officer--what a pity! I blame most the wretches who are governing us,
for not understanding that, especially among us, a man cannot be
replaced. A man! When they have one who wants to serve, they ought to do
everything to keep him. In a campaign, one man is worth ten, twenty,
thirty, a hundred, yes, a thousand others! One would think that our
tyrants were afflicted with a vertigo that impels them to eliminate from
the army the men of heart, that is to say, the loyalists, the men from
whom their Republic has least to fear. The officer who refuses, as you
did, to break down a chapel door, is the officer who doesn't conspire,
because he has scruples, and those fools don't comprehend it!--I, too,"
he added, "I shall leave, and very soon. I don't think that I can stand
it. Yesterday they made us march against the churches, to-morrow we
shall be called upon for a campaign against the strikers. That is no
more a soldier's work than the other. The army may be employed, in
exceptional cases, to see that the laws are executed. But it must be one
of the exceptional cases. The reason for the existence of the army is
war, not police duty. Our politicians have a horror of war, of that
manly and sanctified school of heroism. They have the degraded taste for
armed demonstrations in the streets. Look you, they are talking of
sending us next week to adjust matters at the forges of Apremont.--For
heaven's sake, gentlemen, give us a policy of internal peace and of
proud dignity externally!--Adieu, Claviers. I wish that we may meet
again, you can guess where; foot to foot, charging the enemy. But will
there still be any cavalry to follow us?--I am wrong. We have no right
to despair, so near Vaucouleurs. What can you expect? It breaks your old
captain's heart to see you go away."
"Well! so they've slit your ears, my dear Claviers!" Such was
Vigouroux's first exclamation. "Ah! the--" And the lieutenant of
dragoons, who adhered to the great traditions of the Klébers and
Cambronnes, hurled a mess-room epithet at his comrade's persecutors. "Do
you know that the same thing came near happening to me? And why? Because
I exchanged two or three words with you when we dismounted on our return
from Hugueville. Gad! they didn't waste any time. That same afternoon
the colonel sent for me.--'Is it true that you congratulated Monsieur de
Claviers in public?' he asked me.--'I did talk with Claviers,' I
replied, 'but privately, when we were off duty; and if anybody claims to
have been present at our interview, he lies.'--Charbonnier hesitated a
moment. For all that he has the ideas that you know of, he's a good
fellow. And then, Vigouroux, Charbonnier--those names have a similar
sound, whereas Claviers-Grandchamp--However, 'I'll let it pass this
time,' he said. 'But be less talkative, young man. You may fall in with
another colonel than me.'--That's all there was to it. You see, two
minutes' conversation, and we were spied upon. It poisons life.
Claviers, to be surrounded by blackguards. It spoils the cooking at the
mess, which really hasn't been so bad this year. I can't eat without
talking, and no one dares to speak at the table now. If all the good men
like you, the staunch ones, should disappear, what would become of us?
But no matter, Charbonnier and his curs may say what they please, I
congratulate you again, and I authorize you to say everywhere that
Vigouroux cried 'bravo' twice over."
So Privat had not written! That was the whole significance, to their
former comrade, of the words of the two officers, one so distinguished
by nature, the other so simple-hearted, both equally attached to the
service and wounded to the quick in their military honor by abominable
orders. Later Landri was destined to see very often in his thoughts the
sad and honest glance of Despois in its deeply lined mask, and the
jovially disgusted lip--if one may say so--of the ruddy-visaged
Vigouroux. At the moment there was no place in his heart for sensations
of that sort.
His other visits passed off with the same alternations of painful
curiosity and comparative--but only momentary--relief.
The anticipation of the interview with M. de Claviers--the third since
he had known what he knew--consumed him with too fierce a fever. It
increased constantly as the minutes passed that brought him nearer to
the time when he would find himself face to face with him. Again, as in
the ride at the head of his dragoons to Hugueville-en-Plaine, he seemed
to see him and only him--only him on the railway platform, where very
few of his friends had the courage to come to bid him adieu; only him in
the carriage, where, lulled by the monotonous rumbling of the train, he
tried to imagine the words he was about to hear and those that he would
say in reply, endlessly and anxiously; only him, finally, in Paris,
where, as he stood in Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, before the door of
their house, his suffering acquired fresh intensity. He had not crossed
the threshold since the day when, coming from Saint-Mihiel by train, he
had gone there to dress, before going to Valentine's to ask for her
hand. That was the day before Charles Jaubourg's death!
