de Charlus insolently, addressing the fashionable broker, whom she hated
twice over. As a young woman of noble birth and very proud of her rank,
she was, despite her "modernism," in a constant state of irritation
against those of her own caste who fell away either socially or morally;
and then too everybody who was involved, closely or distantly, in
Landri's marriage to Madame Olier, was insufferable to her. Now there
was a rumor, partly justified indeed, that, but for the subtle mediation
of the Seigneur de la Rochebrocante, the Marquis de Claviers would have
been unable to turn over to his son his mother's fortune. With the
slanderous imagination of a rival, Marie believed that, if that payment
had been delayed, the scheming Madame Olier would certainly have
preferred to delay the ceremony until the final settlement of the
accounts. She said to herself that Landri's eyes would have been opened
by such base conduct, that the marriage would not have taken place--in
short, all the follies of frantic jealousy. Bressieux had to pay the
bill.
"I?" he replied, without irritation. He was not sensitive except when he
chose to be, and he was too dependent on the Charluses not to lower his
flag before the witty Marie. "It is true that I had the good fortune to
prevent poor Geoffroy from being robbed too outrageously in the sale of
the wonders of Grandchamp. Thanks to my advice, he got six millions in
all. Altona offered four, and he wanted to ask five. The tapestries
alone were worth eighteen hundred thousand francs.--This talk about ten
millions of debts is all fable. If you want my opinion, he is absolutely
free from debt, and has a good hundred thousand francs a year. Evidently
the blow was a hard one."
"It seems that Landri, by that woman's advice, demanded interest on
interest," said Madame de Sicard.
"I will never believe that of him," said Marie de Charlus hastily. "As
to her, it's true enough that she doesn't take very well. It's well
deserved. She'll have to work hard to get into society."
"And so she won't try," rejoined Bressieux. "Geoffroy told me that the
couple were going to settle in America."
"Aha! so Landri plays the _coup du 'ranch'_ on us!" said little Sicard.
"We know all about that. You'll see them coming back within a year, to
Paris-les-Bains, where life is so happy, even under the Republic. And
he'll present his wife, and we shall receive her, and we shall be jolly
well in the right. Between ourselves, the excellent Claviers has shown
no common sense in this whole business. One can't live in opposition to
his time to that extent."
"Would you prefer that he should live in opposition to his name?"
interposed Charlus. To him, too, Landri's marriage had been an
over-bitter disappointment. "Upon my word!" he continued, "it's most
astonishing to me that Claviers' conduct, judicious and wise and
legitimate as it has been, should be criticized. And among ourselves!
But everything is going the same way, from great to small. Dine out, no
matter where: people to-day don't even know how to place their guests at
table. Claviers set a superb example."
"I agree with you," said Bressieux. "If we do not defend our names, what
shall we defend?"--Then, with his characteristic dissembled irony:
"Evidently Geoffroy is ruining the market. But don't be alarmed, Sicard.
The title-exchange isn't in danger of being closed yet--even under the
Republic, to adopt your expression."
"All the same," said Elzéar de Travers, coming to the rescue of
Simone's husband, "there's one pack of hounds less! And such a pack! How
it was kept up!"
"And what a table!" said Sicard.
"For my part," said Simone, "I am for the lovers. If I had been in
Monsieur de Claviers' place, I'd have scolded a little, on principle,
and then I'd have given one of those parties that he knew how to give."
"Look you, my dear," interposed Charlus angrily, "when I hear you and
Jean talk like this, I wonder whether we oughtn't to long for another
'93, to bring you all to a realizing sense of what you are and what you
should be."
"Oh!" laughed Madame de Sicard, "now you're just like my grandmother de
Prosny, who used to prophesy the guillotine every night."
"I know," Marie de Charlus broke in, "and you replied: 'You hope for the
staircase of the nobles, but you'll get the wall.'--Wall or staircase,
it's always blood that flows, and I agree with old Claviers, let us try
to see to it that it's pure blood; and his grandchildren's won't be
that. He did all he could to prevent it, and he did well. That's what I
call _chic_ and not _chiqué_."
