did, however, betray something like wonder. Never had Landri opened his
heart to him in this wise when he believed himself to be his son. Never
had he ventured to show to his father that charming, quivering
sensibility, so passionate and so delicate, so easily wounded and so
loving. He disclosed himself in all the loyalty of his refined and
affectionate nature, at the moment that the marquis and he were
exchanging the words of their final conversation. What more could they
say to each other? M. de Claviers felt that impossibility more than all
the rest. His old love for his son stirred him anew, and the more it
assailed him the more obstinately he stiffened himself against it.
Furthermore, throughout that narrative he caught glimpses of Valentine's
charming character, and it was intolerably bitter to him to recall
another betrothal--his own--forty years before, so superb and splendid,
to end in--what? In this heart-rending inquisition about a deadly shame!
"You are right," he said at last, "it is only too evident. She knows
all. But how?" His features assumed an expression of deeper chagrin as
he added: "For a month I have been constantly confronted by this
question, without reaching even a suggestion of a reply: Who can have
stolen those letters?--'We have other documents to furnish!'" He
repeated the informer's words, in such a grief-stricken tone. "'Other
documents!'--Is it the heirs? But I saw them at the funeral. There was
an ex-major there, one Monsieur Privat, who spoke to me about you. I can
never believe in such hypocrisy! They knew about the will, and they
behaved admirably. No, the blow does not come from them. From a servant?
With what object? Blackmail. Oh! let him unmask then! I will pay him
whatever he wants for those other letters!--But no. A servant would
never have devised the devilish irony of the signature: 'an admirer of
the house of Claviers-Grandchamp'! That smells of the club, does that
dastardly insult, of low-lived envy of those who do not palter with the
cowardly customs of these days."--He uttered another roar. "Ah! If I
could only find out who it was! If I could!" And, shaking his head:
"This is not a question of myself at all. Once more I say, the honor of
Madame de Claviers is at stake, and this is the last promise I propose
to demand from you, that you would seek what I cannot seek--the hand
that dealt the blow. You may find it and you may not. But you must try,
so that they may not repeat it."
"Have you no suspicion of anybody?" inquired Landri, "Chaffin, whom you
dismissed--"
"Chaffin? Why, I had had the letter ten days when I settled with him.
No. Chaffin's a thief. He has never wanted anything but money. He'd have
tried to sell the papers. Let us not go astray in suppositions as
useless as my lamentations. Perhaps by questioning Madame Olier you may
learn something. Too much, perhaps."--A pause.--"No. That is not
possible, either."
What was the shocking idea to which that "No" was an answer, and the
"But if it were?" that he added?
"You are aware of my desires now," he concluded.
"I will comply with them," said the young man. He had understood the
wicked and atrocious suspicion that had suddenly suggested itself to the
cruelly betrayed husband, and he pitied him the more for it. "I promise
you."
"That is well," rejoined M. de Claviers. "I accept your promise. Each
day I will write you my instructions concerning what I wish you to do.
It is unnecessary for us to be alone together again unless you have some
information to give me as to the inquiry you are to undertake. I do not
hope very much from it.--I forgot. I asked the Charluses and Bressieux
to luncheon. Be here at quarter past twelve. Now, go."
"Shall I have the strength to keep that promise of mine?" Landri asked
himself as he went down at the appointed hour to the small salon where
the marquis received his guests when he gave a luncheon. To reach it he
had to pass through a succession of magnificent apartments, and at a
distance he could hear the ringing tones of the loud voice that was
associated with all the memories of his childhood and youth. Was the man
who, but a short time before, by turns stoical and desperate, cold as
ice and aflame with passion, accused, commanded, groaned, suspected, in
such a frenzy of grief and indignation, really the same as he who
greeted him with these words, in a jovial tone, as he waved his hand
toward the friends whose coming he had announced:--
"Well, well! So you keep us waiting, master hero! You have no right to,
being new at the game! But you have credit for some time to come, after
what you have done. Hasn't he, Mademoiselle Marie?"
"Oh! a big bunch of it," said Marie de Charlus, laughing with her
beautiful white teeth. "Ah! you tease me. Monsieur de Claviers, and I'll
revenge myself by talking slang. But that won't prevent my going back to
the French of your old France to say to your son that we are all, men
and women alike, very, very proud of him."