Everything indicated that the manner of life in that seignorial mansion
was still as he had always known it. The old concierge saluted him from
his doorway with the same deferential and familiar expression. The same
stablemen, with the same gestures, were splashing pails of water on the
wheels of the same carriages. Garnier, the maître-d'hôtel, whose white
hair gave him a powdered aspect, received him with the same ceremony at
the top of the steps, when his arrival had been announced by the same
bell.
"Is Monsieur le Marquis well?" Landri inquired; and his heart gave a
great throb of relief, as on the day before with Despois and Vigouroux,
when the servant replied:--
"Why, yes, Monsieur le Comte, very well. Monsieur le Marquis went to
Grandchamp yesterday to hunt, with several friends."
"He hunts!" thought the young man. "Then nothing extraordinary is
happening! Evidently I was right. He wishes to talk with me about money
matters only." And he said, aloud: "Ask him if he can see me about ten
o'clock."
This touch of ceremoniousness was no novelty in the relations between
the father and son. Although the conventional courtesy which is
traditionary in old-fashioned families creates something like
embarrassment at certain times, at other times it reveals itself as
singularly beneficent in its operation. It ensures anonymity, if
necessary, when one is suffering. No one of the household suspected that
there was impending between the marquis and Landri one of those scenes
which mark a solemn epoch in two lives.
But did Landri himself suspect to what sort of an interview he was
proceeding when, at the appointed hour, he went down from his apartment
to the library, where M. de Claviers had sent word that he was awaiting
him? That large, high-studded room was on the same level with the
garden, which was fresh and bright-colored in summer, but so severely
bare and leafless on that dark December morning. The gloomy setting was
only too appropriate to the words that were to be exchanged there.
The marquis was standing in front of the vast fireplace, with his back
to the fire, whose bright flame twined about a veritable tree-trunk. It
was another of the old nobleman's manias, that huge fire of the olden
time. Standing before that monumental chimneypiece, he was himself at
that moment, despite his modern costume, more of an "ancient portrait"
than ever. But it was the portrait of one who was living through hours
of frightful martyrdom. The master of the hunt of the forest of Hez,
whose tall erect figure Landri had so admired in the group of sportsmen
watching the kill, was scarcely fifty years of age, despite the
sixty-five years that the genealogical tree of the Claviers-Grandchamps
gave him. The head of the family, who was at that moment awaiting the
heir to his name in the immense room lined with wainscotings and books,
was an old man. His ruddy complexion mottled with white spots, his heavy
eyelids, the wrinkles on his brow, told the story of the long sleepless
nights of those four weeks. The jovial gleam of his deep blue eyes was
replaced by an expression of feverish ardor, wherein one could divine
his secret agony--at that moment! For the undiminished pride of the
whole physiognomy said plainly enough that the nobleman had not
surrendered, and that before any other witness he would have found a way
to conceal his wound.
What was the wound? To know, Landri had no need to question him. What he
had foreseen had happened. M. de Claviers suspected the truth. To what
extent? How had he been warned? The young man instinctively collected
all his strength, in order to undergo without faltering an interview in
which his own secret might escape him. He was about to realize once more
the superiority of Race, and what a powerful and resolute character it
bestows upon its authentic representatives.
M. de Claviers was infinitely affectionate and sensitive, but he was
above all else a man. In him, character was in very truth nourished upon
and permeated by those principles upon which he declaimed with a fervor
which was sometimes so discordant, even--especially, perhaps--in his own
circle. At supremely critical moments he was certain to manifest the
energy born of an unchangeable resolution, which scorns equivocation,
and which has the unswerving decision of the surgeon's knife. He, too,
was unaware exactly how much his son--in name--knew of a situation of
which he had never dreamed before he had had overwhelming and
indisputable proof of it. He was justified in thinking that the young
man was altogether ignorant. That was enough to justify, in a weaker
nature, the temptation to hold his peace, which Landri assuredly would
not have escaped. In the marquis's eyes one duty overshadowed everything
else,--the duty of saving, in this shipwreck of all his confidence and
all his affections, so much as he could save of the honor of the
Claviers-Grandchamps. He was the depositary of the name, and he proposed
to impose his will on the intruder,--justifiably, indeed,--without
concern for aught save that honor. And so when the young man,
immediately on entering the room, began to speak, alluding to their last
interview, he cut him short with a word.
