CHAPTER IIITHE BETROTHEDHe met her in his father’s house that evening. He entered upon her through the folding doors of the withdrawing-room, and saw her before she saw him.The sight of her filled him with an almost intolerable yearning and longing for that happiness he must never enjoy. She was standing by the fire-place. A lamp was on a low table beside her, and it illuminated a gentle beauty that seemed divine to the man who had crawled back mutilated from the embrace of death.Her vows, her kisses, her joy in his presence, her tremulous hopes of pleasing him rushed back to him. Her fair figure in its setting of light, warmth, comfort, and luxury could not have been more alluring to him. Yet he never hesitated for an instant in his resolution that all the things she stood for were things that must be lost to him for ever.She was standing very erect, looking into the fire. Her gown was pink and her bosom covered with lace. She held a prayer-book in her left hand.While Luc still waited, lightly holding the curtain apart, she moved and lowered the lamp.“Mademoiselle,” said Luc.Her shaking hand shot the wick into darkness.“Why, Luc,” she cried in a trembling voice, “the light has gone out!”He noted the relief in her tone, and guessed something of the effort to which she had nerved herself; it made him the stronger.“Mademoiselle,” he said, “it is very gracious of you to permit me to take this farewell of you.”Her voice answered weakly out of the fire-flushed darkness—“Farewell? Farewell?”He came into the room cautiously and feeling his way by the furniture. The darkness was darkness indeed to him. He could see nothing of her but a rosy glimmer where her skirt caught the direct glow of the flames.He paused by the head of a sofa which had stood against the wall since he was a child, and gripped the smooth, familiar curl of the back.“You were never afraid that I should ask more of you than ‘farewell,’ were you, Mademoiselle?” he said sweetly in his tired, slightly hoarse voice.She fortified herself by memories, by the thought of the old Marquis, of his mother, by her own ideals. She tried to stifle her fatal pity that wished to weep over him, and to summon instead some ghost of last summer’s love to help her.“Luc,” she said, with surprising steadiness, “you must not assume that I am inconstant, ignoble. You need me more than ever.”He interrupted her, very gently.“But you have no need of me.”“Yes—ah, yes. This is a strange greeting for you to give me—Luc.” Her voice rose desperately. “Everything is as it was before.”“No,” he said; “everything is changed. You know it—you knew it when you turned the lamp out.”She was silent.“God knows,” he continued slowly, “that it would be pleasant to me to believe what you say—to deceive myself, to sweeten my great loneliness by your loyal duty, by your tender service—by all the gracious phantoms you would conjure from the grave of your dead love—but I am not the coward who would take your sweet self-sacrifice.”“You makemea coward!” came her voice, very low. “What am I to say?”“Farewell,” he answered.He heard her move and saw the blur of her pink skirt pass out of the firelight.“No,” she said, “Iwillbe true—Iwillkeep my vows—I have no right——”“Nor I,” he put in quickly. He paused a moment, then said quietly, “I have no career before me. I shall always be my father’s pensioner, and I shall always be an invalid—and, though no one knows it, the doctor warned me that I have only a few years to live.”“Oh!” shuddered Clémence.He cautiously moved a little nearer to her, treading delicately and feeling his way.“There is nothing to grieve over—and nothing to regret,” he said, “save that I ever entangled your life with mine, Mademoiselle. Yet it has given me the very sweetest memories—and afterwards, in the long years ahead of you, when you are honoured and loved as you are worthy of being, it cannot lessen your happiness to remember that you were the fairest, most sacred thing in the life of a man who did not know—much joy.”He paused and coughed. She was sobbing childishly.“Your tears will be repaid you,” he added in a faltering voice. “You weep for a man who worships you, and who blesses God for having known you—and when you think afterwards of how much it meant to me to meet this tenderness I could not take, you will not regret those tears, Clémence.”He heard her sobs lessen as she struggled to master her tears; he heard her move towards him.“Take me,” she muttered. “I wish it—I meant what I said—I am yours. I could make you happier—let me—Iwillkeep my word.”“Ah, hush!” he answered hoarsely; “you have not even seen me.”“You take away my courage,” she interrupted. “I could have done it—you would never have known.” She broke into sobs again. “Why did you do it? Why was everything so cruel? I think I shall go mad. Luc, Luc, I loved you—on my soul I did! I would have died for you. But why did you go away and come back changed—changed to me? You do not want my love! You refuse my faith! Who was that woman you went with? Where is she now?”“Dead—dead—dead.”“Ah! Does it matter to you?”Luc felt his way nearer to her. He moved into the dim circle of the fire-glow; he could make out her misty shape.“Do you not want me?” she asked, and her voice was steady now.“Yes,” said Luc—“more than I ever wanted you. You asked about the—Countess. She was brave and kind and, I think, had virtues I know not of. I was never more than outside her life—she was not of the same blood—she did not understand. You do—you know what I can do—you will not tempt me.”“Tempt you,” she repeated softly. “But if Iwantedit?”“But you do not, Clémence,” he said gravely and sadly. “You are only pretending for my sake, for my father’s sake, for the sake of your own ideals. And presently you would come to hate me.”She rose and moved restlessly.“Do—you—not believe in love,” she asked hesitatingly “in love being stronger than—anything?”“Yes.”“Then why cannot we—surmount this?”Luc was silent.“Why?” persisted Clémence.He thought she was straining towards him through the darkness.“Ah, my dear,” he cried brokenly, “if you loved me—how different! You said just now, ‘I could have done it—you would never have known.’ Do not try to deceive me.”There was a long silence, then she answered in a muffled but steady tone—“You are right, Monsieur. I will not dare to force on you my ideas. You must act by your own—I will not humiliate you by insisting on your taking any sacrifice. I am speaking very coldly. Forgive me. My heart is not cold. I see there was not in either of our affections anything strong enough to weather storms—and you want the rest of your life free. And I see that you cannot keep me to an old promise—a de Clapiers, Monsieur, can only behave as you have behaved.”She gave a great sigh, as if she was exhausted, and a chill sense of desolation filled the room.“Tell me,” said Luc—“you were afraid?”“Yes,” she admitted lifelessly; “but I would have done it.”“Mademoiselle, I never doubted your courage.”“I—did not lie to you,” came her toneless voice, “when I vowed—I meant——”“I know,” he said—“I know.”“And your father—your poor father——”“He has courage too,” answered Luc, and he laughed. “Light the lamp now, Mademoiselle,” he added.“No—my eyes are too tired,” she replied hastily.“Mademoiselle, I am going to strike a light; but first—may I kiss your hand?”He heard her rise. The fire was dying out and he saw the long gleam of her gown in the faint beams, then her shape came between him and the glow and her hand rested on his. He kissed her fingers, then said, “You would have despised me if I had married you,”—his voice strengthened—“but now you will think of me kindly.”She drew away from him, and seemed to be absorbed and lost in the unbearable darkness.“I want to see you,” said Luc between his teeth.He took the flint and tinder from his pocket and struck it with a steady hand. As the flame flared up he strained his dim eyes across it to gaze at her. He saw her in an atmosphere of fire—the air all about her was red. Her face was more beautiful than he cared to realize; her eyes looked straight at him across the flame, and they were strained, wide, and dark with terror.The still burning tinder fell from his fingers; he put his foot on it. A voice he would not have recognized as hers came out of the obscurity.“You—you are not—much changed.”Luc laughed.“Heaven bless you,” he said sweetly.She seemed to move desperately; he heard her push a chair aside.“Oh—God—God!” she cried on a note of fainting anguish.He felt her skirts brush past him, the door opened, a shaft of light penetrated the darkness for a second, then the door closed.She was gone.Luc fumbled his way to the sofa where she must have been seated; the cushions were still warm where her face had rested, her tears fallen. He spread his hands over them and shivered from head to foot.He had never wanted her so much, in all the days of their summer courtship, as he wanted her now.Yet he was glad she was gone, glad it was over.She was as lost now as that other Clémence who also had closed a door on him and left him alone.His grasp tightened on the silk cushions. Out of the depths of his pain and regret flashed the alluring vision of the phantom he had chased all his life.“Glory!” he said under his breath, “still to be—achieved—not with”—he rose, staggering like one intoxicated—“the body”—he clutched the chimneypiece—“but—with—the soul!”
