24.Marie-ClaireFLORIAN left Bellegarde at dawn. For once, he did not travel in his favorite bottle-green and silver. Good taste suggested that a plain black suit with his best Mechlin ruffles, was the appropriate wear in which to court destruction. Thus clad, he girded on Flamberge, and set out as merrily as might be, afoot: no horse could come to the top of Morven, where once had stood the grove of Virbius.Florian journeyed first to Amneran, and went to a very retired cottage built of oak and plaster upon a stone foundation. Here was his last hope of aid, and of succour which he might accept without any detriment to the pride of Puysange, for this was the ill spoken-of home of his half-sister, Marie-Claire Cazaio. She was alone at her spinning when he came into the room. He took her hand. He kissed it.“You told me once, dear Marie-Claire, a longwhile since, that in the end I would come to you in an old garden where dead leaves were falling, and would kiss your hand, and tell you I had loved you all my life. I wonder, Marie-Claire, if you remember that?”“I have forgotten,” she said, “nothing.”“You were wrong as to the garden and as to the dead leaves. But in all else you were right. This is the end, Marie-Claire. And in the end I fulfill your prophecy.”She looked at him, for no brief while, with those small darkened eyes which seemed to see beyond him. “Yes, you are speaking the truth. I had thought that when this happened it would matter. And it does not matter.”“Only one thing has mattered in all our lives, Marie-Claire. I was at Storisende last week. I remembered you and our youth.”“And were you”—she smiled faintly,—“and were you properly remorseful?”“No. I have regretted many of my doings. But I can find nowhere in me any of the highly requisite repentance for those of my actions which people would describe as criminal. I suppose it is because we of Puysange are so respectful of the notions of others that we do not commit crimes rashly. We enter into no illegal turpitude until rather careful reflection has assured us of its expediency. I, inany event, have sometimes been virtuous with unthinking levity, and with depressing upshots: but my vices, which my judgment had to endorse before prudence would venture on them, have resulted well enough. So I can regret no irregularities, and certainly not the happiness of our far-off youth.”Again Marie-Claire was in no hurry to reply. When she spoke, it was without any apparent conviction either one way or the other. “Our happiness involved, they say, considerable misdoing.”This stirred him to mild indignation. “And is love between brother and sister a misdoing? Come, Marie-Claire, but let us be logical! All scientists will tell you that endogamy is natural to mankind as long as men stay uncorrupted by over-civilization. The weight of history goes wholly one way. The Pharaohs and the Ptolemies afford, I believe, precedents that are tolerably ancient. Strabo is explicit as to the old Irish, Herodotus as to the Persians. In heaven also Osiris and Zeus and I know not how many other supreme gods have, in cherishing extreme affection for their sisters, set the example followed upon earth by the Kings of Siam and of Phœnicia, and by the Incas of Peru—”She shook that small dark head. “But, none the less—”“—An example followed by the Sinhalese, theRomans of the old Republic, the Tyrians, the Guanches of the Canary Islands—”“Let us say no more about it—”“—An example, in short, of the best standing in all quarters of the globe. In the Rig-Veda you will find Yami defending with unanswerable eloquence the union of brother and sister. In Holy Writ we see Heaven’s highest blessings accorded to the fruit of Abraham’s affection for his sister Sarah, nor need I allude to the marriage of Azrun with her two brothers, Abel and Cain. And in the Ynglinga Saga—”She laid her hand upon his mouth. “Yes, yes, you have your precedents: and in your eyes, I know, that is the main thing, because of your dread of being unconventional and offending the neighbors. We were not wicked, then, whatever our less well-read father thought: we were merely”—and here she smiled,—“we were merely logical in our youth. In any event, we wasted our youth.”“Yes,” Florian admitted, “for I was then logical, but not sufficiently logical. I could, as easily at that time as later, have cured our father of his habit of meddling with my affairs. But I turned unthinkingly away from the contented decades of technical criminality which we might have shared. For I was in those days enamored of the beauty that I in childhood had, however briefly, seen: evenwhile my body rioted, my thoughts remained bewilderedly aware of a beguiling and intoxicating brightness which stayed unwon to; and I could care whole-heartedly about nothing else.”