"Very proud," echoed Charlus. "To see a fine thing finely done always
gives pleasure. But when the one who does it belongs to the _comme il
faut_, class, the pleasure is doubled."
"It is indeed," said Bressieux, shaking Landri's hand in his turn. "We
are not spoiled in that way."
"It's because _comme il faut_ folk think too much of their cakes and
ale," retorted Marie, glancing at the Seigneur de la Rochebrocante with
the laughing insolence that was peculiar to her.
"It is principally because the _comme il faut_ folk are not what they
should be [_comme il faudrait_]," said the marquis. "It's so easy to be
of one's own party, nothing more, whereas nowadays no one is of his own
opinion even; and I see none but people who, on the pretext of broad and
liberal ideas, admit that their enemies are in the right. Landri was of
his own party, that's the whole story, without talk and without parade.
You must tell them about it, my boy, and how those excellent peasants
applauded you and your dragoons when you turned on your heel in the
teeth of the disgusted prefect.--But luncheon is served. Will you allow
me to offer you my arm, mademoiselle? Lardin has promised to surpass
himself, and we shall have, to drink this tall fellow's health, a
certain Musigny of a royal year. For we still drink, and drink Burgundy
too, we old fellows, just as we still eat, and with a good appetite, in
that old France that you make sport of. A sweet thing your new France
is! All mineral waters and diet!"
Liveried servants held the chairs for the guests around the table, the
dark wood of which had no cloth, according to the old ceremonial of
_déjeuners à la française_. The great garden imparted an almost rural
atmosphere of peace to that room, which the host enlivened with his
cordiality. To one who observed him closely the contagious warmth of his
joviality was in too striking contrast with the feverish gleam of his
eyes, and the traces of suffering on his face. But the pride of
defending his name sustained him; and, forestalling himself any possible
observation of that sort, he, who had never lied, said:--
"I was very anxious for Landri to return. 'That's the true remedy for
me.' I told Louvet, when he talked about diet, apropos of those two or
three attacks of vertigo I told you of, Charlus. But it seems to me that
this young man doesn't seem glad enough to see us. You'll see that he'll
regret the army."
And, not to fall behind the tragic heroism of that comedy, Landri, who
was being served at that moment with eggs à la Grandchamp, one of the
accomplished Lardin's thousand and one creations, remarked, laughing in
his turn:--
"I certainly sha'n't regret the cuisine of the mess. It is true that
your chef has outdone himself to celebrate my fall from grace."
He put his fork to his lips with the respectful manner of a gourmand to
whom eating is a solemn affair, which drew from Bressieux the
exclamation:--
"You are coming to it! The table is the least deceitful of all things,
and when one of Lardin's chefs-d'œuvre is put before one, in Chantilly
of such delicacy as this," he added, pointing to his plate,--and one
could not tell from the twinkling of his eye whether he was giving vent
to his enthusiasm for antiques or was indulging in secret sarcasm,--"one
may well say, despite the famous _mot_, that one knows the joy of
living!"
VIII
ON A SCENT
Landri had not been mistaken--those phrases that had escaped M. de
Claviers, to be instantly interrupted:--the "too much, perhaps," and the
"but if it were!"--signified that for an instant at least that man,
formerly so entirely a stranger to all the meannesses of suspicion, had
harbored the unfortunate suspicion that Madame Olier was the denouncer
of Madame de Claviers. An utterly insane idea even from a physical
standpoint! How could Valentine ever have obtained the letter?--And even
more insane morally. It attributed to a young woman, gratuitously,
without the slightest evidence, the most shameless of schemes: to
separate Landri forever from the man who had hitherto believed him to be
his son! And with what object? To marry him with less difficulty?--That
theory would not stand a single instant. The wound must in truth have
been very deep, that the great-souled _grand seigneur_ should have come
so quickly to such a transformation of character.
