the person most interested?
"No," Landri answered his own questions, "Chaffin may have been tempted
by the money that passed through his hands, and have become a thief. But
he is not a monster. And Pierre is a physician. There are still some of
them, yes, a great many, who keep professional secrets. No; nothing can
have happened in that direction, nor in any other. Our conversation of
the other day is quite enough."
Despite these arguments, the return to Paris, under such conditions and
in obedience to that telegram, inspired the young man with an
apprehension that he could not overcome.
"It's being shut up in this apartment, where I have too many sorrowful
thoughts to disturb me," he said to himself; and he went out, to try to
conquer his weakness by walking.
He employed the last hours of the afternoon in paying farewell visits.
But they did not give him, after such a succession of violent shocks,
the peace of mind which he was very near requiring physically. He might
have measured the extent of the change wrought in him during those few
weeks, by this trivial fact: during that last walk from one end to the
other of the town where he had done his last garrison duty, he did not
feel a moment's nostalgia for the profession to which he had been so
attached. One anxiety overtopped everything else, of the same nature as
that which he had undergone before the telegram came, and had tried to
shake off: to ascertain whether the news of the infamous will had
reached the ears of his comrades, and what they thought of it.
Landri had heard vaguely long ago that Major Privat was a distant cousin
of Jaubourg. He had no sooner set foot on the sidewalk than he
remembered it. That officer had retired the previous winter. He had
certainly continued to correspond with some of his comrades in arms. Had
he written them the news, and if so, with what comments? In that case
what interpretation would those straightforward, simple hearts, whose
uncompromising loyalty he knew, place upon M. de Claviers' acceptance?
Such an idea was not of the sort that permits the intrusion of others.
In vain did the pictures of military activity on the streets of
Saint-Mihiel multiply themselves about the cashiered lieutenant, as if
to remind him of his youthful dreams and their destruction. He paid no
heed to them. Thus he was able to pass, without being suffocated with
despair, the headquarters gate, which he had entered only the other day
with the firm determination to retain his uniform. He met, without a
tearing at his heart-strings, several troopers of his former command,
led by his successor, who was mounted on Panther herself, become in
those few weeks a docile and spirited cavalry mare. He recognized
Baudoin's insolent and sneering profile, and Teilhard's face, already
less frank and open, evidently recaptured by anarchistic influences.
That is one of the bitterest pangs that a real leader of men can
feel,--to see the living tool that he has hoped, and has begun, to
shape, go astray in other hands. Landri was hardly moved by it. On the
other hand, he was intensely relieved to find that neither Despois nor
Vigouroux, the first two officers whom he called upon, had the slightest
suspicion of the legacy left to the Claviers by Privat's cousin. He had
the courage to mention the former major's name to both of them. Plainly,
they had not thought of him for months. They had many other cares in
their heads, which they both poured into his ears, each after his
manner.