No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all
failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the
effort of our life. In this matter vanity is what leads us astray. It
hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged; whereas
pride is our safeguard, by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our
endeavour as much as by the virtue of its sustaining power.
General D'Hubert was proud and reserved. He had not been damaged by his
casual love affairs, successful or otherwise. In his war-scarred body
his heart at forty remained unscratched. Entering with reserve into his
sister's matrimonial plans, he had felt himself falling irremediably in
love as one falls off a roof. He was too proud to be frightened. Indeed,
the sensation was too delightful to be alarming.
The inexperience of a man of forty is a much more serious thing than
the inexperience of a youth of twenty, for it is not helped out by the
rashness of hot blood. The girl was mysterious, as young girls are
by the mere effect of their guarded ingenuity; and to him the
mysteriousness of that young girl appeared exceptional and fascinating.
But there was nothing mysterious about the arrangements of the match
which Madame Leonie had promoted. There was nothing peculiar, either. It
was a very appropriate match, commending itself extremely to the young
lady's mother (the father was dead) and tolerable to the young lady's
uncle--an old emigre lately returned from Germany, and pervading, cane
in hand, a lean ghost of the ancien regime, the garden walks of the
young lady's ancestral home.
General D'Hubert was not the man to be satisfied merely with the woman
and the fortune--when it came to the point. His pride (and pride aims
always at true success) would be satisfied with nothing short of love.
But as true pride excludes vanity, he could not imagine any reason why
this mysterious creature with deep and brilliant eyes of a violet colour
should have any feeling for him warmer than indifference. The young lady
(her name was Adele) baffled every attempt at a clear understanding on
that point. It is true that the attempts were clumsy and made timidly,
because by then General D'Hubert had become acutely aware of the number
of his years, of his wounds, of his many moral imperfections, of his
secret unworthiness--and had incidentally learned by experience the
meaning of the word funk. As far as he could make out she seemed to
imply that, with an unbounded confidence in her mother's affection and
sagacity, she felt no unsurmountable dislike for the person of General
D'Hubert; and that this was quite sufficient for a well-brought-up young
lady to begin married life upon. This view hurt and tormented the pride
of General D'Hubert. And yet he asked himself, with a sort of sweet
despair, what more could he expect? She had a quiet and luminous
forehead. Her violet eyes laughed while the lines of her lips and chin
remained composed in admirable gravity. All this was set off by such
a glorious mass of fair hair, by a complexion so marvellous, by such
a grace of expression, that General D'Hubert really never found the
opportunity to examine with sufficient detachment the lofty exigencies
of his pride. In fact, he became shy of that line of inquiry since it
had led once or twice to a crisis of solitary passion in which it was
borne upon him that he loved her enough to kill her rather than lose
her. From such passages, not unknown to men of forty, he would come out
broken, exhausted, remorseful, a little dismayed. He derived, however,
considerable comfort from the quietist practice of sitting now and then
half the night by an open window and meditating upon the wonder of
her existence, like a believer lost in the mystic contemplation of his
faith.
It must not be supposed that all these variations of his inward state
were made manifest to the world. General D 'Hubert found no difficulty
in appearing wreathed in smiles. Because, in fact, he was very happy.
He followed the established rules of his condition, sending over flowers
(from his sister's garden and hot-houses) early every morning, and a
little later following himself to lunch with his intended, her mother,
and her emigre uncle. The middle of the day was spent in strolling or
sitting in the shade. A watchful deference, trembling on the verge of
tenderness was the note of their intercourse on his side--with a playful
turn of the phrase concealing the profound trouble of his whole being
caused by her inaccessible nearness. Late in the afternoon General D
'Hubert walked home between the fields of vines, sometimes intensely
miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes pensively sad; but
always feeling a special intensity of existence, that elation common to
artists, poets, and lovers--to men haunted by a great passion, a noble
thought, or a new vision of plastic beauty.
The outward world at that time did not exist with any special
distinctness for General D'Hubert. One evening, however, crossing a
ridge from which he could see both houses, General D'Hubert became aware
of two figures far down the road. The day had been divine. The festal
decoration of the inflamed sky lent a gentle glow to the sober tints
of the southern land. The grey rocks, the brown fields, the purple,
undulating distances harmonized in luminous accord, exhaled already
the scents of the evening. The two figures down the road presented
themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon
of white dust. General D'Hubert made out the long, straight, military
capotes buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked hats,
the lean, carven, brown countenances--old soldiers--vieilles moustaches!
The taller of the two had a black patch over one eye; the other's hard,
dry countenance presented some bizarre, disquieting peculiarity, which
on nearer approach proved to be the absence of the tip of the nose.
Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the slightly lame
civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the house where
the General Baron D'Hubert lived, and what was the best way to get
speech with him quietly.
"If you think this quiet enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round
at the vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of
grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical
hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning
rock--"if you think this spot quiet enough, you can speak to him
at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly, with perfect
confidence."
They stepped back at this, and raised again their hands to their
hats with marked ceremoniousness. Then the one with the chipped nose,
speaking for both, remarked that the matter was confidential enough, and
to be arranged discreetly. Their general quarters were established in
that village over there, where the infernal clodhoppers--damn their
false, Royalist hearts!--looked remarkably cross-eyed at three
unassuming military men. For the present he should only ask for the name
of General D'Hubert's friends.
"What friends?" said the astonished General D'Hubert, completely off the
track. "I am staying with my brother-in-law over there."
"Well, he will do for one," said the chipped veteran.
"We're the friends of General Feraud," interjected the other, who had
kept silent till then, only glowering with his one eye at the man who
had never loved the Emperor. That was something to look at. For even
the gold-laced Judases who had sold him to the English, the marshals
and princes, had loved him at some time or other. But this man had never
loved the Emperor. General Feraud had said so distinctly.