“I know,” she answered. “You were a dear boy. And it does not matter, now, that you went away from me, and played at being a man about whom I knew nothing and cared nothing. For old times’ sake my sending followed you to Brunbelois, and even there for old times’ sake I warned you. But you would not heed—”“I cared for nothing then save the beauty of Melior. And now her beauty,” he said, with a wry smile, “is gone. And that also does not matter. For months her beauty has been the one thing about her I never think of.”“She is flesh and blood,” said Marie-Claire, as if that explained everything. “It is a combination which does not long detain Puysange. What is this peril that you go to encounter to-day?”“I go up upon Morven to keep my word as frankly and as utterly as I gave it; and thereby to be embroiled, I am afraid, in open conflict with my patron saint.”“That is bad. You must keep your word of course, because favoritism to anybody is wrong. But these saints do not understand this; they build all upon Heaven’s favoritism: and these holy persons are stronger than we, precisely because they are immune to such clear seeing as we are cursed with.”CaptionHe closed uponFLORIAN, straightforwardly, without any miracle-working.See page281“But your powers of sending and perverting and blighting and so on,” he said,—“are none of these to be enlisted in my favor?”“Not against Hoprig,” she replied, “for the elect have that invincible unreason and stupidity against which alone our powers are feeble. No, my dearest, I cannot aid you. For these saints are stronger than we are: and in the end, whatever grounds they may afford us for contempt or for laughing at them, they conquer us.”It was in some sort a relief to know there was not hope anywhere. Florian spoke now with more animation. “No, Marie-Claire. Even at the last let us adhere to logic! These saints do not conquer; they destroy us, that is all. The ruthless power of holiness is strong enough for that, but it is not strong enough to hold me, not for one instant, in subjection.”“Ah, and must you still be playing, dear boy that was, at being a most tremendous fellow?” she said, still smiling very tenderly. “Heaven will destroy you, then: and this is the hour of your return, the hour which I once prophesied, the hour which comes—so unportentously!—to end our living. So let us not waste that hour in quibbles.”“You are so practical,” he lamented, “and with all that is lovable you combine such a dearth of admirable sentiments. In brief, you are Puysange.”She said pensively: “You were not lonely in my little time of happiness. You would not ever have been lonely with me.”“Have you divined that also, Marie-Claire? Yes, it has been lonely. I have had many friends and wives and mistresses. Perhaps I have had everything which life has to give—”Florian sat looking moodily at two queer drawings done in red and black upon the plaster of the wall: one represented a serpent swallowing rods, the other a serpent crucified. Beneath these drawings was a dark shining stone, and in its gleaming he saw figures move.Florian turned, and said without any apparent emotion: “But I have lived quite alone, with no comprehension of anyone, and with so much distrust of everybody! And now it is too late.”She considered this: she spread out her hands, smiling without mirth. “Yes, it is too late, even with me. Nothing is left, where all was yours once, Florian. I seem a husk. I do not either love or hate you any longer. Only,”—again that dark blind staring puzzled over him,—“only, it is not you who wait here in this fine black suit.”That made him too smile, and shrug a little. “Itis what remains of me, my dear,—all that remains anywhere to-day. Such is the end of every person’s youth and passion. I sometimes think that we reside in an ill-managed place. For look, Marie-Claire!” He waved toward the window, made up of very small panes of leaded glass, through which you saw the first vaporous green of the low fruit trees and much sunshine. “Look, Marie-Claire! spring is returning now, on every side. That seems so tactless.”But Marie-Claire replied, with more tolerance: “That is Their notion of humor. I suppose it amuses the poor dears, so let us not complain.”Then they fell to talking of other matters, and they spoke of shared small happenings in that spring of eighteen years ago, talking quite at random as one trifle reminded them of another. The son of Marie-Claire, young Achille Cazaio, was away from home in the way of business: for at seventeen he had just set up as a brigand, and he was at this time only a hopeful apprentice in the trade through which he was to