"I did not send for you," he said; and the failure to address him by the
familiar _tu_ seemed strangely harsh in his mouth, for never before,
since his childhood, had Landri known him to address him thus, even in
his sternest moments;--"I did not send for you to resume a discussion
which, henceforth, has no interest or even any pretext. Something has
happened during the month since we last met. It is destined to change
our relations forever, and in every respect. It has seemed to me that I
owed it to myself and to you to make it known to you. Prepare to receive
a very painful blow, as I received it, bravely."
"I am prepared, father, to receive anything from you," Landri replied,
"for I am sure that you will never do anything except for what you
believe to be my good."
This ambiguous sentence was a final effort to conceal--to what avail
now?--what he on his side had learned. At the word "father" the marquis,
firm as he was, could not help closing his eyes for a second. But his
voice, full and deep, did not falter as he continued:--
"Look over those two letters first; then we will talk."
With outstretched finger he pointed to an envelope lying on the desk,
unsealed. On opening it the young man saw that it did in fact contain
two letters. One, type-written, was thus conceived:--
"Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp doubtless is unaware of the
reasons that led one of his friends (?) very recently deceased, to make
him his residuary legatee. The accompanying document will enlighten him.
If Monsieur le Marquis is not satisfied, we have other documents to
furnish him." And this denunciation was signed: "An admirer of the house
of Claviers-Grandchamp"!
The other letter--Ah! his recognition of the handwriting stopped the
beating of Landri's heart. The paper, slightly yellowed by time, still
gave forth a vague, musty sweetness, the faint, evaporated odor of
Geneviève de Claviers' favorite perfume,--the perfume that hovered
about the kisses of which the child was born who unfolded the sheet with
hands that trembled so that he tore it across the middle. It was a love
letter, written without precaution, in the perilous sense of security
which a long-continued liaison finally imparts even to those who are
most closely watched. The first three words,--"My beloved Charles,"--the
"tu" that came next--news of "our dear little Landri,"--and other
phrases, no less explicit, would have made it impossible for the most
obstinate to doubt.
From whom had the letter been stolen? From the lover after he received
it? Or had villainous hands intercepted it, hands which the careless
mistress deemed faithful? Why had they waited for years before using
this formidable weapon, and why was it produced to-day, when the two
culprits were protected forever by the tomb against the vengeance of the
outraged husband? That the will which made M. de Claviers sole legatee
had induced this revolting denunciation, the other letter needed not to
assert with such insulting cynicism. It was sufficient evidence in
itself. The motive was of little importance. The effect had been
produced, as complete as the most implacable animosity could wish.
Landri stood as one stricken dumb before the man whose name he bore, by
virtue of the sin of the dead woman who had insanely written those lines
with her impassioned fingers. When he ventured at last to raise his
eyes, he saw that the marquis pointed to the fire on the hearth. He
threw the two papers, laden with deadly meaning, into the flames. A
minute later a few charred fragments, whirling about in the smoke, alone
testified that those letters had ever existed. Doubtless the young man's
face had exhibited an extraordinary poignancy of suffering during that
silent scene, for, even at that moment, M. de Claviers could not help
pitying him.
"I could not perform the task incumbent upon me," he said, "except with
your aid and with you aware of the facts."
"Do not reproach yourself, monsieur," said Landri. "Those letters have
told me nothing. I knew it all before."
