CHAPTER IV. AT MEUDON
Later in the week he received a visit from Le Chapelier just beforenoon.
"I have news for you, Andre. Your godfather is at Meudon. He arrivedthere two days ago. Had you heard?"
"But no. How should I hear? Why is he at Meudon?" He was conscious of afaint excitement, which he could hardly have explained.
"I don't know. There have been fresh disturbances in Brittany. It may bedue to that."
"And so he has come for shelter to his brother?" asked Andre-Louis.
"To his brother's house, yes; but not to his brother. Where do you liveat all, Andre? Do you never hear any of the news? Etienne de Gavrillacemigrated years ago. He was of the household of M. d'Artois, and hecrossed the frontier with him. By now, no doubt, he is in Germany withhim, conspiring against France. For that is what the emigres aredoing. That Austrian woman at the Tuileries will end by destroying themonarchy."
"Yes, yes," said Andre-Louis impatiently. Politics interested him not atall this morning. "But about Gavrillac?"
"Why, haven't I told you that Gavrillac is at Meudon, installed in thehouse his brother has left? Dieu de Dieu! Don't I speak French or don'tyou understand the language? I believe that Rabouillet, his intendant,is in charge of Gavrillac. I have brought you the news the moment Ireceived it. I thought you would probably wish to go out to Meudon."
"Of course. I will go at once--that is, as soon as I can. I can't to-day,nor yet to-morrow. I am too busy here." He waved a hand towards theinner room, whence proceeded the click-click of blades, the quick movingof feet, and the voice of the instructor, Le Duc.
"Well, well, that is your own affair. You are busy. I leave you now. Letus dine this evening at the Cafe de Foy. Kersain will be of the party."
"A moment!" Andre-Louis' voice arrested him on the threshold. "Is Mlle.de Kercadiou with her uncle?"
"How the devil should I know? Go and find out."
He was gone, and Andre-Louis stood there a moment deep in thought.Then he turned and went back to resume with his pupil, the Vicomte deVilleniort, the interrupted exposition of the demi-contre of Danet,illustrating with a small-sword the advantages to be derived from itsadoption.
Thereafter he fenced with the Vicomte, who was perhaps the ablest of hispupils at the time, and all the while his thoughts were on the heightsof Meudon, his mind casting up the lessons he had to give that afternoonand on the morrow, and wondering which of these he might postponewithout deranging the academy. When having touched the Vicomte threetimes in succession, he paused and wrenched himself back to the present,it was to marvel at the precision to be gained by purely mechanicalaction. Without bestowing a thought upon what he was doing, his wristand arm and knees had automatically performed their work, like theaccurate fighting engine into which constant practice for a year andmore had combined them.
Not until Sunday was Andre-Louis able to satisfy a wish which theimpatience of the intervening days had converted into a yearning.Dressed with more than ordinary care, his head elegantly coiffed--by oneof those hairdressers to the nobility of whom so many were being thrownout of employment by the stream of emigration which was now flowingfreely--Andre-Louis mounted his hired carriage, and drove out to Meudon.
The house of the younger Kercadiou no more resembled that of the headof the family than did his person. A man of the Court, where his brotherwas essentially a man of the soil, an officer of the household of M.le Comte d'Artois, he had built for himself and his family an imposingvilla on the heights of Meudon in a miniature park, convenientlysituated for him midway between Versailles and Paris, and easilyaccessible from either. M. d'Artois--the royal tennis-player--had beenamongst the very first to emigrate. Together with the Condes, theContis, the Polignacs, and others of the Queen's intimate council, oldMarshal de Broglie and the Prince de Lambesc, who realized that theirvery names had become odious to the people, he had quitted Franceimmediately after the fall of the Bastille. He had gone to play tennisbeyond the frontier--and there consummate the work of ruining the Frenchmonarchy upon which he and those others had been engaged in France. Withhim, amongst several members of his household went Etienne de Kercadiou,and with Etienne de Kercadiou went his family, a wife and four children.Thus it was that the Seigneur de Gavrillac, glad to escape from aprovince so peculiarly disturbed as that of Brittany--where the nobleshad shown themselves the most intransigent of all France--had come tooccupy in his brother's absence the courtier's handsome villa at Meudon.