He met her in his father’s house that evening. He entered upon her through the folding doors of the withdrawing-room, and saw her before she saw him.
The sight of her filled him with an almost intolerable yearning and longing for that happiness he must never enjoy. She was standing by the fire-place. A lamp was on a low table beside her, and it illuminated a gentle beauty that seemed divine to the man who had crawled back mutilated from the embrace of death.
Her vows, her kisses, her joy in his presence, her tremulous hopes of pleasing him rushed back to him. Her fair figure in its setting of light, warmth, comfort, and luxury could not have been more alluring to him. Yet he never hesitated for an instant in his resolution that all the things she stood for were things that must be lost to him for ever.
She was standing very erect, looking into the fire. Her gown was pink and her bosom covered with lace. She held a prayer-book in her left hand.
While Luc still waited, lightly holding the curtain apart, she moved and lowered the lamp.
“Mademoiselle,” said Luc.
Her shaking hand shot the wick into darkness.
“Why, Luc,” she cried in a trembling voice, “the light has gone out!”
He noted the relief in her tone, and guessed something of the effort to which she had nerved herself; it made him the stronger.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “it is very gracious of you to permit me to take this farewell of you.”
Her voice answered weakly out of the fire-flushed darkness—
“Farewell? Farewell?”
He came into the room cautiously and feeling his way by the furniture. The darkness was darkness indeed to him. He could see nothing of her but a rosy glimmer where her skirt caught the direct glow of the flames.
He paused by the head of a sofa which had stood against the wall since he was a child, and gripped the smooth, familiar curl of the back.
“You were never afraid that I should ask more of you than ‘farewell,’ were you, Mademoiselle?” he said sweetly in his tired, slightly hoarse voice.
She fortified herself by memories, by the thought of the old Marquis, of his mother, by her own ideals. She tried to stifle her fatal pity that wished to weep over him, and to summon instead some ghost of last summer’s love to help her.
“Luc,” she said, with surprising steadiness, “you must not assume that I am inconstant, ignoble. You need me more than ever.”
He interrupted her, very gently.
“But you have no need of me.”
“Yes—ah, yes. This is a strange greeting for you to give me—Luc.” Her voice rose desperately. “Everything is as it was before.”
“No,” he said; “everything is changed. You know it—you knew it when you turned the lamp out.”
She was silent.
“God knows,” he continued slowly, “that it would be pleasant to me to believe what you say—to deceive myself, to sweeten my great loneliness by your loyal duty, by your tender service—by all the gracious phantoms you would conjure from the grave of your dead love—but I am not the coward who would take your sweet self-sacrifice.”
“You makemea coward!” came her voice, very low. “What am I to say?”
“Farewell,” he answered.
He heard her move and saw the blur of her pink skirt pass out of the firelight.
“No,” she said, “Iwillbe true—Iwillkeep my vows—I have no right——”
“Nor I,” he put in quickly. He paused a moment, then said quietly, “I have no career before me. I shall always be my father’s pensioner, and I shall always be an invalid—and, though no one knows it, the doctor warned me that I have only a few years to live.”
“Oh!” shuddered Clémence.
He cautiously moved a little nearer to her, treading delicately and feeling his way.
“There is nothing to grieve over—and nothing to regret,” he said, “save that I ever entangled your life with mine, Mademoiselle. Yet it has given me the very sweetest memories—and afterwards, in the long years ahead of you, when you are honoured and loved as you are worthy of being, it cannot lessen your happiness to remember that you were the fairest, most sacred thing in the life of a man who did not know—much joy.”
He paused and coughed. She was sobbing childishly.
“Your tears will be repaid you,” he added in a faltering voice. “You weep for a man who worships you, and who blesses God for having known you—and when you think afterwards of how much it meant to me to meet this tenderness I could not take, you will not regret those tears, Clémence.”
He heard her sobs lessen as she struggled to master her tears; he heard her move towards him.
“Take me,” she muttered. “I wish it—I meant what I said—I am yours. I could make you happier—let me—Iwillkeep my word.”
“Ah, hush!” he answered hoarsely; “you have not even seen me.”
“You take away my courage,” she interrupted. “I could have done it—you would never have known.” She broke into sobs again. “Why did you do it? Why was everything so cruel? I think I shall go mad. Luc, Luc, I loved you—on my soul I did! I would have died for you. But why did you go away and come back changed—changed to me? You do not want my love! You refuse my faith! Who was that woman you went with? Where is she now?”
“Dead—dead—dead.”
“Ah! Does it matter to you?”
Luc felt his way nearer to her. He moved into the dim circle of the fire-glow; he could make out her misty shape.
“Do you not want me?” she asked, and her voice was steady now.
“Yes,” said Luc—“more than I ever wanted you. You asked about the—Countess. She was brave and kind and, I think, had virtues I know not of. I was never more than outside her life—she was not of the same blood—she did not understand. You do—you know what I can do—you will not tempt me.”
“Tempt you,” she repeated softly. “But if Iwantedit?”
“But you do not, Clémence,” he said gravely and sadly. “You are only pretending for my sake, for my father’s sake, for the sake of your own ideals. And presently you would come to hate me.”
She rose and moved restlessly.
“Do—you—not believe in love,” she asked hesitatingly “in love being stronger than—anything?”
“Yes.”
“Then why cannot we—surmount this?”
Luc was silent.
“Why?” persisted Clémence.
He thought she was straining towards him through the darkness.
“Ah, my dear,” he cried brokenly, “if you loved me—how different! You said just now, ‘I could have done it—you would never have known.’ Do not try to deceive me.”
There was a long silence, then she answered in a muffled but steady tone—
“You are right, Monsieur. I will not dare to force on you my ideas. You must act by your own—I will not humiliate you by insisting on your taking any sacrifice. I am speaking very coldly. Forgive me. My heart is not cold. I see there was not in either of our affections anything strong enough to weather storms—and you want the rest of your life free. And I see that you cannot keep me to an old promise—a de Clapiers, Monsieur, can only behave as you have behaved.”
She gave a great sigh, as if she was exhausted, and a chill sense of desolation filled the room.
“Tell me,” said Luc—“you were afraid?”
“Yes,” she admitted lifelessly; “but I would have done it.”
“Mademoiselle, I never doubted your courage.”
“I—did not lie to you,” came her toneless voice, “when I vowed—I meant——”
“I know,” he said—“I know.”
“And your father—your poor father——”
“He has courage too,” answered Luc, and he laughed. “Light the lamp now, Mademoiselle,” he added.
“No—my eyes are too tired,” she replied hastily.
“Mademoiselle, I am going to strike a light; but first—may I kiss your hand?”
He heard her rise. The fire was dying out and he saw the long gleam of her gown in the faint beams, then her shape came between him and the glow and her hand rested on his. He kissed her fingers, then said, “You would have despised me if I had married you,”—his voice strengthened—“but now you will think of me kindly.”
She drew away from him, and seemed to be absorbed and lost in the unbearable darkness.
“I want to see you,” said Luc between his teeth.
He took the flint and tinder from his pocket and struck it with a steady hand. As the flame flared up he strained his dim eyes across it to gaze at her. He saw her in an atmosphere of fire—the air all about her was red. Her face was more beautiful than he cared to realize; her eyes looked straight at him across the flame, and they were strained, wide, and dark with terror.