The blood rushed suddenly to the old man's face, attesting the burst of
passion that this unexpected reply aroused in him. His blue eyes flashed
fire, and as his former habit of speech returned to his lips in that
explosion, he cried:--
"You (_tu_) knew it all! And you did not speak to me! You knew all, and
your conscience didn't say to you: 'That man who brought me up, who has
always loved me like the most affectionate of fathers, was betrayed in
his conjugal honor! He is betrayed to-day in his probity! He accepts
that abominable legacy in good faith! He is grateful for it! He is going
to use it to pay his debts, to release his patrimony! His patrimony,'"
he repeated. "'At any price I must prevent that!'--You knew all, and you
allowed me to go away the other day without uttering the cry that you
owed me! Yes, you owed it to me, for what I have given you with all my
heart for so many years, for what I was still giving you a few moments
ago.--I was just about to apologize to you for not being able to conceal
the shameful truth from you! And you betrayed me, you, too! You made
yourself an accomplice in the supreme outrage!--Ah! villain, you are
indeed of their blood, the child of--"
He checked himself. Even in that outburst of his rage his great heart
recoiled from the barbarity of insulting a mother, however unworthy, in
the presence of a son. But the paroxysm was too violent to pass off
thus. His clenched fists opened and closed. He seized the first thing
that offered itself, a silver paper-knife lying on the table beside an
uncut review. He broke in two the blade, which snapped like glass. Then,
brought to himself by the very frenzy of the act, he addressed Landri
again in a tone in which the tempest still rumbled:--
"But explain yourself, unhappy boy! Explain your silence! Why did you
keep silent?"
"Because I loved you," said Landri, "and because my mother was
concerned."
A heart-rending cry, so simple and poignant in its humanness, of the
sort that the heart emits when it is touched to its lowest depths! M. de
Claviers had loved the young man too long and too deeply, that affection
was still too largely mingled in the horror which his existence inspired
in him, for him not to be moved to the very entrails. He made a gesture
which he instantly checked; and, as if he were angry with himself for
that weakness, his face clouded anew as he inquired:--
"And from whom did you learn of this thing?"
"On Rue de Solferino--on that Tuesday. Oh! don't compel me to live
through that frightful scene again!"
"He spoke to you!" roared M. de Claviers. "To you! to you! He dared!"
"He is dead," replied, nay, rather, implored the young man.
Again his innate generosity carried the day in the nobleman's heart; he
placed his hand over his eyes, the same hand with which he had traced
over the remains of his false friend the great sign of pardon. These
sudden outbursts of his speech and his passion frightened him, no doubt.
This interview which he had sought affected him too profoundly. He
collected himself thus for a few seconds, and when he began again to
speak his tone had changed. He uttered his words now with a sort of
haughty coldness, hurried and harsh, which made his interlocutor feel
even more keenly perhaps the utter hopelessness of their situation.
"It is useless to prolong an interview that must be as painful to you as
to me. Listen to me, I beg, without interrupting me. In my capacity of
head of the Claviers family, so long as you bear its name, I consider
myself as having with respect to you both duties and rights. My duty is
to treat you ostensibly as if you were my son!" His eyelids drooped once
more over his eyes, as he said this. "I shall not fail in that duty.--My
right is to demand that you abide by my decision in everything that
concerns the defence of my family's honor. That honor is threatened.
Such villainies as this are a sign." He pointed to the place on the desk
where the envelope had been. He still saw it there! "They prove that
people have talked about it, and that they are talking. We know enough
of the world, you and I, to know that its fickleness exceeds its
ferocity. We know, too, that it has, in spite of everything, a sort of
justice of its own. There is nobody, I say nobody, who can honestly
believe that Geoffroy de Claviers-Grandchamp accepted a legacy knowing
it to be infamous. If, therefore, he retains it, it must be because he
does not believe that it is infamous; because he is convinced that his
wife has been slandered. I propose,--understand me,--I propose that
people shall say, I propose that people shall think, that Madame de
Claviers has been slandered. Consequently I shall not renounce this
legacy after I have publicly agreed to accept it. Need I tell you that
that money fills me with horror, and that I shall keep none of it? It is
your money. I propose that you shall have it all. But this restitution
must be made between you and me. Unfortunately I have already given
orders that I cannot cancel without causing comment, to Métivier's man,
Cauvet, that miserable Chaffin's successor. So that restitution cannot
be made for some little time. In fact, I must have time to carry out my
plans.--There's one point settled between us, is it not?"