That he was quite happy there is not to be supposed. A man of his almostSpartan habits, accustomed to plain fare and self-help, was a littleuneasy in this sybaritic abode, with its soft carpets, profusion ofgilding, and battalion of sleek, silent-footed servants--for Kercadiouthe younger had left his entire household behind. Time, which atGavrillac he had kept so fully employed in agrarian concerns, here hungheavily upon his hands. In self-defence he slept a great deal, and butfor Aline, who made no attempt to conceal her delight at this proximityto Paris and the heart of things, it is possible that he would have beata retreat almost at once from surroundings that sorted so ill with hishabits. Later on, perhaps, he would accustom himself and grow resignedto this luxurious inactivity. In the meantime the novelty of it frettedhim, and it was into the presence of a peevish and rather somnolentM. de Kercadiou that Andre-Louis was ushered in the early hours of theafternoon of that Sunday in June. He was unannounced, as had ever beenthe custom at Gavrillac. This because Benoit, M. de Kercadiou's oldseneschal, had accompanied his seigneur upon this soft adventure, andwas installed--to the ceaseless and but half-concealed hilarity of theimpertinent valetaille that M. Etienne had left--as his maitre d'hotelhere at Meudon.
Benoit had welcomed M. Andre with incoherencies of delight; almost hadhe gambolled about him like some faithful dog, whilst conducting him tothe salon and the presence of the Lord of Gavrillac, who would--in thewords of Benoit--be ravished to see M. Andre again.
"Monseigneur! Monseigneur!" he cried in a quavering voice, entering apace or two in advance of the visitor. "It is M. Andre... M. Andre, yourgodson, who comes to kiss your hand. He is here... and so fine that youwould hardly know him. Here he is, monseigneur! Is he not beautiful?"
And the old servant rubbed his hands in conviction of the delight thathe believed he was conveying to his master.
Andre-Louis crossed the threshold of that great room, soft-carpeted tothe foot, dazzling to the eye. It was immensely lofty, and its festoonedceiling was carried on fluted pillars with gilded capitals. The door bywhich he entered, and the windows that opened upon the garden, were ofan enormous height--almost, indeed, the full height of the room itself.It was a room overwhelmingly gilded, with an abundance of ormoluencrustations on the furniture, in which it nowise differed from whatwas customary in the dwellings of people of birth and wealth. Never,indeed, was there a time in which so much gold was employed decorativelyas in this age when coined gold was almost unprocurable, and paper moneyhad been put into circulation to supply the lack. It was a saying ofAndre-Louis' that if these people could only have been induced to putthe paper on their walls and the gold into their pockets, the financesof the kingdom might soon have been in better case.
The Seigneur--furbished and beruffled to harmonize with hissurroundings--had risen, startled by this exuberant invasion on the partof Benoit, who had been almost as forlorn as himself since their comingto Meudon.
"What is it? Eh?" His pale, short-sighted eyes peered at the visitor."Andre!" said he, between surprise and sternness; and the colourdeepened in his great pink face.
Benoit, with his back to his master, deliberately winked and grinned atAndre-Louis to encourage him not to be put off by any apparent hostilityon the part of his godfather. That done, the intelligent old fellowdiscreetly effaced himself.
"What do you want here?" growled M. de Kercadiou.
"No more than to kiss your hand, as Benoit has told you, monsieur mygodfather," said Andre-Louis submissively, bowing his sleek black head.
"Y
ou have contrived without kissing it for two years."
"Do not, monsieur, reproach me with my misfortune."
The little man stood very stiffly erect, his disproportionately largehead thrown back, his pale prominent eyes very stern.
"Did you think to make your outrageous offence any better by vanishingin that heartless manner, by leaving us without knowledge of whether youwere alive or dead?"
"At first it was dangerous--dangerous to my life--to disclose mywhereabouts. Then for a time I was in need, almost destitute, and mypride forbade me, after what I had done and the view you must take ofit, to appeal to you for help. Later..."