The still burning tinder fell from his fingers; he put his foot on it. A voice he would not have recognized as hers came out of the obscurity.
“You—you are not—much changed.”
Luc laughed.
“Heaven bless you,” he said sweetly.
She seemed to move desperately; he heard her push a chair aside.
“Oh—God—God!” she cried on a note of fainting anguish.
He felt her skirts brush past him, the door opened, a shaft of light penetrated the darkness for a second, then the door closed.
She was gone.
Luc fumbled his way to the sofa where she must have been seated; the cushions were still warm where her face had rested, her tears fallen. He spread his hands over them and shivered from head to foot.
He had never wanted her so much, in all the days of their summer courtship, as he wanted her now.
Yet he was glad she was gone, glad it was over.
She was as lost now as that other Clémence who also had closed a door on him and left him alone.
His grasp tightened on the silk cushions. Out of the depths of his pain and regret flashed the alluring vision of the phantom he had chased all his life.
“Glory!” he said under his breath, “still to be—achieved—not with”—he rose, staggering like one intoxicated—“the body”—he clutched the chimneypiece—“but—with—the soul!”
CHAPTER IVTHE CONFLICTThe elder Marquis de Vauvenargues put down theGazettein which he had been reading of the opening of the spring campaign and the progress of the Chevalier de St. George through Scotland, and looked across the dining-room at his eldest son.Luc stood before the window half concealed by the long folds of the dark crimson curtains. It was late afternoon in March, and the garden was grey, misty, and fragrant; beyond the trees, just blurred with green, glowed the pale, clear blue of the fading sky, mournful, remote, and calm.“Mademoiselle de Séguy is leaving for Paris to-morrow,” said the Marquis.“Ah!” answered Luc, without moving his head.M. de Vauvenargues paused a moment, then added in a low tone—“It need not have been, Luc, it need not have been.”The young man did not reply, and his father sighed.“You were always obstinate, Luc,” he added with a sad tenderness, “from the day you insisted on entering the army—which was Joseph’s place—as the second son.”Luc moved now; he turned his back to the window, facing now the long, dark room, the table on which the fine cloth, cakes, and wine still gleamed, facing the figure of his father in full peruke and black velvet, brilliants and much Michelin lace.“I am going to prove myself still further obstinate, Monseigneur,” he said. He stifled a cough and braced his stooping figure. “I have wished—for some weeks—since I returned from the convent—to speak to you. I think this is my chance.”The old man folded the paper across mechanically, and the great ruffles round his wrists shook with the quivering of his fair hands.“What can you have to say, Luc?” he asked quickly.His son came slowly to the table with the hesitating and uncertain step that was the accompaniment of his imperfect sight.“I want to tell you, Monseigneur, what I mean to do.”He seated himself on the old, high-backed walnut chair with the fringed leather seat which had been his since the time he had sat there, a stately child in skirts, murmuring grace or eating sugared macaroons.“What you mean to do?” repeated the Marquis.Luc raised his face. In the cold light of the early year and the shadows of the dark room this face looked like a mask of colourless clay modelled in lines of perpetual pain. The white curls of his wig fell either side on to his green coat, and his hands were again white, one holding the back of the black chair, one resting on the lace cloth.He looked at his father steadily, and the blood receded from the Marquis’s strong features.“What do you mean to do?” he asked. “Eh, Luc?”“Monseigneur,”—though the voice was hoarse and broken by constant coughing, there were in it the old sweet notes—“I fear to give you pain. Yet I cannot think that you will not understand.”“I am ready,” said his father, “to do anything you wish—you know that—anything.”Again Luc braced himself with an obvious effort; his bent shoulders straightened and he held up his head.“I want—I mean to—go to Paris.”“To—Paris! You want to leave Aix!”“Monseigneur, I must.”“Luc,”—the Marquis also was endeavouring to remain calm,—“why do you wish to leave your home? What do you intend to do in Paris?”The young man answered swiftly—“Give myself a chance—a last chance.”“But you have refused your appointment.”“Forgive me—I do not mean in that way—that is over. You know. Now it is—my soul, unaided. I must satisfy myself before I die. Who knows what is after? And if I leave my life at this I shall have been a sluggard.I shall not have expressed what was in me to express.”He pressed his handkerchief to his lips and gave a little sigh, as if what he had said and the force with which he had spoken exhausted him.The Marquis stared at him with troubled eyes.“Explain yourself, Luc. If you wish to go you shall—but——” he paused, at a loss.“I must go,” answered Luc. “I have not very long—not much time. Here I merely let you watch me die.”“Luc—Luc.”“I must speak—forgive me again—you may think I go against my duty.”The Marquis was crumpling the edge of the cloth in nervous fingers.“What is the object of this resolution?” he demanded. “Tell me clearly. I have a right to know.”Luc answered steadily and sweetly—“It is hard to pain you, Monseigneur, and before I speak I would implore you to consider that I have not come to this resolution without struggles—so intense, so bitter that I thought I could not live and endure them.”“You frighten me,” said the Marquis. “You always had a wild heart—what has it prompted you to now?”Luc bent his head.“I know a man in Paris who is shaping the thought of France. I told him once what I meant to do, what goal I set myself, and he gave me advice that I rejected. Now other ways are closed to me I shall take this. I think, after all, that he was right. I am going to Paris to join this man and his friends—the people who are making the future of France, of the world. They will help me to so live my last years, to so express the thoughts that come to me that I may die not utterly useless—perhaps even achieving that inward glory that is the paradise of the soul.” His voice rose full and clear with emotion and enthusiasm, and his marred eyes flashed with something of the old fire the Luc of yester year had so often darted on the world.The old Marquis sat very still. He looked grey, and hard, and massive; his fine right hand clutched and unclutched on the table.“Who is this man?” he asked.Luc paused for a moment, then said, without fear or bravado—“Voltaire.”It was the first time that name had been mentioned in this house without loathing or contempt; it was the first time M. de Vauvenargues had heard it on the lips of his son. His face worked with passion: a heavy flush stained his cheeks, and his eyes were almost hidden by his over-hanging, frowning brows.“You mean to leave Aix to become a follower of M. de Voltaire?” he said in a low, trembling voice.“Yes.”“How—what do you mean to do?”“I mean to collect my writings, to publish them—to write again.”“How do you mean to live?”“As they lived when they began.”“And you willwrite?”“Yes—Imust.”The Marquis rose, and his face was distorted.“Have you forgotten that you are my son—my eldest son?”“No.” Luc rose also, and stood fronting his father, the table between them.“And yet you propose to disgrace your blazon!”“Better disgrace my blazon than my genius!” answered Luc. “I have been fettered all my life—now I have no more time to waste. I am going to answer atmytribunal, remember, Monseigneur, not at yours—andmyjudge is not pleased with the things that please Him who judges you.”“You speak blasphemy!” thundered the Marquis. “This twice-damned atheist has poisoned you! There is but one God—beware of Him!”Luc did not move nor speak. There was no defiance nor anger in his attitude, but a great stillness and sweetness in his air, terrible to his father, who checked his passion as swiftly as he had given it rein and said in a controlled, low, and baffled voice—“We must speak of these things quietly, Luc. You cannot mean what you say—no, it is not possible. Your whole life cannot have been a lie.”“My life,” answered Luc quietly, “has borne witness to the truth as it was revealed to me.”“Yet, if youdomean what you say, you have deceived me until this moment.”The young man brought his hands to his bosom.“I never dared tell you what I really believed, Monseigneur,” he said. “Besides, there was no need. I had resolved on the accepted path of honour; I was going the way you had gone, your father before you; I meant to pay all respect to your God; I meant to take a wife of your rank, your faith, your choice—now Fate has ordered differently.” He paused, then added in a deeply moved voice, “I have nothing left save thetruththat is inmyself.”The old man turned and pointed haughtily to the shield carved above the marble chimneypiece, the fasces of blue and silver, the golden chief.