On leaving the house on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, at the end of
that luncheon which had left him with the impression of a nightmare,
Landri recalled those words among all the rest, and that insinuation so
insulting to his Valentine. He found therein an additional reason for
desiring to know who had committed that two-fold private crime,
unpunishable by law, yet truly ferocious: that theft of a
correspondence, aggravated by an anonymous denunciation. In that
interview, the strain of which was almost beyond human endurance, he had
seen distinctly that only that knowledge could relieve in any degree the
agony with which the marquis was suffocating. He himself realized the
necessity of the destruction of those "other documents," as the
anonymous writer had said, in heartless official phraseology. Such
letters, if retained, constituted a too formidable menace against the
dead wife's honor, which the betrayed husband was generously determined
to save. How could the son have failed to feel that his self-esteem
required him to take part in that work of salvation? And how could
Valentine's lover not have it at heart that not even the shadow of the
shade of that most unreasonable suspicion should be let hover above the
woman whom he was to marry and whom M. de Claviers would never know?
That he could have thought so of her, even in a moment of suffering and
frenzy, was enough to intensify the young man's longing to see the light
in that abhorrent darkness. But what scent was he to follow, and upon
what indications? He asked himself this question, set free at last from
that constraint against his natural instincts to which he whom he had so
long called the "Émigré" had condemned him--while condemning himself
thereto through a sense of honor worthy of another age.
He bent his steps to Valentine's house, to seek in her soft eyes, in her
dear smile, in her loved presence, strength to endure this test, the end
of which it was not for him to fix. Would he question her, as M. de
Claviers had not hesitated to advise him to do? To learn what? That the
disinherited relations had told her of Jaubourg's will, and that she had
drawn therefrom a conclusion only too evident to one already informed?
That she was informed, Landri knew only too well. In the long solitary
meditations of his weeks of arrest at Saint-Mihiel, he had succeeded in
piecing together the whole story, and in understanding why the Privats
had always treated him with a coolness which he had noticed only at a
distance.--Yes, what was the use of trying to learn anything more? If it
were the Privats from whom the anonymous letter came, Valentine did not
know it, and what purpose would it serve to introduce her to such
villainy? True lovers have a passionate and rapturous respect for that
fine flower of delicacy and of illusion which constitutes the spotless
charm of the feminine heart, when it has not been prematurely brutalized
by the blighting realities of life. This sentiment alone would have
deterred Landri from questioning his sweetheart, even if he had not felt
a sort of spasm of horror at the thought of accusing his mother to her.
Silence is the pious charity of the son to whom reverence is forbidden.
And then, too, even if he had essayed to speak, the young woman would
have arrested the blasphemous words on his lips.
He had no sooner crossed the threshold of the little salon on Rue
Monsieur, where she awaited him, than from the glance with which she
greeted him he became aware that she too dreaded a painful explanation.
And how could he mar the delight of their meeting by such a hideous
disclosure, finding her as he found her, so youthful and lovely, still
in black--although the approaching end of her mourning could already be
detected!
Valentine wore a gown of crêpe de Chine and lace, the soft fabrics
admirably in harmony with the slender grace of her whole person. On her
neck a string of pearls glistened softly, a bunch of violets bloomed at
her waist, and on the light curls of her ash-colored hair was a
_torsade_ of black tulle. It was, as it were, the rebirth of the
woman,--those jewels and flowers, and that evident yet artless desire to
please which imparted a flush as of a rose-petal to her thin cheeks, a
gleam to her blue eyes, a quiver to her smile.
She had her son with her, and was feverishly smoothing his hair, of a
golden shade like the pale gold of her own. She pushed him gently toward
Landri as he entered the room, as if he were a symbol of the union of
which she dreamed--a union in which nothing of the child's happiness
should be sacrificed, in which he should always remain with her and his
second father.
"Give Monsieur de Claviers a kiss, Ludovic," she said, "and tell him
that you and your mother prayed for him while he was in prison, so
unjustly."
"It's true," said the child, "and I am glad you've come out! They won't
put you in again, will they, monsieur?" he added apprehensively.
"No," replied Landri; and he, too, caressed the golden curls, while the
mother said:--
"I kept you here only because you wanted to see Monsieur de Claviers.
You have seen him, so go to your lessons.--He is fond of you," she
continued, when the door had closed behind the little fellow, "and that
is so sweet to me!" And, taking the young man's hand in her own, she
added: "Yes, I prayed so earnestly for you,--but before your
arrest,--that you would do what you did do, and I am so proud, so proud!