And upon this conclusion of the "emancipated _gratin_," the conversation
took another turn, Bressieux having asked Simone, with an air of
indifference, whether she had seen the new play at the Français, in
order not to prolong the discussion of such dangerous topics. They
talked in undertones of a proposed marriage between Sicard's brother and
a Demoiselle Mosé, and the satirical personage almost regretted having
yielded to the temptation to bury his poisonous fang in the self-esteem
of the happiest of the "Three Halves." The commission he had received in
the second Altona deal--two hundred thousand francs, for the Chaffins
who are in society are more expensive than the others--had put him on
his feet for some time. But who could say? The future Sicard-Mosé
ménage might need advice about furnishing their abode. And so he tried
to repair with the young wife the bad turn he had done himself with her
husband by his epigram. He tried without energy, however. Contradictory
as it may appear, Geoffroy de Claviers' misfortune saddened him, despite
the two hundred thousand francs so quickly earned. He had pocketed the
money, but had actually made Sieur Altona pay another million. Moreover,
as there was in him a man of race, compared with the dealer, he had
admired the demeanor of the châtelain of Grandchamp during a trial of
which he alone understood the hidden side. In fact it was Jean de
Sicard's little attack on the chivalrous marquis that had drawn his
_mot_ from him; and while the salon discussed the actors on Rue
Richelieu, he was elsewhere in thought.
"Claviers in England?" he said to himself. "To buy horses? Nonsense! He
probably wanted to see Landri once more. How he loved him! No one will
ever make me believe that he was not told the truth by that Chaffin,--to
whom the infamous performance didn't bring luck, however, for Altona
tells me he has had a paralytic shock. It's another piece of luck for
me, that shock. The rascal would have claimed a percentage, on the
ground that he baited the hook!"
Observers of the type of Bressieux, those disguised tradesmen, who earn
their bread--or their luxuries--by studying the characters of their
dupes or their rivals, really do possess a second sight. At the very
moment when these comments, neither very intelligent nor very foolish,
very kindly or very unkindly, were being exchanged in the Charlus salon,
another scene was taking place many miles away; and that scene was the
veritable conclusion of this tale.
This dénouement had for its stage one of those spots where it seems
least likely that words of a certain sort can be spoken: a room in a
hotel at Liverpool, that city on the bank of the Mersey, the immense
mart of England's commerce, one of the extremities of a vast moving
street of steamships and sailing vessels, of which the other ends are
Boston and New York! City of docks and railway-stations, of smoke and
speed, panting with the travail of a world, with its irregular and
chaotic structures of brick and stone, built in haste, above which the
finest days spread only a mistily blue sky, dimmed by clouds of vapor.
It was such a veiled, uncertain sky that Landri and Valentine saw
through the bow-window of a small parlor in that hotel, at which they
had alighted the day before. They were awaiting the time to go on board
the boat that was to take them in six days to New York, whence they were
to journey, via Montreal, to Ottawa, to prepare for their permanent
establishment. Little Ludovic had insisted upon going with his tutor on
board the steamer, which the husband and wife--they had been married ten
days--could see at the dock, within a few rods of the hotel. The huge
vessel was called the Cambria, the Latin name of the principality of
Wales. She was of thirty-two thousand five hundred tons, with engines of
seventy thousand horse-power; seven hundred and eighty feet long and
eighty-eight feet beam. Her vast black hull towered above the gray water
of the river, swollen by the rising of the tide. A floating palace,
pierced by innumerable port-holes, and dominated by four huge
smoke-stacks, reared its white walls above the waterline. Locomotives
whistled. Tram-cars ran along their electric wires, with a snapping
noise. Between the hotel and the landing-stage were travellers going to
and fro, giving orders, looking after their trunks, or hailing porters.