“You have that,” he answered with inexpressible pride. “You have your name, me, your house.”“It is not enough,” said Luc in the same tone. “I want, Monseigneur, my own soul.”“Leave that in God’s hands,” flashed the Marquis.“It is in my own,” answered Luc. “Monseigneur, we have come to this issue, and between us—now—it must be decided. I remember when I was a boy you found me writing and reading. You burnt my books and papers; you forbade me to make the acquaintance of men of literature; you instilled into me ideas I am scarcely free of yet. But it is no use—I belong to my age, I am one with those men in Paris.”“With Voltaire, atheist,canaille.”“With him, Monseigneur.”“My son tells this to me!” cried the old man wildly. “If you want to read books, read the history of your house; you will find them much good company and not one pedant! You will be the first of your race to so disgrace yourself!”With equal fire and decision Luc answered—“Nothing can move me. I am what I am. There is only that one thing for me to do. I will not betray my inspiration because I am a man of quality—I would sooner degrade my rank than degrade my spirit.”The Marquis moved back and put out his hand against the chimneypiece. The encroaching shadows began to strengthen in the long, dark chamber; they were over the face of the old noble, these shadows, and gave it a look of hardness, of dreariness, of implacable wrath—a terrible look and a terrible face to be turned on that other marred face opposite, a terrible glance for eyes to dart on those other eyes, half blind, but valiant, that watched patiently.“There is only one thing formeto do,” he said, in bitter mockery of his son’s words. “If you mean what you say, if you hold the beliefs you avow, you leave at once and for ever the house of de Clapiers, you will never look on me or your mother again, and you will not obtain from me a single louis if you are starving—as you will starve in your folly and wickedness.”The old clock struck the half-hour. Those same bells had chimed when Luc had first come into his father’s presence in his fine uniform and been blessed with proud gladness by the man who was spurning him now.Luc trembled a little, then sat down.“I meant,” he replied, “all I said, Monseigneur.”“And I also mean what I say.”Luc was silent; his hands fell into his lap. His father remained motionless, erect, hard, grey in the grey shadows.“I must go—even on these terms I must go.” His voice was yearning, full of regret, of sorrow, but not of weakness.“Then go—at once.”The young man got to his feet.“Like—this?”“At once.”“Monseigneur!”—he held his hands out across the table—“is there nothing in the past that can prevent you from parting so from me—nothing?”“The present kills the past. You choose to forget your blazon, your quality, your name—you are then nothing to me. I shall forget my eldest son as he has forgotten me.”Luc answered feverishly, desperately—“Take care, Monseigneur—you will never be able to undo what you do now—never. Think of it—what a difference it would make to me if I had a kind remembrance of you to take with me into the last endeavour of my life.”“Go—leave my presence. I do not wish to hear your voice.”“My father!”“Go!”“Will you hear me?”“Hear you! What do you think it is to me to hearmy sonspeak as you have spoken?”“Be merciful! Remember I shall never have a child to speak to me—I have nothing but myself.”The Marquis winced and his face quivered.“You have boasted that before!” he cried.“No boast,” said Luc steadily—“the truth.”“Then on that truth we part. Go to Paris and never think of me again.”Luc stood for a full minute silent.“I think you mean it,” he said at last. “I know I might waste my passion on you. I shall never trouble you any more, Monseigneur.”The shadows gathered with steady swiftness. Luc was reminded of other darknesses: of the retreat from Prague, his journey with Carola to the convent, his parting with Clémence. He put his frail hand over his eyes to shut out the pallid bitterness of his father’s face.“I must see my mother,” he said. “I think she would wish to say farewell.”Without a word the Marquis pulled the long bell rope. Luc heard his quick orders, when the servant appeared—“To beg Madame for her presence.”“Thank you, Monseigneur,” he said hoarsely. He seated himself and sank his face in his hands. Were there still depths of anguish, of regret to be sounded? Were there still delicate pangs of pain as yet unknown to him?He heard the door open. He looked up, to perceive the Marquise entering the room—to perceive her, between his blurred sight and the shadows, very dimly, a gleam of rose-coloured brocade, a flash of brilliants in the fire-glow.“Madame,” said M. de Vauvenargues, in a voice hard and bitter, “I have brought you here to say farewell to your son.”Luc was on his feet. He began to speak—he did not know what he was saying.“No,” interrupted the Marquis. “Hear me first, Madame.”Madame de Vauvenargues laid her hand on his cuff.“What has come between you two?” she asked. “Joseph, how is this possible?”“God and honour have come between us,” he answered. “Luc is going to Paris—to—Voltaire—to earn his bread among mountebanks by writing blasphemies. He—a de Clapiers!—he elects to go down into the gutter.”“Hush, Monseigneur, hush!” she implored. “There is some mistake. Luc, Luc—speak to me—tell me what you wish.”His own voice sounded hollow and weary to him as he answered—“I am a follower of M. de Voltaire, Madame. I choose to use what life I have left in the profession of letters—I am going to Paris for that purpose.”“You hear!” cried the Marquis—“you hear!”His wife held herself erect.“Luc,” she said, “you will not persist in this wicked folly.”“Alas!” he answered with great sweetness, “does it seem that to you, my mother?”“Voltaire!” she murmured.“Say your farewells,” commanded the Marquis fiercely.Luc came slowly round the table, feeling his way by the edge of it.“You, at least, will not let me go with harsh words,” he said unsteadily.“Tell me one thing!” she flashed—“do you turn your back on God?”He was beyond all subterfuge. Lies seemed then too flimsy to handle—things that broke at a touch—only truth was strong enough for his mood.“On the God of the Gospels, yes,” he answered. “But what has that to do with you and me?”She crossed herself and shrank back against her husband.“You deny Christ?” she asked, quivering.“I am speaking toyou, mother,” he answered passionately. “I am in great need of you, I am very lonely and weak with regrets—give me a kind farewell.”“Do you deny Christ?” she repeated, and clutched her husband’s hand.Luc lurched and caught hold of the back of the settle by the fire-place.“Shall a dead man come between us?” he asked, and his voice was faint.“The Living God!” answered his mother.Luc straightened himself.“I deny Him—before my own soul I deny Him. If He is more to you than your son—then I go—free—even of your love—free,” he laughed. “I cannot see you. Shall I go like this? Mother, does your God let you cast me off like this?”She stood, taut and cold, at her husband’s side.“I have no more to say to you,” she replied. “With great anguish I shall pray for you.”“Is it possible,” murmured Luc—“is it possible?”The Marquis spoke now.“Madame, you have heard for yourself what manner of son we have. I have told him never to think or speak of us again. Was I right?”She steadied herself against his shoulder.“Quite—right.”“I have bidden him go to Paris—to never set foot in Aix again. Again, was I right?”“Quite—right.”“I tell him, before you, to look for no pity, no charity, no recognition from us until he has made his peace with his outraged God. Marguérite, am I right?”She replied now in one word—“Yes.”Luc drew a little broken sigh.“Farewell,” he said.His father did not answer nor move from his haughty attitude, but his mother said in an awful voice—“Farewell, and Christ have mercy on you.”He could not see either of them. In moving to the door he stumbled several times against the furniture, for the deep twilight meant utter darkness to his partial blindness.The two before the fire heard his awkward steps, his fumbling for the handle of the door, and never moved.When he at last had gone from them utterly, the Marquis caught his wife by the shoulders and looked down into her face.“Never speak his name to me again,” he cried; “never! never!”
The elder Marquis de Vauvenargues put down theGazettein which he had been reading of the opening of the spring campaign and the progress of the Chevalier de St. George through Scotland, and looked across the dining-room at his eldest son.