When I read in the newspapers what happened at Hugueville, I felt so
proud of you!"
"And I," he said, "it is so sweet to be with you once more!"
And it was true that the affectionate welcome of that passionately loved
woman, after the heart-rending scenes of the morning, which had
themselves followed upon a succession of racking and corroding emotions,
was like the divine coolness of the oasis between two wearisome journeys
over the scorching sand of the desert--a feast of the heart almost too
intoxicating, so that it seemed as if the contrast could not be true,
that that rapture was a lie and on the point of vanishing.
"Yes," he continued, "so sweet. For, you see, I have no one but you in
all the world."
"Have you spoken to Monsieur de Claviers of your plans?" she asked. "You
have never written me about it."
She interpreted Landri's words only in part in their real meaning, not
wishing to seem to have divined the other part. Keen as was her
intuition, she had not discerned the whole of the drama in which her
dearly loved friend was involved. She had guessed that he was Jaubourg's
son and that he knew it. She had no idea that the marquis also knew it.
"I have spoken to him."
"And he has refused his consent?"
"He has refused it."
"Landri," she resumed after a pause, "you know now that I love you, and
how dearly! When I answered yes to your question five weeks ago, I did
so without any illusions. I was certain that Monsieur de Claviers would
never agree to our marriage. I disregarded that, because I saw, I
thought I saw, that you really could not live without me, and because I
loved you. Do not seek in what I say something that is not there. I love
you still. I am, I shall always be, ready to give you my life.
But if you must face difficulties that are too great, engage in a
contest that is too painful, I want you to know that you are free. I
will wait for you one year, two years, ten years, twenty years, if
necessary--forever." She repeated: "Forever."
"After what Monsieur de Claviers and I have said to each other," Landri
replied, "everything is at an end between us, whether I marry you or
not."
She looked at him while he uttered these words in so melancholy a tone
that she shuddered at it. He turned a little pale, realizing that she
understood; and in an outrush of pity like that of the other day she
drew him to her, pressing his hand against her heart.
"I will try to wipe that out, too," she said, quivering with emotion.
It was his part to seem not to comprehend all that that protestation
signified, and he rejoined:--
"He was not content with refusing. He insists that, when I am married, I
shall not live in Paris."
"I will answer you like Ruth," she said. "'Whither thou goest, I will
go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.'"
"Even if I do not simply leave Paris--even away from France?"
"Even away from France."
A little sign disclosed the intensity of the emotion with which she was
overflowing. The pupils of her eyes dilated so that her blue eyes seemed
to be black; and enveloping, caressing, embracing Landri in that sombre
glance, she said:--
"You have no idea of the affection that I have been heaping up for you
in my heart during these three years when I have hidden from you so much
of what I felt, in order not to ruin you. That love has burrowed into me
to such a depth that it would make me tremble if you were not you, if I
were not sure that you will never expect of me anything except my duty,
that you will never ask me to live under such conditions that my son
would not be brought up, as he must be, so as to remain, even away from
his country, a child of France!" She repeated: "Even away from his
country;" then asked, timidly: "Does Monsieur de Claviers really demand
it?"
"He demands nothing," Landri replied.
"But you think that that's the only way to reconcile him in some degree
to the idea of our marriage, eh?" she asked; and, as he bowed: "Then we
must not hesitate," she added. "You do not know either how much you have
taught me to love him, even without knowing him; how grateful I am to
him for the influence he has had on you, for the traces of his wonderful
sense of delicacy which I find in yours. When I said yes to you the
other day, I had a feeling of remorse for taking you from your duty and
from his affection. You tell me that there is no occasion for it, that
all is at an end between you. That takes away my remorse but makes me so
sorry for you. Remember at all events that to part is not to forget each
other. You may retain an image of each other against which you have no
reproach to make. I hope that it may be so between Monsieur de Claviers
and you, and that when he thinks of you he will realize that you loved
him, that you still love him, as he deserves, and that there is only
this life between you."