"Destitute?" The Seigneur interrupted. For a moment his lip trembled.Then he steadied himself, and the frown deepened as he surveyed thisvery changed and elegant godson of his, noted the quiet richness of hisapparel, the paste buckles and red heels to his shoes, the sword hiltedin mother-o'-pearl and silver, and the carefully dressed hair that hehad always seen hanging in wisps about his face. "At least you do notlook destitute now," he sneered.
"I am not. I have prospered since. In that, monsieur, I differ from theordinary prodigal, who returns only when he needs assistance. I returnsolely because I love you, monsieur--to tell you so. I have come at thevery first moment after hearing of your presence here." He advanced."Monsieur my godfather!" he said, and held out his hand.
But M. de Kercadiou remained unbending, wrapped in his cold dignity andresentment.
"Whatever tribulations you may have suffered or consider that you mayhave suffered, they are far less than your disgraceful conduct deserved,and I observe that they have nothing abated your impudence. You thinkthat you have but to come here and say, 'Monsieur my godfather!' andeverything is to be forgiven and forgotten. That is your error. You havecommitted too great a wrong; you have offended against everything bywhich I hold, and against myself personally, by your betrayal of mytrust in you. You are one of those unspeakable scoundrels who areresponsible for this revolution."
"Alas, monsieur, I see that you share the common delusion. Theseunspeakable scoundrels but demanded a constitution, as was promised themfrom the throne. They were not to know that the promise was insincere,or that its fulfilment would be baulked by the privileged orders. Themen who have precipitated this revolution, monsieur, are the nobles andthe prelates."
"You dare--and at such a time as this--stand there and tell me suchabominable lies! You dare to say that the nobles have made therevolution, when scores of them, following the example of M. le Ducd'Aiguillon, have flung their privileges, even their title-deeds, intothe lap of the people! Or perhaps you deny it?"
"Oh, no. Having wantonly set fire to their house, they now try to putit out by throwing water on it; and where they fail they put the entireblame on the flames."
"I see that you have come here to talk politics."
"Far from it. I have come, if possible, to explain myself. To understandis always to forgive. That is a great saying of Montaigne's. If I couldmake you understand..."
"You can't. You'll never make me understand how you came to renderyourself so odiously notorious in Brittany."
"Ah, not odiously, monsieur!"
"Certainly, odiously--among those that matter. It is said even that youwere Omnes Omnibus, though that I cannot, will not believe."
"Yet it is true."
M. de Kercadiou choked. "And you confess it? You dare to confess it?"
"What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess--unless he is acoward."
"Oh, and to be sure you were very brave, running away each time afteryou had done the mischief, turning comedian to hide yourself, doing moremischief as a comedian, provoking a riot in Nantes, and then runningaway again, to become God knows what--something dishonest by the affluentlook of you. My God, man, I tell you that in these past two years I havehoped that you were dead, and you profoundly disappoint me that youare not!" He beat his hands together, and raised his shrill voice tocall--"Benoit!" He strode away towards the fireplace, scarlet in theface, shaking with the passion into which he had worked himself. "Dead,I might have forgiven you, as one who had paid for his evil, and hisfolly. Living, I never can forgive you. You have gone too far. God aloneknows where it will end.
"Benoit, the door. M. Andre-Louis Moreau to the door!" The tone arguedan irrevocable determination. Pale and self-contained, but with a queerpain at his heart, Andre-Louis heard that dismissal, saw Benoit'swhite, scared face and shaking hands half-raised as if he were aboutto expostulate with his master. And then another voice, a crisp, boyishvoice, cut in.
"Uncle!" it cried, a world of indignation and surprise in its pitch,and then: "Andre!" And this time a note almost of gladness, certainly ofwelcome, was blended with the surprise that still remained.
Both turned, half the room between them at the moment, and beheld Alinein one of the long, open windows, arrested there in the act of enteringfrom the garden, Aline in a milk-maid bonnet of the latest mode, thoughwithout any of the tricolour embellishments that were so commonly to beseen upon them.