prosper and to win success and some fame. So they were undisturbed; and Florian that day saw nothing of the stripling bandit, whom gossip declared remarkably to resemble his half-uncle.And Florian stayed for some while in this neat sparsely furnished room. He was content. At the bottom of his mind had always been the knowledge that by and by he would return to Marie-Claire. Such events as had happened since he left her, and the things that people had said and thought and done because of him, and in particular the responsibilities with which he had been entrusted,—his dukedom, his wives, his order of the Holy Ghost, a whole château to do with whatever he pleased,—were the materials of a joke which he was to share with his sister some day, when the boy that had left her came back after having hoodwinked so many persons into regarding him as mature and efficient and unprincipled and all sorts of other amusing things. Marie-Claire alone knew that this fourth Duke of Puysange was still the boy who had loved her; and her blind gazing seemed always to penetrate the disguise.Well! he had come back to her, to find that both of them were changed. The fact was sad, because it seemed to him that boy and girl had been rather wonderful. But it did not matter. Probably nothing mattered. Meanwhile he was again with Marie-Claire. It was sufficient to be home again, for the little while which remained before his destruction by that pig-headed and meddlesome Hoprig. And Florian was content....Toward mid-day Florian parted with his sister for the last time. He found it rather appalling that neither she nor he was moved by this leave-taking.Then he reflected: “But we are dead persons, dead a great while ago. This is the calm of death.”He saw that this was true, and got from it the comfort which he always derived from logic.Nevertheless, he went back very softly, and he peered through the door he had left not quite closed. Marie-Claire now knelt before the dark polished stone in whose gleaming moved figures.“Lalle, Bachera, Magotte, Baphia—” she had begun.Florian shrugged as, this time, he really went away from the house of oak and plaster. He knew whom she invoked. But that did not matter either. And in fact, for Marie-Claire to pass from him to that other was profoundly logical.Florian bowing to Assyrian god
24.Marie-Claire
24.Marie-Claire
F
LORIAN left Bellegarde at dawn. For once, he did not travel in his favorite bottle-green and silver. Good taste suggested that a plain black suit with his best Mechlin ruffles, was the appropriate wear in which to court destruction. Thus clad, he girded on Flamberge, and set out as merrily as might be, afoot: no horse could come to the top of Morven, where once had stood the grove of Virbius.
Florian journeyed first to Amneran, and went to a very retired cottage built of oak and plaster upon a stone foundation. Here was his last hope of aid, and of succour which he might accept without any detriment to the pride of Puysange, for this was the ill spoken-of home of his half-sister, Marie-Claire Cazaio. She was alone at her spinning when he came into the room. He took her hand. He kissed it.
“You told me once, dear Marie-Claire, a longwhile since, that in the end I would come to you in an old garden where dead leaves were falling, and would kiss your hand, and tell you I had loved you all my life. I wonder, Marie-Claire, if you remember that?”
“I have forgotten,” she said, “nothing.”
“You were wrong as to the garden and as to the dead leaves. But in all else you were right. This is the end, Marie-Claire. And in the end I fulfill your prophecy.”
She looked at him, for no brief while, with those small darkened eyes which seemed to see beyond him. “Yes, you are speaking the truth. I had thought that when this happened it would matter. And it does not matter.”
“Only one thing has mattered in all our lives, Marie-Claire. I was at Storisende last week. I remembered you and our youth.”
“And were you”—she smiled faintly,—“and were you properly remorseful?”
“No. I have regretted many of my doings. But I can find nowhere in me any of the highly requisite repentance for those of my actions which people would describe as criminal. I suppose it is because we of Puysange are so respectful of the notions of others that we do not commit crimes rashly. We enter into no illegal turpitude until rather careful reflection has assured us of its expediency. I, inany event, have sometimes been virtuous with unthinking levity, and with depressing upshots: but my vices, which my judgment had to endorse before prudence would venture on them, have resulted well enough. So I can regret no irregularities, and certainly not the happiness of our far-off youth.”