The trees in the little garden beyond the door-window were as desolate
as those which spread their leafless branches outside the high windows
of the dining-room on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. The leaden sky of
that winter's day was as depressing. The young woman's words, albeit not
especially significant, and so considerately vague, affirmed none the
less, by their very reticences, the same ghastly and incontrovertible
fact which had weighed so heavily upon Landri's heart during the
agonizing formal luncheon an hour earlier. But once more Valentine had
the miraculous double sight of love. She had appealed to the only
sentiment in that suffering heart which could assist him to live through
the far too trying period that was to precede the ostensible rupture
with the marquis. He could find the requisite strength only in his
passionate craving to prove to him the depth of an affection which had
never been more intensely alive.
At those words of his compassionate friend and loving monitress,
Landri's heart, always so susceptible to affection, was once more
inspired with a genuine purpose, and when he left Rue Monsieur, he was
conscious, even in his distress, of that species of inward satisfaction
which one derives from a determined plan of action, when it is based
upon a courageous acceptance of circumstances, even the most hostile,
and upon the most deep-rooted attachments of our being. Yes, although
the rôle of dissimulation imposed upon him by M. de Claviers was most
painful, he would summon strength to go on with it as long as it should
be necessary. Difficult as was the task of discovering the anonymous
informer, he would devote himself to it. He was able to offer that
reparation to the great and noble-hearted victim of the falsehood of
which he himself was born. He would offer it to him before leaving
Paris--and, perhaps, other reparation too. When he had spoken to
Valentine of the project of making their home far away from France, he
had given voice to one of the ideas that had been most constantly in his
mind during those last weeks. In a voluntary exile to the western part
of the United States,--or perhaps of Canada; there he would still be at
home!--he saw a possibility of laying aside, without exciting comment,
that name of Claviers-Grandchamp, which was not his own. With what
emotion he had heard the dear woman's reply: "Even away from
France!"--And that assurance added to his courage.
He needed that reinforcement of courage to endure the dinner which he
was obliged to eat that evening at the club on Rue Scribe, sitting
opposite M. de Claviers. The latter had transmitted to him his commands
to that effect, as had been agreed, in a note which contained this line
only: "Dinner at the club, at eight o'clock."--He needed it again, and
more, the next day, to consent to take his seat beside the marquis, at
ten o'clock, in the box at the Opéra which had been Madame de
Claviers'. Charles Jaubourg had passed so many evenings there gazing at
his mistress enthroned in all the splendor of her social royalty.
Something of that liaison floated still about the hangings of the box,
which the châtelain of Grandchamp had retained in pious regard for her
memory.
And what courage again, on the days that followed, to appear at banquet
after banquet, at reception after reception, always beside that
companion, who, in the presence of witnesses, continued to treat him
with the old-time warmth and cordiality! And as soon as they were alone,
in the automobile which took them from or to the house, not a word, not
a glance; and upon that face, more haggard and more aged from day to
day, was the stamp of the haughty grief that will never complain or
forgive.
How many times, as they drove home thus, Landri was tempted to ask: "Are
you satisfied with me?"
Satisfied! What a word to be uttered between them! Would the time ever
come when he could utter a different word? when he could say to him: "I
know the name of the anonymous villain who wrote that infamous letter.
Here are the other documents that he threatened you with?"
Between the moments that he passed in this way, in this heart-rending
attitude of dissimulation before the world, and the hours which he had
at once adopted the delicious habit of devoting, every afternoon, to the
comforter of Rue Monsieur, his only preoccupation was this: to find a
scent and follow it. But what scent? But how?
"I must proceed upon the definite facts," he said to himself the first
day. Now, what were these "definite facts?" That the sending of Madame
de Claviers' letter to her husband was coincident with the publication
of Jaubourg's will. What could the sender have hoped? That M. de
Claviers would refuse to accept the property. Who would have profited by
his refusal? The heirs-at-law. It was advisable therefore to investigate
in that direction, leaving Privat out of the question. Landri knew that
officer too well to suppose for an instant that he, who was rich in his
own right and through his wife, would have been guilty of so base an
action. For whose benefit, indeed? The Privats had no children.
Certain inquiries, cautiously instituted, convinced him that the other
three heirs were no more open to suspicion. One was a wholesale
tradesman on Rue du Sentier, Paris; another, the owner of extensive
vineyards near Lectoure, where the Jaubourgs originally came
from; the third, a magistrate of distinction, held the office of
procureur-général in one of the courts of appeal in the Nord.