The thin lips of Andre's long mouth twisted into a queer smile. Into hismind had flashed the memory of their last parting. He saw himself again,standing burning with indignation upon the pavement of Nantes, lookingafter her carriage as it receded down the Avenue de Gigan.
She was coming towards him now with outstretched hands, a heightenedcolour in her cheeks, a smile of welcome on her lips. He bowed low andkissed her hand in silence.
Then with a glance and a gesture she dismissed Benoit, and in herimperious fashion constituted herself Andre's advocate against thatharsh dismissal which she had overheard.
"Uncle," she said, leaving Andre and crossing to M. de Kercadiou, "youmake me ashamed of you! To allow a feeling of peevishness to overwhelmall your affection for Andre!"
"I have no affection for him. I had once. He chose to extinguish it.He can go to the devil; and please observe that I don't permit you tointerfere."
"But if he confesses that he has done wrong..."
"He confesses nothing of the kind. He comes here to argue with me aboutthese infernal Rights of Man. He proclaims himself unrepentant. Heannounces himself with pride to have been, as all Brittany says, thescoundrel who hid himself under the sobriquet of Omnes Omnibus. Is thatto be condoned?"
She turned to look at Andre across the wide space that now separatedthem.
"But is this really so? Don't you repent, Andre--now that you see all theharm that has come?"
It was a clear invitation to him, a pleading to him to say that herepented, to make his peace with his godfather. For a moment it almostmoved him. Then, considering the subterfuge unworthy, he answeredtruthfully, though the pain he was suffering rang in his voice.
"To confess repentance," he said slowly, "would be to confess to amonstrous crime. Don't you see that? Oh, monsieur, have patiencewith me; let me explain myself a little. You say that I am in partresponsible for something of all this that has happened. My exhortationsof the people at Rennes and twice afterwards at Nantes are said to havehad their share in what followed there. It may be so. It would be beyondmy power positively to deny it. Revolution followed and bloodshed. Moremay yet come. To repent implies a recognition that I have done wrong.How shall I say that I have done wrong, and thus take a share of theresponsibility for all that blood upon my soul? I will be quite frankwith you to show you how far, indeed, I am from repentance. What I did,I actually did against all my convictions at the time. Because therewas no justice in France to move against the murderer of Philippe deVilmorin, I moved in the only way that I imagined could make the evildone recoil upon the hand that did it, and those other hands that hadthe power but not the spirit to punish. Since then I have come to seethat I was wrong, and that Philippe de Vilmorin and those who thoughtwith him were in the right.
"You must realize, monsieur, that it is with sincerest thankfulnessthat I find I have done nothing calling for repentance; that, on thecontrary, when France is given the inestimable boon of a constitu
tion,as will shortly happen, I may take pride in having played my part inbringing about the conditions that have made this possible."
There was a pause. M. de Kercadiou's face turned from pink to purple.
"You have quite finished?" he said harshly.
"If you have understood me, monsieur."
"Oh, I have understood you, and... and I beg that you will go."
Andre-Louis shrugged his shoulders and hung his head. He had come thereso joyously, in such yearning, merely to receive a final dismissal. Helooked at Aline. Her face was pale and troubled; but her wit failed toshow her how she could come to his assistance. His excessive honesty hadburnt all his boats.
"Very well, monsieur. Yet this I would ask you to remember after I amgone. I have not come to you as one seeking assistance, as one driven toyou by need. I am no returning prodigal, as I have said. I am one who,needing nothing, asking nothing, master of his own destinies, has cometo you driven by affection only, urged by the love and gratitude hebears you and will continue to bear you."
"Ah, yes!" cried Aline, turning now to her uncle. Here at least was anargument in Andre's favour, thought she. "That is true. Surely that..."
Inarticulately he hissed her into silence, exasperated.
"Hereafter perhaps that will help you to think of me more kindly,monsieur."
"I see no occasion, sir, to think of you at all. Again, I beg that youwill go."
Andre-Louis looked at Aline an instant, as if still hesitating.
She answered him by a glance at her furious uncle, a faint shrug, and alift of the eyebrows, dejection the while in her countenance.