Again Marie-Claire was in no hurry to reply. When she spoke, it was without any apparent conviction either one way or the other. “Our happiness involved, they say, considerable misdoing.”
This stirred him to mild indignation. “And is love between brother and sister a misdoing? Come, Marie-Claire, but let us be logical! All scientists will tell you that endogamy is natural to mankind as long as men stay uncorrupted by over-civilization. The weight of history goes wholly one way. The Pharaohs and the Ptolemies afford, I believe, precedents that are tolerably ancient. Strabo is explicit as to the old Irish, Herodotus as to the Persians. In heaven also Osiris and Zeus and I know not how many other supreme gods have, in cherishing extreme affection for their sisters, set the example followed upon earth by the Kings of Siam and of Phœnicia, and by the Incas of Peru—”
She shook that small dark head. “But, none the less—”
“—An example followed by the Sinhalese, theRomans of the old Republic, the Tyrians, the Guanches of the Canary Islands—”
“Let us say no more about it—”
“—An example, in short, of the best standing in all quarters of the globe. In the Rig-Veda you will find Yami defending with unanswerable eloquence the union of brother and sister. In Holy Writ we see Heaven’s highest blessings accorded to the fruit of Abraham’s affection for his sister Sarah, nor need I allude to the marriage of Azrun with her two brothers, Abel and Cain. And in the Ynglinga Saga—”
She laid her hand upon his mouth. “Yes, yes, you have your precedents: and in your eyes, I know, that is the main thing, because of your dread of being unconventional and offending the neighbors. We were not wicked, then, whatever our less well-read father thought: we were merely”—and here she smiled,—“we were merely logical in our youth. In any event, we wasted our youth.”
“Yes,” Florian admitted, “for I was then logical, but not sufficiently logical. I could, as easily at that time as later, have cured our father of his habit of meddling with my affairs. But I turned unthinkingly away from the contented decades of technical criminality which we might have shared. For I was in those days enamored of the beauty that I in childhood had, however briefly, seen: evenwhile my body rioted, my thoughts remained bewilderedly aware of a beguiling and intoxicating brightness which stayed unwon to; and I could care whole-heartedly about nothing else.”
“I know,” she answered. “You were a dear boy. And it does not matter, now, that you went away from me, and played at being a man about whom I knew nothing and cared nothing. For old times’ sake my sending followed you to Brunbelois, and even there for old times’ sake I warned you. But you would not heed—”
“I cared for nothing then save the beauty of Melior. And now her beauty,” he said, with a wry smile, “is gone. And that also does not matter. For months her beauty has been the one thing about her I never think of.”
“She is flesh and blood,” said Marie-Claire, as if that explained everything. “It is a combination which does not long detain Puysange. What is this peril that you go to encounter to-day?”
“I go up upon Morven to keep my word as frankly and as utterly as I gave it; and thereby to be embroiled, I am afraid, in open conflict with my patron saint.”
“That is bad. You must keep your word of course, because favoritism to anybody is wrong. But these saints do not understand this; they build all upon Heaven’s favoritism: and these holy persons are stronger than we, precisely because they are immune to such clear seeing as we are cursed with.”
Caption
He closed uponFLORIAN, straightforwardly, without any miracle-working.See page281
He closed uponFLORIAN, straightforwardly, without any miracle-working.See page281
“But your powers of sending and perverting and blighting and so on,” he said,—“are none of these to be enlisted in my favor?”
“Not against Hoprig,” she replied, “for the elect have that invincible unreason and stupidity against which alone our powers are feeble. No, my dearest, I cannot aid you. For these saints are stronger than we are: and in the end, whatever grounds they may afford us for contempt or for laughing at them, they conquer us.”
It was in some sort a relief to know there was not hope anywhere. Florian spoke now with more animation. “No, Marie-Claire. Even at the last let us adhere to logic! These saints do not conquer; they destroy us, that is all. The ruthless power of holiness is strong enough for that, but it is not strong enough to hold me, not for one instant, in subjection.”