Luc stood before the window half concealed by the long folds of the dark crimson curtains. It was late afternoon in March, and the garden was grey, misty, and fragrant; beyond the trees, just blurred with green, glowed the pale, clear blue of the fading sky, mournful, remote, and calm.
“Mademoiselle de Séguy is leaving for Paris to-morrow,” said the Marquis.
“Ah!” answered Luc, without moving his head.
M. de Vauvenargues paused a moment, then added in a low tone—
“It need not have been, Luc, it need not have been.”
The young man did not reply, and his father sighed.
“You were always obstinate, Luc,” he added with a sad tenderness, “from the day you insisted on entering the army—which was Joseph’s place—as the second son.”
Luc moved now; he turned his back to the window, facing now the long, dark room, the table on which the fine cloth, cakes, and wine still gleamed, facing the figure of his father in full peruke and black velvet, brilliants and much Michelin lace.
“I am going to prove myself still further obstinate, Monseigneur,” he said. He stifled a cough and braced his stooping figure. “I have wished—for some weeks—since I returned from the convent—to speak to you. I think this is my chance.”
The old man folded the paper across mechanically, and the great ruffles round his wrists shook with the quivering of his fair hands.
“What can you have to say, Luc?” he asked quickly.
His son came slowly to the table with the hesitating and uncertain step that was the accompaniment of his imperfect sight.
“I want to tell you, Monseigneur, what I mean to do.”
He seated himself on the old, high-backed walnut chair with the fringed leather seat which had been his since the time he had sat there, a stately child in skirts, murmuring grace or eating sugared macaroons.
“What you mean to do?” repeated the Marquis.
Luc raised his face. In the cold light of the early year and the shadows of the dark room this face looked like a mask of colourless clay modelled in lines of perpetual pain. The white curls of his wig fell either side on to his green coat, and his hands were again white, one holding the back of the black chair, one resting on the lace cloth.
He looked at his father steadily, and the blood receded from the Marquis’s strong features.
“What do you mean to do?” he asked. “Eh, Luc?”
“Monseigneur,”—though the voice was hoarse and broken by constant coughing, there were in it the old sweet notes—“I fear to give you pain. Yet I cannot think that you will not understand.”
“I am ready,” said his father, “to do anything you wish—you know that—anything.”
Again Luc braced himself with an obvious effort; his bent shoulders straightened and he held up his head.
“I want—I mean to—go to Paris.”
“To—Paris! You want to leave Aix!”
“Monseigneur, I must.”
“Luc,”—the Marquis also was endeavouring to remain calm,—“why do you wish to leave your home? What do you intend to do in Paris?”
The young man answered swiftly—
“Give myself a chance—a last chance.”
“But you have refused your appointment.”
“Forgive me—I do not mean in that way—that is over. You know. Now it is—my soul, unaided. I must satisfy myself before I die. Who knows what is after? And if I leave my life at this I shall have been a sluggard.I shall not have expressed what was in me to express.”
He pressed his handkerchief to his lips and gave a little sigh, as if what he had said and the force with which he had spoken exhausted him.
The Marquis stared at him with troubled eyes.
“Explain yourself, Luc. If you wish to go you shall—but——” he paused, at a loss.
“I must go,” answered Luc. “I have not very long—not much time. Here I merely let you watch me die.”
“Luc—Luc.”
“I must speak—forgive me again—you may think I go against my duty.”
The Marquis was crumpling the edge of the cloth in nervous fingers.
“What is the object of this resolution?” he demanded. “Tell me clearly. I have a right to know.”
Luc answered steadily and sweetly—
“It is hard to pain you, Monseigneur, and before I speak I would implore you to consider that I have not come to this resolution without struggles—so intense, so bitter that I thought I could not live and endure them.”
“You frighten me,” said the Marquis. “You always had a wild heart—what has it prompted you to now?”
Luc bent his head.
“I know a man in Paris who is shaping the thought of France. I told him once what I meant to do, what goal I set myself, and he gave me advice that I rejected. Now other ways are closed to me I shall take this. I think, after all, that he was right. I am going to Paris to join this man and his friends—the people who are making the future of France, of the world. They will help me to so live my last years, to so express the thoughts that come to me that I may die not utterly useless—perhaps even achieving that inward glory that is the paradise of the soul.” His voice rose full and clear with emotion and enthusiasm, and his marred eyes flashed with something of the old fire the Luc of yester year had so often darted on the world.
The old Marquis sat very still. He looked grey, and hard, and massive; his fine right hand clutched and unclutched on the table.
“Who is this man?” he asked.
Luc paused for a moment, then said, without fear or bravado—
“Voltaire.”
It was the first time that name had been mentioned in this house without loathing or contempt; it was the first time M. de Vauvenargues had heard it on the lips of his son. His face worked with passion: a heavy flush stained his cheeks, and his eyes were almost hidden by his over-hanging, frowning brows.
“You mean to leave Aix to become a follower of M. de Voltaire?” he said in a low, trembling voice.
“Yes.”
“How—what do you mean to do?”
“I mean to collect my writings, to publish them—to write again.”
“How do you mean to live?”
“As they lived when they began.”
“And you willwrite?”
“Yes—Imust.”
The Marquis rose, and his face was distorted.
“Have you forgotten that you are my son—my eldest son?”
“No.” Luc rose also, and stood fronting his father, the table between them.
“And yet you propose to disgrace your blazon!”
“Better disgrace my blazon than my genius!” answered Luc. “I have been fettered all my life—now I have no more time to waste. I am going to answer atmytribunal, remember, Monseigneur, not at yours—andmyjudge is not pleased with the things that please Him who judges you.”
“You speak blasphemy!” thundered the Marquis. “This twice-damned atheist has poisoned you! There is but one God—beware of Him!”
Luc did not move nor speak. There was no defiance nor anger in his attitude, but a great stillness and sweetness in his air, terrible to his father, who checked his passion as swiftly as he had given it rein and said in a controlled, low, and baffled voice—
“We must speak of these things quietly, Luc. You cannot mean what you say—no, it is not possible. Your whole life cannot have been a lie.”
“My life,” answered Luc quietly, “has borne witness to the truth as it was revealed to me.”
“Yet, if youdomean what you say, you have deceived me until this moment.”
The young man brought his hands to his bosom.
“I never dared tell you what I really believed, Monseigneur,” he said. “Besides, there was no need. I had resolved on the accepted path of honour; I was going the way you had gone, your father before you; I meant to pay all respect to your God; I meant to take a wife of your rank, your faith, your choice—now Fate has ordered differently.” He paused, then added in a deeply moved voice, “I have nothing left save thetruththat is inmyself.”
The old man turned and pointed haughtily to the shield carved above the marble chimneypiece, the fasces of blue and silver, the golden chief.
“You have that,” he answered with inexpressible pride. “You have your name, me, your house.”
“It is not enough,” said Luc in the same tone. “I want, Monseigneur, my own soul.”
“Leave that in God’s hands,” flashed the Marquis.
“It is in my own,” answered Luc. “Monseigneur, we have come to this issue, and between us—now—it must be decided. I remember when I was a boy you found me writing and reading. You burnt my books and papers; you forbade me to make the acquaintance of men of literature; you instilled into me ideas I am scarcely free of yet. But it is no use—I belong to my age, I am one with those men in Paris.”
“With Voltaire, atheist,canaille.”
“With him, Monseigneur.”
“My son tells this to me!” cried the old man wildly. “If you want to read books, read the history of your house; you will find them much good company and not one pedant! You will be the first of your race to so disgrace yourself!”
With equal fire and decision Luc answered—
“Nothing can move me. I am what I am. There is only that one thing for me to do. I will not betray my inspiration because I am a man of quality—I would sooner degrade my rank than degrade my spirit.”