It was as if she said: "You see his mood. There is nothing to be done."
He bowed with that singular grace the fencing-room had given him andwent out by the door.
"Oh, it is cruel!" cried Aline, in a stifled voice, her hands clenched,and she sprang to the window.
"Aline!" her uncle's voice arrested her. "Where are you going?"
"But we do not know where he is to be found."
"Who wants to find the scoundrel?"
"We may never see him again."
"That is most fervently to be desired."
Aline said "Ouf!" and went out by the window.
He called after her, imperiously commanding her return. ButAline--dutiful child--closed her ears lest she must disobey him, andsped light-footed across the lawn to the avenue there to intercept thedeparting Andre-Louis.
As he came forth wrapped in gloom, she stepped from the bordering treesinto his path.
"Aline!" he cried, joyously almost.
"I did not want you to go like this. I couldn't let you," she explainedherself. "I know him better than you do, and I know that his great softheart will presently melt. He will be filled with regret. He will wantto send for you, and he will not know where to send."
"You think that?"
"Oh, I know it! You arrive in a bad moment. He is peevish andcross-grained, poor man, since he came here. These soft surroundingsare all so strange to him. He wearies himself away from his belovedGavrillac, his hunting and tillage, and the truth is that in his mind hevery largely blames you for what has happened--for the necessity, or atleast, the wisdom, of this change. Brittany, you must know, was becomingtoo unsafe. The chateau of La Tour d'Azyr, amongst others, was burnt tothe ground some months ago. At any moment, given a fresh excitement, itmay be the turn of Gavrillac. And for this and his present discomfort heblames you and your friends. But he will come round presently. He willbe sorry that he sent you away like this--for I know that he loves you,Andre, in spite of all. I shall reason with him when the time comes. Andthen we shall want to know where to find you."
"At number 13, Rue du Hasard. The number is unlucky, the name of thestreet appropriate. Therefore both are easy to remember."
She nodded. "I will walk with you to the gates." And side by side nowthey proceeded at a leisurely pace down the long avenue in the Junesunshine dappled by the shadows of the bordering trees. "You are lookingwell, Andre; and do you know that you have changed a deal? I am gladthat you have prospered." And then, abruptly changing the subject beforehe had time to answer her, she came to the matter uppermost in her mind.
"I have so wanted to see you in all these months, Andre. You were theonly one who could help me; the only one who could tell me the truth,and I was angry with you for never having written to say where you wereto be found."
"Of course you encouraged me to do so when last we met in Nantes."
"What? Still resentful?"
"I am never resentful. You should know that." He expressed one of hisvanities. He loved to think himself a Stoic. "But I still bear the scarof a wound that would be the better for the balm of your retraction."
"Why, then, I retract, Andre. And now tell me."
"Yes, a self-seeking retraction," said he. "You give me something thatyou may obtain something." He laughed quite pleasantly. "Well, well;command me."
"Tell me, Andre." She paused, as if in some difficulty, and then wenton, her eyes upon the ground: "Tell me--the truth of that event at theFeydau."
The request fetched a frown to his brow. He suspected at once thethought that prompted it. Quite simply and briefly he gave her hisversion of the affair.
She listened very attentively. When he had done she sighed; her face wasvery thoughtful.
"That is much what I was told," she said. "But it was added that M.de La Tour d'Azyr had gone to the theatre expressly for the purpose ofbreaking finally with La Binet. Do you know if that was so?"
"I don't; nor of any reason why it should be so. La Binet provided himthe sort of amusement that he and his kind are forever craving..."
"Oh, there was a reason," she interrupted him. "I was the reason.I spoke to Mme. de Sautron. I told her that I would not continue toreceive one who came to me contaminated in that fashion." She spokeof it with obvious difficulty, her colour rising as he watched herhalf-averted face.
"Had you listened to me..." he was beginning, when again she interruptedhim.