General D'Hubert felt an inward blow in his chest. For an infinitesimal
fraction of a second it was as if the spinning of the earth had become
perceptible with an awful, slight rustle in the eternal stillness
of space. But this noise of blood in his ears passed off at once.
Involuntarily he murmured, "Feraud! I had forgotten his existence."
"He's existing at present, very uncomfortably, it is true, in the
infamous inn of that nest of savages up there," said the one-eyed
cuirassier, drily. "We arrived in your parts an hour ago on post horses.
He's awaiting our return with impatience. There is hurry, you know.
The General has broken the ministerial order to obtain from you the
satisfaction he's entitled to by the laws of honour, and naturally he's
anxious to have it all over before the gendarmerie gets on his scent."
The other elucidated the idea a little further. "Get back on the
quiet--you understand? Phitt! No one the wiser. We have broken out, too.
Your friend the king would be glad to cut off our scurvy pittances at
the first chance. It's a risk. But honour before everything."
General D'Hubert had recovered his powers of speech. "So you come here
like this along the road to invite me to a throat-cutting match with
that--that . . ." A laughing sort of rage took possession of him. "Ha!
ha! ha! ha!"
His fists on his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood
before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a
snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago
the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts,
they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own
narrow shadows falling so black across the white road: the military
and grotesque shadows of twenty years of war and conquests. They had an
outlandish appearance of two imperturbable bonzes of the religion of
the sword. And General D'Hubert, also one of the ex-masters of Europe,
laughed at these serious phantoms standing in his way.
Said one, indicating the laughing General with a jerk of the head: "A
merry companion, that."
"There are some of us that haven't smiled from the day The Other went
away," remarked his comrade.
A violent impulse to set upon and beat those unsubstantial wraiths to
the ground frightened General D'Hubert. He ceased laughing suddenly.
His desire now was to get rid of them, to get them away from his sight
quickly before he lost control of himself. He wondered at the fury
he felt rising in his breast. But he had no time to look into that
peculiarity just then.
"I understand your wish to be done with me as quickly as possible. Don't
let us waste time in empty ceremonies. Do you see that wood there at the
foot of that slope? Yes, the wood of pines. Let us meet there to-morrow
at sunrise. I will bring with me my sword or my pistols, or both if you
like."
The seconds of General Feraud looked at each other.
"Pistols, General," said the cuirassier.
"So be it. Au revoir--to-morrow morning. Till then let me advise you to
keep close if you don't want the gendarmerie making inquiries about you
before it gets dark. Strangers are rare in this part of the country."
They saluted in silence. General D'Hubert, turning his back on their
retreating forms, stood still in the middle of the road for a long time,
biting his lower lip and looking on the ground. Then he began to walk
straight before him, thus retracing his steps till he found himself
before the park gate of his intended's house. Dusk had fallen.
Motionless he stared through the bars at the front of the house,
gleaming clear beyond the thickets and trees. Footsteps scrunched on
the gravel, and presently a tall stooping shape emerged from the lateral
alley following the inner side of the park wall.
Le Chevalier de Valmassigue, uncle of the adorable Adele, ex-brigadier
in the army of the Princes, bookbinder in Altona, afterwards shoemaker
(with a great reputation for elegance in the fit of ladies' shoes) in
another small German town, wore silk stockings on his lean shanks, low
shoes with silver buckles, a brocaded waistcoat. A long-skirted coat,
a la francaise, covered loosely his thin, bowed back. A small
three-cornered hat rested on a lot of powdered hair, tied in a queue.
"Monsieur le Chevalier," called General D'Hubert, softly.
"What? You here again, mon ami? Have you forgotten something?"
"By heavens! that's just it. I have forgotten something. I am come to
tell you of it. No--outside. Behind this wall. It's too ghastly a thing
to be let in at all where she lives."
The Chevalier came out at once with that benevolent resignation some
old people display towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a
century than General D'Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of
his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his
enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a
mere man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind
of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile
was almost unintelligible to him. Their sentiments appeared to him
unduly violent, lacking fineness and measure, their language needlessly
exaggerated. He joined calmly the General on the road, and they made a
few steps in silence, the General trying to master his agitation, and
get proper control of his voice.
"It is perfectly true; I forgot something. I forgot till half an hour
ago that I had an urgent affair of honour on my hands. It's incredible,
but it is so!"
All was still for a moment. Then in the profound evening silence of the
countryside the clear, aged voice of the Chevalier was heard trembling
slightly: "Monsieur! That's an indignity."
It was his first thought. The girl born during his exile, the posthumous
daughter of his poor brother murdered by a band of Jacobins, had grown
since his return very dear to his old heart, which had been starving on
mere memories of affection for so many years. "It is an inconceivable
thing, I say! A man settles such affairs before he thinks of asking for
a young girl's hand. Why! If you had forgotten for ten days longer, you
would have been married before your memory returned to you. In my time
men did not forget such things--nor yet what is due to the feelings
of an innocent young woman. If I did not respect them myself, I would
qualify your conduct in a way which you would not like."
General D'Hubert relieved himself frankly by a groan. "Don't let that
consideration prevent you. You run no risk of offending her mortally."
But the old man paid no attention to this lover's nonsense. It's
doubtful whether he even heard. "What is it?" he asked. "What's the
nature of . . . ?" "Call it a youthful folly, Monsieur le Chevalier. An
inconceivable, incredible result of . . ." He stopped short. "He will
never believe the story," he thought. "He will only think I am taking
him for a fool, and get offended." General D'Hubert spoke up again:
"Yes, originating in youthful folly, it has become . . ."