The Marquis moved back and put out his hand against the chimneypiece. The encroaching shadows began to strengthen in the long, dark chamber; they were over the face of the old noble, these shadows, and gave it a look of hardness, of dreariness, of implacable wrath—a terrible look and a terrible face to be turned on that other marred face opposite, a terrible glance for eyes to dart on those other eyes, half blind, but valiant, that watched patiently.
“There is only one thing formeto do,” he said, in bitter mockery of his son’s words. “If you mean what you say, if you hold the beliefs you avow, you leave at once and for ever the house of de Clapiers, you will never look on me or your mother again, and you will not obtain from me a single louis if you are starving—as you will starve in your folly and wickedness.”
The old clock struck the half-hour. Those same bells had chimed when Luc had first come into his father’s presence in his fine uniform and been blessed with proud gladness by the man who was spurning him now.
Luc trembled a little, then sat down.
“I meant,” he replied, “all I said, Monseigneur.”
“And I also mean what I say.”
Luc was silent; his hands fell into his lap. His father remained motionless, erect, hard, grey in the grey shadows.
“I must go—even on these terms I must go.” His voice was yearning, full of regret, of sorrow, but not of weakness.
“Then go—at once.”
The young man got to his feet.
“Like—this?”
“At once.”
“Monseigneur!”—he held his hands out across the table—“is there nothing in the past that can prevent you from parting so from me—nothing?”
“The present kills the past. You choose to forget your blazon, your quality, your name—you are then nothing to me. I shall forget my eldest son as he has forgotten me.”
Luc answered feverishly, desperately—
“Take care, Monseigneur—you will never be able to undo what you do now—never. Think of it—what a difference it would make to me if I had a kind remembrance of you to take with me into the last endeavour of my life.”
“Go—leave my presence. I do not wish to hear your voice.”
“My father!”
“Go!”
“Will you hear me?”
“Hear you! What do you think it is to me to hearmy sonspeak as you have spoken?”
“Be merciful! Remember I shall never have a child to speak to me—I have nothing but myself.”
The Marquis winced and his face quivered.
“You have boasted that before!” he cried.
“No boast,” said Luc steadily—“the truth.”
“Then on that truth we part. Go to Paris and never think of me again.”
Luc stood for a full minute silent.
“I think you mean it,” he said at last. “I know I might waste my passion on you. I shall never trouble you any more, Monseigneur.”
The shadows gathered with steady swiftness. Luc was reminded of other darknesses: of the retreat from Prague, his journey with Carola to the convent, his parting with Clémence. He put his frail hand over his eyes to shut out the pallid bitterness of his father’s face.
“I must see my mother,” he said. “I think she would wish to say farewell.”
Without a word the Marquis pulled the long bell rope. Luc heard his quick orders, when the servant appeared—“To beg Madame for her presence.”
“Thank you, Monseigneur,” he said hoarsely. He seated himself and sank his face in his hands. Were there still depths of anguish, of regret to be sounded? Were there still delicate pangs of pain as yet unknown to him?
He heard the door open. He looked up, to perceive the Marquise entering the room—to perceive her, between his blurred sight and the shadows, very dimly, a gleam of rose-coloured brocade, a flash of brilliants in the fire-glow.
“Madame,” said M. de Vauvenargues, in a voice hard and bitter, “I have brought you here to say farewell to your son.”
Luc was on his feet. He began to speak—he did not know what he was saying.
“No,” interrupted the Marquis. “Hear me first, Madame.”
Madame de Vauvenargues laid her hand on his cuff.
“What has come between you two?” she asked. “Joseph, how is this possible?”
“God and honour have come between us,” he answered. “Luc is going to Paris—to—Voltaire—to earn his bread among mountebanks by writing blasphemies. He—a de Clapiers!—he elects to go down into the gutter.”
“Hush, Monseigneur, hush!” she implored. “There is some mistake. Luc, Luc—speak to me—tell me what you wish.”
His own voice sounded hollow and weary to him as he answered—
“I am a follower of M. de Voltaire, Madame. I choose to use what life I have left in the profession of letters—I am going to Paris for that purpose.”
“You hear!” cried the Marquis—“you hear!”
His wife held herself erect.
“Luc,” she said, “you will not persist in this wicked folly.”
“Alas!” he answered with great sweetness, “does it seem that to you, my mother?”
“Voltaire!” she murmured.
“Say your farewells,” commanded the Marquis fiercely.
Luc came slowly round the table, feeling his way by the edge of it.
“You, at least, will not let me go with harsh words,” he said unsteadily.
“Tell me one thing!” she flashed—“do you turn your back on God?”
He was beyond all subterfuge. Lies seemed then too flimsy to handle—things that broke at a touch—only truth was strong enough for his mood.
“On the God of the Gospels, yes,” he answered. “But what has that to do with you and me?”
She crossed herself and shrank back against her husband.
“You deny Christ?” she asked, quivering.
“I am speaking toyou, mother,” he answered passionately. “I am in great need of you, I am very lonely and weak with regrets—give me a kind farewell.”
“Do you deny Christ?” she repeated, and clutched her husband’s hand.
Luc lurched and caught hold of the back of the settle by the fire-place.
“Shall a dead man come between us?” he asked, and his voice was faint.
“The Living God!” answered his mother.
Luc straightened himself.
“I deny Him—before my own soul I deny Him. If He is more to you than your son—then I go—free—even of your love—free,” he laughed. “I cannot see you. Shall I go like this? Mother, does your God let you cast me off like this?”
She stood, taut and cold, at her husband’s side.
“I have no more to say to you,” she replied. “With great anguish I shall pray for you.”
“Is it possible,” murmured Luc—“is it possible?”
The Marquis spoke now.
“Madame, you have heard for yourself what manner of son we have. I have told him never to think or speak of us again. Was I right?”
She steadied herself against his shoulder.
“Quite—right.”
“I have bidden him go to Paris—to never set foot in Aix again. Again, was I right?”
“Quite—right.”
“I tell him, before you, to look for no pity, no charity, no recognition from us until he has made his peace with his outraged God. Marguérite, am I right?”
She replied now in one word—
“Yes.”
Luc drew a little broken sigh.
“Farewell,” he said.
His father did not answer nor move from his haughty attitude, but his mother said in an awful voice—
“Farewell, and Christ have mercy on you.”
He could not see either of them. In moving to the door he stumbled several times against the furniture, for the deep twilight meant utter darkness to his partial blindness.
The two before the fire heard his awkward steps, his fumbling for the handle of the door, and never moved.
When he at last had gone from them utterly, the Marquis caught his wife by the shoulders and looked down into her face.
“Never speak his name to me again,” he cried; “never! never!”