Valentine had sent her maid on before, so that not even a package was
left in that empty parlor whose dark mahogany furniture emphasized its
depressing commonness. How far away they were, she from her homelike
little sanctuary on Rue Monsieur, he from the magnificence of Grandchamp
and Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré! That contrast was the anticipatory
reflection of the exile that Landri had desired and she had agreed to.
The melancholy aspect of their surroundings intensified the distress
with which the young man was weighed down. He was thinking of M. de
Claviers, and he said to his wife:--
"You see, he has not even given me a sign of life. If he had intended to
write he would have written to London. He knew my whole route, day by
day, hour by hour, but not a word, not a sign that he retains even a
little of the old affection!"
"He retains it all," Valentine replied. She had taken her husband's
hand, and pressed it gently, as if to make the compassion with which she
was overflowing pass into his heart to whom she had given her whole
life. She saw him bleeding from a deep, deep wound, even in his
happiness, and she loved him with a love that was the more profound and
passionate therefor. "There is still an hour and a half before we sail,"
she added. "Let us wait."
"Wait?" rejoined Landri. "I have done nothing but that since that
horrible moment when he went out of the door without glancing at me,
without turning his head. I ought to have gone to his house and asked
for him, tried to see him."
"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed. "If only I didn't give you bad advice when I
advised you simply to write! I had such a strong belief that we should
let him return of his own motion! But I shall hope till the last second.
You'll get a letter, a message,--something."
They said no more, listening intently to the faintest sounds
on the staircase, echoing with the hurried footsteps of the guests
of the hotel, where people live after the fashion of a railway
station--between the swift ocean steamers like the Cambria, and the
boat-trains--"specials" as they are called in England--that run
constantly from Liverpool to London and from London to Liverpool. At
every such sound Landri had a convulsive shudder which Valentine soothed
with a warmer pressure. The steps did not stop at the door, and all the
visions of the past two months rushed back into Landri's mind, to
increase twofold the craving for another farewell from him whom, in his
thoughts, he still called his father.
He saw himself once more, leaving the mansion on Rue de
Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, after their last, distressing interview, and his
quest of a furnished apartment in which to take up his abode for a few
weeks. He lived through the days which had followed, when he was
arranging the preliminaries of his marriage and his departure, avoiding
familiar streets and faces. Several episodes stood out more clearly than
the rest: visits to Métivier, one especially, when the notary, gazing
at him with such inquisitive eyes, despite professional discretion, had
spoken of the sale at Grandchamp--of a chance meeting with Pierre
Chaffin, who had turned his face away, an innocent victim of his
father's shame;--another with Altona, when the future baron had saluted
him with a familiar, almost patronizing, _coup de chapeau_, as from one
gentleman to another!
He saw himself receiving an envelope directed in the marquis's
well-known hand, which contained a receipt for nearly three million
francs deposited to his account in the Bank of France. It was Jaubourg's
fortune. And he felt again the beating of the heart that he had had
when, after much reflection, he went to a priest at the church of
Saint-François Xavier, who was Madame Olier's confessor. What a
contrast to the morning when, jumping from his automobile, he ascended
the steps of the same church, to throw the chauffeur off the scent! He
entered the church on this second occasion, beset by more serious
anxieties than that of assuring the secrecy of his visits to Rue
Monsieur! He had gone thither to request the priest to be his
intermediary in an anonymous gift of that money to the "Society for the
Relief of Soldiers Wounded in the Armies of Sea and Shore." How proud he
had been and how hopeful, when, a week later, that difficult project
once realized, he had been able to send with his own hand to M. de
Claviers, in a letter, the documents which attested that investment!
This "French Red Cross" was still the army. How sad he had been when the
marquis did not reply!
Nor had he replied to a second letter, in which Landri informed him of
his wedding and the date of his sailing. And the young man saw himself,
too, in one of the chapels of the same church of Saint-François,
kneeling before the altar with Madame Olier, in the presence of no
others than his wife's two witnesses, relations from the provinces, and
his own two, Captain Despois and Lieutenant Vigouroux. Last of all, he
saw himself writing to the Marquis de Claviers a last letter, in which
he set down the details of his journey: the date of his arrival at
London, the length of his stay and the address of his hotel; the date of
his arrival at Liverpool and the address of his hotel there, and the day
and hour of sailing; and he told him also the name he had chosen among
the ancient patronymics of the Candales--Saint-Marc.
