SCARAMOUCHE
Book III - The Sword
CHAPTER XV
Safe-Conduct
Across the body of that convulsively sobbing woman, the mother of one and the
mistress of the other, the eyes of those mortal enemies met, invested with a
startled, appalled interest that admitted of no words.
Beyond the table, as if turned to stone by this culminating horror of
revelation, stood Aline.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr was the first to stir. Into his bewildered mind came the
memory of something that Mme. de Plougastel had said of a letter that was on the
table. He came forward, unhindered. The announcement made, Mme. de Plougastel no
longer feared the sequel, and so she let him go. He walked unsteadily past this
new-found son of his, and took up the sheet that lay beside the candlebranch. A
long moment he stood reading it, none heeding him. Aline's eyes were all on
Andre-Louis, full of wonder and commiseration, whilst Andre-Louis was staring
down, in stupefied fascination, at his mother.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr read the letter slowly through. Then very quietly he
replaced it. His next concern, being the product of an artificial age sternly
schooled in the suppression of emotion, was to compose himself. Then he stepped
back to Mme. de Plougastel's side and stooped to raise her.
"Therese," he said.
Obeying, by instinct, the implied command, she made an effort to rise and to
control herself in her turn. The Marquis half conducted, half carried her to the
armchair by the table.
Andre-Louis looked on. Still numbed and bewildered, he made no attempt to
assist. He saw as in a dream the Marquis bending over Mme. de Plougastel. As in
a dream he heard him ask:
"How long have you known this, Therese?"
"I... I have always known it... always. I confided him to Kercadiou. I saw
him once as a child... Oh, but what of that?"
"Why was I never told? Why did you deceive me? Why did you tell me that this
child had died a few days after birth? Why, Therese? Why?"
"I was afraid. I... I thought it better so -- that nobody, nobody, not even
you, should know. And nobody has known save Quintin until last night, when to
induce him to come here and save me he was forced to tell him."
"But I, Therese?" the Marquis insisted. "It was my right to know."
"Your right? What could you have done? Acknowledge him? And then? Ha!" It was
a queer, desperate note of laughter. "There was Plougastel; there was my family.
And there was you... you, yourself, who had ceased to care, in whom the fear of
discovery had stifled love. Why should I have told you, then? Why? I should not
have told you now had there been any other way to... to save you both. Once
before I suffered just such dreadful apprehensions when you and he fought in the
Bois. I was on my way to prevent it when you met me. I would have divulged the
truth, as a last resource, to avert that horror. But mercifully God spared me
the necessity then."
It had not occurred to any of them to doubt her statement, incredible though
it might seem. Had any done so her present words must have resolved all doubt,
explaining as they did much that to each of her listeners had been obscure until
this moment.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr, overcome; reeled away to a chair and sat down heavily.
Losing command of himself for a moment, he took his haggard face in his hands.
Through the windows open to the garden came from the distance the faint
throbbing of a drum to remind them of what was happening around them. But the
sound went unheeded. To each it must have seemed that here they were face to
face with a horror greater than any that might be tormenting Paris. At last
Andre-Louis began to speak, his voice level and unutterably cold.
"M. de La Tour d'Azyr," he said, "I trust that you'll agree that this
disclosure, which can hardly be more distasteful and horrible to you than it is
to me, alters nothing, -- since it effaces nothing of all that lies between us.
Or, if it alters anything, it is merely to add something to that score. And
yet... Oh, but what can it avail to talk! Here, monsieur, take this safe-conduct
which is made out for Mme. de Plougastel's footman, and with it make your escape
as best you can. In return I will beg of you the favour never to allow me to see
you or hear of you again."
"Andre!" His mother swung upon him with that cry. And yet again that
question. "Have you no heart? What has he ever done to you that you should nurse
so bitter a hatred of him?"
"You shall hear, madame. Once, two years ago in this very room I told you of
a man who had brutally killed my dearest friend and debauched the girl I was to
have married. M. de La Tour d'Azyr is that man."
A moan was her only answer. She covered her face with her hands.
The Marquis rose slowly to his feet again. He came slowly forward, his
smouldering eyes scanning his son's face.
"You are hard," he said grimly. "But I recognize the hardness. It derives
from the blood you bear."
"Spare me that," said Andre-Louis.
The Marquis inclined his head. "I will not mention it again. But I desire
that you should at least understand me, and you too, Therese. You accuse me,
sir, of murdering your dearest friend. I will admit that the means employed were
perhaps unworthy. But what other means were at my command to meet an urgency
that every day since then proves to have existed? M. de Vilmorin was a
revolutionary, a man of new ideas that should overthrow society and rebuild it
more akin to the desires of such as himself. I belonged to the order that quite
as justifiably desired society to remain as it was. Not only was it better so
for me and mine, but I also contend, and you have yet to prove me wrong, that it
is better so for all the world; that, indeed, no other conceivable society is
possible. Every human society must of necessity be composed of several strata.
You may disturb it temporarily into an amorphous whole by a revolution such as
this; but only temporarily. Soon out of the chaos which is all that you and your
kind can ever produce, order must be restored or life will perish; and with the
restoration of order comes the restoration of the various strata necessary to
organized society. Those that were yesterday at the top may in the new order of
things find themselves dispossessed without any benefit to the whole. That
change I resisted. The spirit of it I fought with whatever weapons were
available, whenever and wherever I encountered it. M. de Vilmorin was an
incendiary of the worst type, a man of eloquence full of false ideals that
misled poor ignorant men into believing that the change proposed could make the
world a better place for them. You are an intelligent man, and I defy you to
answer me from your heart and conscience that such a thing was true or possible.