"M. de Sautron conveyed my decision to him, and afterwards representedhim to me as a man in despair, repentant, ready to give proofs--anyproofs--of his sincerity and devotion to me. He told me that M. de LaTour d'Azyr had sworn to him that he would cut short that affair, thathe would see La Binet no more. And then, on the very next day I heardof his having all but lost his life in that riot at the theatre. Hehad gone straight from that interview with M. de Sautron, straight fromthose protestations of future wisdom, to La Binet. I was indignant. Ipronounced myself finally. I stated definitely that I would not in anycircumstances receive M. de La Tour d'Azyr again! And then they pressedthis explanation upon me. For a long time I would not believe it."
"So that you believe it now," said Andre quickly. "Why?"
"I have not said that I believe it now. But... but... neither can Idisbelieve. Since we came to Meudon M. de La Tour d'Azyr has been here,and himself he has sworn to me that it was so."
"Oh, if M. de La Tour d'Azyr has sworn..." Andre-Louis was laughing on abitter note of sarcasm.
"Have you ever known him lie?" she cut in sharply. That checked him."M. de La Tour d'Azyr is, after all, a man of honour, and men of honournever deal in falsehood. Have you ever known him do so, that you shouldsneer as you have done?"
"No," he confessed. Common justice demanded that he should admit thatvirtue at least in his enemy. "I have not known him lie, it is true. Hiskind is too arrogant, too self-confident to have recourse to untruth.But I have known him do things as vile..."
"Nothing is as vile," she interrupted, speaking from the code by whichshe had been reared. "It is for liars only--who are first cousin tothieves--that there is no hope. It is in falsehood only that there isreal loss of honour."
"You are defending that satyr, I think," he said frostily.
"I desire to be just."
"Justice may seem to you a different matter when at last you shallhave resolved yourself to become Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr.
" He spokebitterly.
"I don't think that I shall ever take that resolve."
"But you are still not sure--in spite of everything."
"Can one ever be sure of anything in this world?"
"Yes. One can be sure of being foolish."
Either she did not hear or did not heed him.
"You do not of your own knowledge know that it was not as M. de La Tourd'Azyr asserts--that he went to the Feydau that night?"
"I don't," he admitted. "It is of course possible. But does it matter?"
"It might matter. Tell me; what became of La Binet after all?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" She turned to consider him. "And you can say it withthat indifference! I thought... I thought you loved her, Andre."
"So did I, for a little while. I was mistaken. It required a LaTour d'Azyr to disclose the truth to me. They have their uses, thesegentlemen. They help stupid fellows like myself to perceive importanttruths. I was fortunate that revelation in my case preceded marriage. Ican now look back upon the episode with equanimity and thankfulnessfor my near escape from the consequences of what was no more than anaberration of the senses. It is a thing commonly confused with love. Theexperience, as you see, was very instructive."
She looked at him in frank surprise.
"Do you know, Andre, I sometimes think that you have no heart."
"Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence. And what ofyourself, Aline? What of your own attitude from the outset where M. deLa Tour d'Azyr is concerned? Does that show heart? If I were to tell youwhat it really shows, we should end by quarrelling again, and God knowsI can't afford to quarrel with you now. I... I shall take another way."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, nothing at the moment, for you are not in any danger of marryingthat animal."
"And if I were?"
"Ah! In that case affection for you would discover to me some means ofpreventing it--unless..." He paused.
"Unless?" she demanded, challengingly, drawn to the full of her shortheight, her eyes imperious.
"Unless you could also tell me that you loved him," said he simply,whereat she was as suddenly and most oddly softened. And then he added,shaking his head: "But that of course is impossible."
"Why?" she asked him, quite gently now.
"Because you are what you are, Aline--utterly good and pure and adorable.Angels do not mate with devils. His wife you might become, but never hismate, Aline--never."
They had reached the wrought-iron gates at the end of the avenue.Through these they beheld the waiting yellow chaise which had broughtAndre-Louis. From near at hand came the creak of other wheels, the beatof other hooves, and now another vehicle came in sight, and drew to astand-still beside the yellow chaise--a handsome equipage with polishedmahogany panels on which the gold and azure of armorial bearings flashedbrilliantly in the sunlight. A footman swung to earth to throw wide thegates; but in that moment the lady who occupied the carriage, perceivingAline, waved to her and issued a command.