“Ah, and must you still be playing, dear boy that was, at being a most tremendous fellow?” she said, still smiling very tenderly. “Heaven will destroy you, then: and this is the hour of your return, the hour which I once prophesied, the hour which comes—so unportentously!—to end our living. So let us not waste that hour in quibbles.”
“You are so practical,” he lamented, “and with all that is lovable you combine such a dearth of admirable sentiments. In brief, you are Puysange.”
She said pensively: “You were not lonely in my little time of happiness. You would not ever have been lonely with me.”
“Have you divined that also, Marie-Claire? Yes, it has been lonely. I have had many friends and wives and mistresses. Perhaps I have had everything which life has to give—”
Florian sat looking moodily at two queer drawings done in red and black upon the plaster of the wall: one represented a serpent swallowing rods, the other a serpent crucified. Beneath these drawings was a dark shining stone, and in its gleaming he saw figures move.
Florian turned, and said without any apparent emotion: “But I have lived quite alone, with no comprehension of anyone, and with so much distrust of everybody! And now it is too late.”
She considered this: she spread out her hands, smiling without mirth. “Yes, it is too late, even with me. Nothing is left, where all was yours once, Florian. I seem a husk. I do not either love or hate you any longer. Only,”—again that dark blind staring puzzled over him,—“only, it is not you who wait here in this fine black suit.”
That made him too smile, and shrug a little. “Itis what remains of me, my dear,—all that remains anywhere to-day. Such is the end of every person’s youth and passion. I sometimes think that we reside in an ill-managed place. For look, Marie-Claire!” He waved toward the window, made up of very small panes of leaded glass, through which you saw the first vaporous green of the low fruit trees and much sunshine. “Look, Marie-Claire! spring is returning now, on every side. That seems so tactless.”
But Marie-Claire replied, with more tolerance: “That is Their notion of humor. I suppose it amuses the poor dears, so let us not complain.”
Then they fell to talking of other matters, and they spoke of shared small happenings in that spring of eighteen years ago, talking quite at random as one trifle reminded them of another. The son of Marie-Claire, young Achille Cazaio, was away from home in the way of business: for at seventeen he had just set up as a brigand, and he was at this time only a hopeful apprentice in the trade through which he was to prosper and to win success and some fame. So they were undisturbed; and Florian that day saw nothing of the stripling bandit, whom gossip declared remarkably to resemble his half-uncle.
And Florian stayed for some while in this neat sparsely furnished room. He was content. At the bottom of his mind had always been the knowledge that by and by he would return to Marie-Claire. Such events as had happened since he left her, and the things that people had said and thought and done because of him, and in particular the responsibilities with which he had been entrusted,—his dukedom, his wives, his order of the Holy Ghost, a whole château to do with whatever he pleased,—were the materials of a joke which he was to share with his sister some day, when the boy that had left her came back after having hoodwinked so many persons into regarding him as mature and efficient and unprincipled and all sorts of other amusing things. Marie-Claire alone knew that this fourth Duke of Puysange was still the boy who had loved her; and her blind gazing seemed always to penetrate the disguise.
Well! he had come back to her, to find that both of them were changed. The fact was sad, because it seemed to him that boy and girl had been rather wonderful. But it did not matter. Probably nothing mattered. Meanwhile he was again with Marie-Claire. It was sufficient to be home again, for the little while which remained before his destruction by that pig-headed and meddlesome Hoprig. And Florian was content....
Toward mid-day Florian parted with his sister for the last time. He found it rather appalling that neither she nor he was moved by this leave-taking.Then he reflected: “But we are dead persons, dead a great while ago. This is the calm of death.”
He saw that this was true, and got from it the comfort which he always derived from logic.
Nevertheless, he went back very softly, and he peered through the door he had left not quite closed. Marie-Claire now knelt before the dark polished stone in whose gleaming moved figures.
“Lalle, Bachera, Magotte, Baphia—” she had begun.
Florian shrugged as, this time, he really went away from the house of oak and plaster. He knew whom she invoked. But that did not matter either. And in fact, for Marie-Claire to pass from him to that other was profoundly logical.
Florian bowing to Assyrian god