You know that it is untrue; you know that it is a pernicious doctrine; and what
made it worse on the lips of M. de Vilmorin was that he was sincere and
eloquent. His voice was a danger that must be removed -- silenced. So much was
necessary in self-defence. In self-defence I did it. I had no grudge against M.
de Vilmorin. He was a man of my own class; a gentleman of pleasant ways,
amiable, estimable, and able.
"You conceive me slaying him for the very lust of slaying, like some beast of
the jungle flinging itself upon its natural prey. That has been your error from
the first. I did what I did with the very heaviest heart -- oh, spare me your
sneer! -- I do not lie, I have never lied. And I swear to you here and now, by
my every hope of Heaven, that what I say is true. I loathed the thing I did. Yet
for my own sake and the sake of my order I must do it. Ask yourself whether M.
de Vilmorin would have hesitated for a moment if by procuring my death he could
have brought the Utopia of his dreams a moment nearer realization.
"After that. You determined that the sweetest vengeance would be to frustrate
my ends by reviving in yourself the voice that I had silenced, by yourself
carrying forward the fantastic apostleship of equality that was M. de
Vilmorin's. You lacked the vision that would have shown you that God did not
create men equals. Well, you are in case to-night to judge which of us was
right, which rong. You see what is happening here in Paris. You see the foul
spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land fallen into confusion. Probably you
have enough imagination to conceive something of what must follow. And do you
deceive yourself that out of this filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal
form of society? Don't you understand that society must re-order itself
presently out of all this?
"But why say more? I must have said enough to make you understand the only
thing that really matters -- that I killed M. de Vilmorin as a matter of duty to
my order. And the truth -- which though it may offend you should also convince
you -- is that to-night I can ook back on the deed with equanimity, without a
single regret, apart from what lies between you and me.
"When, kneeling beside the body of your friend that day at Gavrillac, you
insulted and provoked me, had I been the tiger you conceived me I must have
killed you too. I am, as you may know, a man of quick passions. Yet I curbed the
natural anger you aroused in me, because I could forgive an affront to myself
where I could not overlook a calculated attack upon my order."
He paused a moment. Andre-Louis stood rigid listening and wondering. So, too,
the others. Then M. le Marquis resumed, on a note of less assurance. "In the
matter of Mlle. Binet I was unfortunate. I wronged you through inadvertence. I
had no knowledge of the relations between you."
Andre-Louis interrupted him 'sharply at last with a question: "Would it have
made a difference if you had?"
"No," he was answered frankly. "I have the faults of my kind. I cannot
pretend that any such scruple as you suggest would have weighed with me. But can
you -- if you are capable of any detached judgment -- blame me very much for
that?"
"All things considered, monsieur, I am rapidly being forced to the conclusion
that it is impossible to blame any man for anything in this world; that we are
all of us the sport of destiny. Consider, monsieur, this gathering -- this
family gathering -- here to-night, whilst out there... 0 my God, let us make an
end! Let us go our ways and write 'finis' to this horrible chapter of our
lives."
M. le La Tour considered him gravely, sadly, in silence for a moment.
"Perhaps it is best," he said, at length, in a small voice. He turned to Mme.
de Plougastel. "If a wrong I have to admit in my life, a wrong that I must
bitterly regret, it is the wrong that I have done to you, my dear... "
"Not now, Gervais! Not now!" she faltered, interrupting him.
"Now -- for the first and the last time. I am going. It is not likely that we
shall ever meet again -- that I shall ever see any of you again -- you who
should have been the nearest and dearest to me. We are all, he says, the sport
of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with
purpose. In life we pay for the evil that in life we do. That is the lesson that
I have learnt to-night. By an act of betrayal I begot unknown to me a son who,
whilst as ignorant as myself of our relationship, has come to be the evil genius
of my life, to cross and thwart me, and finally to help to pull me down in ruin.
It is just -- poetically just. My full and resigned acceptance of that fact is
the only atonement I can offer you."
He stooped and took one of madame's hands that lay limply in her lap.
"Good-bye, Therese!" His voice broke. He had reached the end of his iron
self-control.
She rose and clung to him a moment, unashamed before them. The ashes of that
dead romance had been deeply stirred this night, and deep down some lingering
embers had been found that glowed brightly now before their final extinction.
Yet she made no attempt to detain him. She understood that their son had pointed
out the only wise, the only possible course, and was thankful that M. de La Tour
d'Azyr accepted it.
"God keep you, Gervais," she murmured. "You will take the safe-conduct,
and... and you will let me know when you are safe?"
He held her face between his hands an instant; then very gently kissed her
and put her from him. Standing erect, and outwardly calm again, he looked across
at Andre-Louis who was proffering him a sheet of paper.
"It is the safe-conduct. Take it, monsieur. It is my first and last gift to
you, and certainly the last gift I should ever have thought of making you -- the
gift of life. In a sense it makes us quits. The irony, sir, is not mine, but
Fate's. Take it, monsieur, and go in peace."
M. de La Tour d'Azyr took it. His eyes looked hungrily into the lean face
confronting him, so sternly set. He thrust the paper into his bosom, and then
abruptly, convulsively, held out his hand. His son's eyes asked a question.
"Let there be peace between us, in God's name," said the Marquis thickly.
Pity stirred at last in Andre-Louis. Some of the sternness left his face. He
sighed. "Good-bye, monsieur," he said.
"You are hard," his father told him, speaking wistfully. "But perhaps you are
in the right so to be. In other circumstances I should have been proud to have
owned you as my son. As it is... " He broke off abruptly, and as abruptly added,
"Good-bye."
He loosed his son's hand and stepped back. They bowed formally to each other.
And then M. de La Tour d'Azyr bowed to Mlle. de Kercadiou in utter silence, a
bow that contained something of utter renunciation, of finality.
That done he turned and walked stiffly out of the room, and so out of all
their lives. Months later they were to hear if him in the service of the Emperor
of Austria.