CHAPTER VTHE DEPARTURE FROM AIXLuc sat in a corner of the Paris post-chaise which was driving through the dark away from Aix. It was over now. He was free of everything; his own master; on his own road to his own goal.Though, knowing his father, he must have known this utter breach would follow his confession of his faith and belief, yet no previous preparation could soften the pang of the suddenness with which the thing had happened. For years he had been aware that if he spoke what was in his mind his father would be moved to terrible wrath; yet it was none the less awful that he was riding away from Aix, from his home, for ever.His mother, too. She had let him go with less kindness than he had often seen her show to poor beseechers of charity at her gate.Jean, his own body-servant, had shrunk from him—he had packed his portmanteaus himself; the other servants had kept out of his way. He seemed to have left the house under a silent curse.He roused himself; demanded of himself what he was doing brooding on the past. His justification lay in the future. He looked round the interior of the coach, which was full of mist, and shadow, and the wavering light of an oil lamp that hung above the red upholstered worn back of the seat opposite him.It was a chilly night, the road rough, and progress slow. Luc’s weak sight slowly made out the other passengers. His mental preoccupation had been such that till now he had not noticed them.One, who sat opposite him, under the lamp, was an ordinary middle-aged citizen, wrapped in a frieze coat and wearing a grey wig. He was half asleep, and his head shook to and fro on his breast with the rattling of the coach. The remaining passenger was a woman, so muffled from head to foot in a dark mantle that face, figure, hands, and feet were hidden—probably she was asleep.Luc had never been in a public coach before. The close smell, the worn fittings, the near presence of strangers—it was all new to him, as were the joltings and lurching in the heavy leathers. He reflected that henceforth all his life would be as strange, as different as this from what he had hitherto known; that from now on he would have to consider things from another standpoint—the soldier, the noble existed no longer. He was a man broken in health, with very little longer to live, adventuring to Paris. He schooled himself to endure the monotony of the cold, the dim light, the two silent figures, the slow motion. He closed his eyes and endeavoured to sleep.His senses were slipping into a languid, bitter-sweet confusion, when a stinging blast of air roused him. He sat up, shivering and coughing.The window farthest from him had been opened, and a thin curl of mist, icy cold, entered the coach. The man opposite slept and nodded, and the lady by the open window held her head turned away, and seemed to be gazing out at the darkness.Luc’s courtesy would not permit him to ask her to close the window, though to have it wide to the night in such weather seemed folly.The cold crept up to him, and clung to him. Recollections of all that cold had meant in his life came to him: the cold in Bohemia; the cold outside Aix; even the delicate chill of evening in the garden off the Rue Deauville. And all these associations were with Carola Koklinska, and he recalled that she had told him how she used to lie shivering under the trees when she was a child—cold, cold, cold.Wherever her soul might be, her body was cold now, stiff in the frosty earth. He too, he shivered as he had not under the snows of Pürgitz. Again he closed his eyes, yet soon opened them.Now the window was shut.He stared, for he had not heard the sound of closing. When he reflected, he had not heard the sound of opening either, nor had the lady changed her attitude—and it was not possible that she could have pulled the thick strap, moved down or up the ponderous frame of wood, the heavy sheet of glass, without some sound, and without disturbing the folds of the cloak across her hands.Luc admitted to himself, with a little quiver, that his sight was more and more failing him. In these last few weeks he could not trust himself about objects even so near as was this window, that could never have been opened.He wondered where the cold came from, for it was increasing till every bone ached. Yet his fellow-travellers were quiet. Could it be his fancy conjuring up the past, the snow, the chill—and Carola, Clémence that was? His head sank sideways on his breast, and he fixed his blurred vision on the silent figure of the woman in the corner. Since he could not see her face, he might please himself by imagining it; since he was free to picture her as he would, he might believe she had black hair in long fine ringlets, dark eyes and hollowed cheeks, and a fair throat softly shadowed.The coach rattled on with cumbrous pace. The lantern flame flared and dipped in the socket; the man in the frieze coat sank huddled together in a deeper sleep; and the cold became more intense, more searching, till Luc felt as if some creature of ice were embracing him.Presently, and for the first time, the lady in the corner moved. She did not turn her head from gazing at the darkness, but she drew her hand from under her cloak (that Luc now perceived to be of purple velvet) and laid it on the seat between them.It was a bare hand, white, and thin, and long.Luc stared down at this hand, leant forward to bridge the space between them. On the second of the fingers was a diamond ring with sapphire points. Luc had seen a child with such a ring in her shroud buried in the convent graveyard. He drooped against the back of the seat; the hand came nearer, and it seemed to him that his sight suddenly became as perfect as it once had been, for he saw every line and curve and shadow, every tint and crease in the delicate hand creeping closer to him across the worn red velvet of the seat; saw the blue and white sparkle of the stones in the lamplight, and the minute details of their carved silver setting.She still did not look round. Luc put out his own hand, and the long fingers rested on his. The deep cold increased till he felt that every drop of blood in his body was chilled.The coach jolted, the lamp shook violently, and the flame sank out; darkness joined the cold. The coach vanished from about Luc; he felt himself being drawn by that icy hand through soft blackness. Cloudy pictures of all he had lost oppressed him: he heard his father’s voice, very far off; his mother’s last cruel dismissal, coming too from a great distance. He thought he was under the earth, lying in a grave with Carola Koklinska. His own hand was now so cold that he did not know whether or no another was resting in it. A faint Eastern perfume, luxurious and warm, pervaded the universal cold; a sense of comfort, of delight, stayed the long ache of regret in Luc’s heart, as if herbs had been placed on a wound.He thought he was back in Bohemia, sleeping on the frozen ground, and that presently the dawn would break like a frosty lily, and he would look up to see a lady in a habit of Oriental gaudiness ride round a tall silver fir, in the topmost boughs of which the sun would sparkle among the snow crystals.But it was another light that broke across the peaceful, grateful darkness that surrounded Luc. He sat up shivering, to find himself in the close, worn interior of a public coach, the door of which was being held open by the guard, who carried a lantern that cast a strong yellow glow.The coach had stopped. Luc’s fellow-passenger was yawning and shaking himself.“Ah, Messieurs,” the guard was saying, “a thousand pardons—the light has gone out!”“Eh?” yawned the man in the frieze coat. “Well, I think we have both been asleep, have we not, Monsieur?”He smiled courteously at Luc.“It would seem so,” shuddered the Marquis. Beyond the stout figure of the guard, clumsy with heavy capes, he could see the misty lights of an inn, and a group of men standing in front of the yellow square of the door.“The lady?” he asked. “Has the lady got out here?”The fellow shook his head.“There was no passenger save you two from Aix, Monsieur. Some others join us at the next stage.”Luc glanced at his fellow-traveller, who was chafing his hands vigorously.“Did you not think that there was a lady in that corner?” he asked faintly.When he saw the look turned on him, he repented having spoken.“You have been dreaming, Monsieur,” was the brusque answer. “We have been alone in the coach since Aix.”Luc controlled himself.“Forgive me,” he said simply. “My sight is not very good, and there were so many shadows I thought I saw a lady in a dark mantle seated in that corner.”The little man laughed.“Mon Dieu, no, Monsieur.” He spoke pleasantly, being affected, almost unconsciously, by the sweetness and gentleness of the slight stooping gentleman who was so terribly marked by the smallpox and seemed to breathe with such an effort.The guard entered to relight the lantern, and the two travellers descended and stood in the strip of light outside the inn, where the coachman, some peasants, and two starved-looking people, who had been travelling outside, were drinking hot spiced wine with wolfish relish.Luc felt the night wind touch his face. He walked out of the radius of light, away from the sound of the talk, and stood facing the dark high road.Can she, then, come back—has she, then, remembered? Did she mean to comfort me?He breathed strongly and drew himself erect.Why should I fear sorrow and loss? Who am I that I should hope to be free of grief and regret? I have not offended the Being who put me here, and I fear nothing.He stood motionless, for the wind was rising higher, and passed him with a sound like the sweep of a woman’s skirt. He thought to feel a touch, a breath, to hear a voice, a sigh.But the wind passed, and a great stillness fell.Luc returned to the coach.“Will you not have a glass of wine, Monsieur?” asked the man in the frieze coat. “It is a bitter night for spring.”The Marquis declined pleasantly.“I suppose we are near the dawn?” he added.“I think it will be light before the next stage, Monsieur.”They mounted the step, entered, and closed the door. A heavy smell of oil hung in the air, and the lamp burnt raggedly. From without came the clink of glasses and money, voices, and the stamp of feet.Luc was roused from the exaltation of his inner thoughts by the question—“How far are you travelling, Monsieur?”“To Paris.”“Ah, a long way.”“Yes, a long way.”“A fine city, Paris,” said the other, pulling on his gloves.“Fine, indeed, Monsieur.”They took their seats, and the coach started with a noisy effort. The elder traveller was soon asleep again, but Luc sat awake, alert, watching the blurred misty glass turn a cold white as the dawn came slowly.