"It is for you to command," said Landri, "and for me to obey."
"I come to the second point. We can no longer, I do not say live
together, but see each other. We must part, and forever, while adhering
faithfully to the programme I have outlined. The avowed reason must be
one of those that our set will accept without looking beyond it. That
reason is all ready--it is the mésalliance which you proposed to make
and which you must make. A month ago the mere thought of it was
intolerable to me. I showed you that plainly enough. To-day--" he shook
his head with a bitter smile. "It is a horrible thing to me that the
family you will found will bear the name of mine. But then I can do
nothing. The Code would not allow me even to compel recognition of the
circumstances. Besides, I have no right to demand that you should not
make the most of your life. I cannot prevent that. I cannot prevent you
from existing. No. You will marry therefore, ostensibly against my will.
You will give me your word not to live in the same city with me, not to
present your wife in our circle. I do not wish to meet you or to meet
her.--Wait," he exclaimed imperiously, as Landri was about to reply. "If
I were not certain, I say again, that people are talking, things would
take care of themselves. You would leave this house this morning, never
to return. But people are talking, and as neither you nor I have taken
anybody into our confidence concerning our two discussions,--at Hez and
at Saint-Mihiel,--the abrupt announcement of your marriage at this
moment might be taken for a pretext. No matter how well everybody knows
that I am not a man of these times, this theory of mésalliances is so
weakened of late years, that people might say and would say: 'He has
seized this opportunity; there's something else.'--Now, I propose that
the reply shall be, as with one voice: 'No, there was nothing
else.'--You have left the army under circumstances that have aroused the
sympathy of everybody about you--about us, I should say, since no human
power can prevent our interests being mutual. It is natural that I
should take this time to receive, to bring people about you. I will
receive--we will receive, together. I shall find the strength to
maintain this attitude, and so will you. It will last as long as we make
it, but we must arrange it so that, on the day when the news of your
marriage and our rupture becomes known, everybody who is intimate with
us shall say: 'Poor Claviers! he was so fond of his son!'--I doubt not
that there will be those who will add: 'What a fool!'--One's vanity is
not to be wounded when one thinks of honor, and the only way for me to
defend Madame de Claviers' honor is to seem to believe in it. In that
our interests are really mutual, with a mutuality which is not a
falsehood. She was, she still is my wife, and she is your mother."
"I repeat that I will obey you in everything," said the young man.
"It remains for me to touch upon two other points," continued the
marquis. "I have reflected much, during these last days, upon the
character of the person you are going to marry. You love her. Yes, you
must love her dearly to have spoken to me as you did when we were
together at Saint-Mihiel. You see, I do not underrate your affection for
me. You will be tempted to open your heart to her. If she doesn't
deserve to be loved as you love her, do not do it; and if she does
deserve it, do not do it. I ask you to give me your word that she shall
never learn this ghastly secret from you."
"I give it to you, instantly," Landri replied. He added, in a low voice,
so much in dread was he of another outburst of that rage which, he felt,
was still smouldering: "But if I should allow myself to tell her the
whole truth, I think--that I should tell her nothing new."
"You have spoken to her already!" ejaculated M. de Claviers in a
threatening tone. "Confess it. Ah! if you have done that--"
"I have not done it," Landri protested; and with tears in his eyes, he
added: "I entreat you, never believe that I could have acted otherwise
than you have taught me to act all your life and are still teaching me
at this moment. I will tell you everything. Then you can pass judgment
on me."
And he began by describing the first indication--her sudden entreaty to
him not to go up to the invalid's apartment on Rue de Solferino, on his
way from Paris to Grandchamp; and how, after the visit to Jaubourg and
the revelation, he had said to himself: "Madame Olier knows all,"--and
in what a state of feverish excitement he had arrived at her house, and
the horror he had had of speaking, and his silence in the face of her
grief, and that grief itself, and their betrothal in that moment of
supreme emotion. Then he told of the letter he had received from her
immediately after the Hugueville affair, and of the others, in which she
had not made a single allusion to M. de Claviers.