When he signed "M. and Mme. de Saint-Marc" on the hotel register at
London, for the first time, what a strange emotion had assailed him,
made up of relief and of sorrow together! And he had said to himself,
possessed still by the persistent image of the man whose son he had for
so many years believed himself to be: "The word of farewell that he
denied to Landri de Claviers, who was not a Claviers, he will not deny
to Landri de Saint-Marc, who, through his mother, is a genuine
Saint-Marc."
Vain reasoning! That supreme sacrifice had not triumphed over inexpiable
resentment. And in the excess of suffering caused by that silence, now
evidently final, Landri looked at Valentine, who was looking at him. In
her travelling costume she was very slender and youthful. Her fathomless
eyes expressed such boundless devotion! Her fragile grace seemed to
appeal so for protection! And, drawing her to him, he held her long in a
close embrace, with the sensation that he could still live, for her and
through her.
Strange mystery of memory! While his lips were pressed upon his dear
wife's, he remembered M. de Clavier's remarks concerning those exiles
who leave their city, "carrying their gods with them." In his
imagination he heard the "Émigré's" loud, clear voice saying those
words in his room at Saint-Mihiel.--Suddenly--was it an illusion?--he
thought that he heard that voice, in very truth, speaking in the
corridor.
"Listen!" he said, grasping Valentine's arm. "Some one is coming. Why,
it's he!"
"It is he!" she repeated, turning pale; and, as some one knocked at the
door, "I will leave you alone. It's better so." And, on the threshold of
the adjoining room, she turned, with her hand on her heart, to repress
its throbbing: "I told you to hope."
She had hardly left the room when the door opened and, behind the
bell-boy, appeared the form of the Marquis de Claviers. Aged even more
in the last two months, his face more haggard and more hollow, he was
more than ever the Seigneur, the man of lofty lineage, who, wherever he
goes, is a Master. He was profoundly moved at that moment, when he was
taking a step so directly contrary, it seemed, to his recent attitude;
but he found a way to maintain, in his whole person, that species of
haughty bonhomie which was characteristic of him. He saw Landri, and
simply, without a word, held out his arms. The young man responded to
that gesture, which betrayed such deep affection, and they embraced, as
if they were still in those days when, as they rode together through the
forest of Hez, they believed themselves of the same blood, offshoots of
the same trunk, a father and son who might differ in ideas, but who were
bound together by a chain as indissoluble as their own persons. A father
and son! They had not ceased to be so in heart, and in that moment of
passionate impulse, after they had forbidden themselves to show their
affection during so many days, they listened to naught save that heart.
"Ah!" said M. de Claviers, "you have not gone! I have come in time!--No.
I could not let you go away so. I could not. I wrote you. I prepared a
despatch. I sent neither. It was the sight of you that I craved--to hear
your voice, to speak to you once more. I resisted up to the last moment.
I knew that it would cost me so dear to lose you again! And then, when I
saw the hour for the last train for England draw near, after which it
would be too late, I held out no longer. I went to your hotel in London,
thinking that you might have postponed your departure.--However, here I
am and here you are. You have behaved so admirably! That very last act,
too--your refusal to keep that money! I shall at least have told you
again that I thank you. I shall have told you that I have never ceased
to love you."
"I am the one who has to thank you," replied Landri, "for understanding
the appeal of my letters. It is true: to go so far away without seeing
you again was very hard. I would have endured that grief, like the
others, without rebelling. But I think that I did not deserve it. I,
too, have always loved you so dearly, revered you so--"
"You deserved no grief at all," the marquis hastily interrupted. Then,
dropping into a chair, and in an attitude of utter dejection, "none at
all," he repeated, "and you were justified in thinking me terribly
cruel."
"Cruel?" cried the young man. "Don't say that. Don't think it."
"I do think it," M. de Claviers replied. "I felt that you were
wretchedly unhappy when we parted. You stood there, I saw, loving me
with all your heart, awaiting a word from me. I did not say it, because
I too loved you too well. If I had spoken to you then, I should not have
had the strength to go on to the end of what I had to do. That money
must be repaid. I must sell the treasures of Grandchamp. I must place an
indestructible barrier between you and myself, in the eyes of the world,
so that it might suspect nothing. I was obliged to stifle that paternal
feeling which I could not succeed in destroying. But it was I who formed
your character! If I had not been the heir of the Claviers-Grandchamps,
the depositary of the name, the representative of the race, I should
have held my peace for love of you when I received that anonymous
letter. If I alone had been involved, I would have swallowed the insult.
You would never have known what I knew. Because of them, in the interest
of their house, I had to act as I did. But I was able to measure your
grief by my own. And I had my dead to encourage me, while you--"
"I had you," interrupted Landri. "I had your example. You say that you
formed my character. That is much truer than you have any idea; and I
myself did not know myself, did not understand to what degree I thought
as you think concerning matters of moment, until I was taught by this
sorrow. You remember that, in that conversation after the hunt, the last
afternoon of intimacy that we ever had, you spoke of the indestructible
connections, the unbreakable tie between ourselves and those from whom
we descend. And I argued with you. I maintained the right of the
individual to live his own life, to seek his own happiness. The instant
that I learned the secret of my birth, I realized how entirely in the
right you were in that discussion. Your right to demand satisfaction
from me, although I was not personally culpable, appeared to me so
clearly established! And so of my duty to give you that satisfaction,
entire, complete. I felt that the very quintessence of man is in this
solidarity between the present and a past which was his before he
himself existed. I realized all that nobility meant. All your ideas,
against which I had fought so long, revealed themselves to me in their
living truth. I made them my guide in the conduct which you are kind
enough to approve. When you said to me, 'For your sake I can forgive,'
what a healing balm you poured into my heart, and upon what an aching
wound! Even in my misery, I felt a peace of mind which has not abandoned
me. That is what has upheld me."
"Ah, my child!" returned the marquis. "Yes, I can call you my child! You
talk of balm poured upon wounds, but who, pray, allayed the pain of my
wound a little, if not you? Your thoughts, your resolutions, your
actions--I have loved everything that came from you, and everything has
helped to prove to me that this at least had not been wasted--my efforts
during so many years, to inculcate my opinions in you, to make you a
man. Ah! I too have learned many things through this suffering. You say
that you fought a long while against my ideas. That was because, in
prosperity, they were mixed up with too many other things. Yes, I
yielded to too many temptations. I was too proud of my name, and too
fond of life. You might well have thought that there was more pride than
reflection, more emotion than reason in the principles whose real force
you discovered when the test came. I did not derive from them, when I
was fortunate, all that I should have done. In the rank in which
Providence had placed me, I did not see clearly enough the good that one
might do. Because of that I deserved to be punished, and, no doubt, my
dear ones through me. In a race which has endured for centuries, many
secret sins must have been committed, which demand expiation. I
interpreted this terrible misfortune in that sense. I accepted it and
offered it to God; and, as I told you, I forgave. And now," in a tone of
infinite melancholy, "I must offer Him my solitary old age.--How
solitary it will be without you! Without you!" he repeated; and, with
more and more emotion, "and yet, if we chose!--You spoke the other day
of my adopting a son. There have been families on the point of becoming
extinct that have prolonged their existence in that way!--I am
dreaming.--Suppose I should adopt you? Then you would not leave me. The
world, having known nothing of what has happened, would not know of the
secret compact between us. People would say: 'Claviers is crazy. It
wasn't worth while to make such an outcry, only to give way
finally.'--What do I care? I should have you. You would close my eyes."