Luc sat in a corner of the Paris post-chaise which was driving through the dark away from Aix. It was over now. He was free of everything; his own master; on his own road to his own goal.
Though, knowing his father, he must have known this utter breach would follow his confession of his faith and belief, yet no previous preparation could soften the pang of the suddenness with which the thing had happened. For years he had been aware that if he spoke what was in his mind his father would be moved to terrible wrath; yet it was none the less awful that he was riding away from Aix, from his home, for ever.
His mother, too. She had let him go with less kindness than he had often seen her show to poor beseechers of charity at her gate.
Jean, his own body-servant, had shrunk from him—he had packed his portmanteaus himself; the other servants had kept out of his way. He seemed to have left the house under a silent curse.
He roused himself; demanded of himself what he was doing brooding on the past. His justification lay in the future. He looked round the interior of the coach, which was full of mist, and shadow, and the wavering light of an oil lamp that hung above the red upholstered worn back of the seat opposite him.
It was a chilly night, the road rough, and progress slow. Luc’s weak sight slowly made out the other passengers. His mental preoccupation had been such that till now he had not noticed them.
One, who sat opposite him, under the lamp, was an ordinary middle-aged citizen, wrapped in a frieze coat and wearing a grey wig. He was half asleep, and his head shook to and fro on his breast with the rattling of the coach. The remaining passenger was a woman, so muffled from head to foot in a dark mantle that face, figure, hands, and feet were hidden—probably she was asleep.
Luc had never been in a public coach before. The close smell, the worn fittings, the near presence of strangers—it was all new to him, as were the joltings and lurching in the heavy leathers. He reflected that henceforth all his life would be as strange, as different as this from what he had hitherto known; that from now on he would have to consider things from another standpoint—the soldier, the noble existed no longer. He was a man broken in health, with very little longer to live, adventuring to Paris. He schooled himself to endure the monotony of the cold, the dim light, the two silent figures, the slow motion. He closed his eyes and endeavoured to sleep.
His senses were slipping into a languid, bitter-sweet confusion, when a stinging blast of air roused him. He sat up, shivering and coughing.
The window farthest from him had been opened, and a thin curl of mist, icy cold, entered the coach. The man opposite slept and nodded, and the lady by the open window held her head turned away, and seemed to be gazing out at the darkness.
Luc’s courtesy would not permit him to ask her to close the window, though to have it wide to the night in such weather seemed folly.
The cold crept up to him, and clung to him. Recollections of all that cold had meant in his life came to him: the cold in Bohemia; the cold outside Aix; even the delicate chill of evening in the garden off the Rue Deauville. And all these associations were with Carola Koklinska, and he recalled that she had told him how she used to lie shivering under the trees when she was a child—cold, cold, cold.
Wherever her soul might be, her body was cold now, stiff in the frosty earth. He too, he shivered as he had not under the snows of Pürgitz. Again he closed his eyes, yet soon opened them.
Now the window was shut.
He stared, for he had not heard the sound of closing. When he reflected, he had not heard the sound of opening either, nor had the lady changed her attitude—and it was not possible that she could have pulled the thick strap, moved down or up the ponderous frame of wood, the heavy sheet of glass, without some sound, and without disturbing the folds of the cloak across her hands.
Luc admitted to himself, with a little quiver, that his sight was more and more failing him. In these last few weeks he could not trust himself about objects even so near as was this window, that could never have been opened.
He wondered where the cold came from, for it was increasing till every bone ached. Yet his fellow-travellers were quiet. Could it be his fancy conjuring up the past, the snow, the chill—and Carola, Clémence that was? His head sank sideways on his breast, and he fixed his blurred vision on the silent figure of the woman in the corner. Since he could not see her face, he might please himself by imagining it; since he was free to picture her as he would, he might believe she had black hair in long fine ringlets, dark eyes and hollowed cheeks, and a fair throat softly shadowed.
The coach rattled on with cumbrous pace. The lantern flame flared and dipped in the socket; the man in the frieze coat sank huddled together in a deeper sleep; and the cold became more intense, more searching, till Luc felt as if some creature of ice were embracing him.
Presently, and for the first time, the lady in the corner moved. She did not turn her head from gazing at the darkness, but she drew her hand from under her cloak (that Luc now perceived to be of purple velvet) and laid it on the seat between them.
It was a bare hand, white, and thin, and long.
Luc stared down at this hand, leant forward to bridge the space between them. On the second of the fingers was a diamond ring with sapphire points. Luc had seen a child with such a ring in her shroud buried in the convent graveyard. He drooped against the back of the seat; the hand came nearer, and it seemed to him that his sight suddenly became as perfect as it once had been, for he saw every line and curve and shadow, every tint and crease in the delicate hand creeping closer to him across the worn red velvet of the seat; saw the blue and white sparkle of the stones in the lamplight, and the minute details of their carved silver setting.
She still did not look round. Luc put out his own hand, and the long fingers rested on his. The deep cold increased till he felt that every drop of blood in his body was chilled.
The coach jolted, the lamp shook violently, and the flame sank out; darkness joined the cold. The coach vanished from about Luc; he felt himself being drawn by that icy hand through soft blackness. Cloudy pictures of all he had lost oppressed him: he heard his father’s voice, very far off; his mother’s last cruel dismissal, coming too from a great distance. He thought he was under the earth, lying in a grave with Carola Koklinska. His own hand was now so cold that he did not know whether or no another was resting in it. A faint Eastern perfume, luxurious and warm, pervaded the universal cold; a sense of comfort, of delight, stayed the long ache of regret in Luc’s heart, as if herbs had been placed on a wound.
He thought he was back in Bohemia, sleeping on the frozen ground, and that presently the dawn would break like a frosty lily, and he would look up to see a lady in a habit of Oriental gaudiness ride round a tall silver fir, in the topmost boughs of which the sun would sparkle among the snow crystals.
But it was another light that broke across the peaceful, grateful darkness that surrounded Luc. He sat up shivering, to find himself in the close, worn interior of a public coach, the door of which was being held open by the guard, who carried a lantern that cast a strong yellow glow.
The coach had stopped. Luc’s fellow-passenger was yawning and shaking himself.
“Ah, Messieurs,” the guard was saying, “a thousand pardons—the light has gone out!”
“Eh?” yawned the man in the frieze coat. “Well, I think we have both been asleep, have we not, Monsieur?”
He smiled courteously at Luc.
“It would seem so,” shuddered the Marquis. Beyond the stout figure of the guard, clumsy with heavy capes, he could see the misty lights of an inn, and a group of men standing in front of the yellow square of the door.
“The lady?” he asked. “Has the lady got out here?”
The fellow shook his head.
“There was no passenger save you two from Aix, Monsieur. Some others join us at the next stage.”
Luc glanced at his fellow-traveller, who was chafing his hands vigorously.
“Did you not think that there was a lady in that corner?” he asked faintly.
When he saw the look turned on him, he repented having spoken.
“You have been dreaming, Monsieur,” was the brusque answer. “We have been alone in the coach since Aix.”
Luc controlled himself.
“Forgive me,” he said simply. “My sight is not very good, and there were so many shadows I thought I saw a lady in a dark mantle seated in that corner.”
The little man laughed.
“Mon Dieu, no, Monsieur.” He spoke pleasantly, being affected, almost unconsciously, by the sweetness and gentleness of the slight stooping gentleman who was so terribly marked by the smallpox and seemed to breathe with such an effort.
The guard entered to relight the lantern, and the two travellers descended and stood in the strip of light outside the inn, where the coachman, some peasants, and two starved-looking people, who had been travelling outside, were drinking hot spiced wine with wolfish relish.
Luc felt the night wind touch his face. He walked out of the radius of light, away from the sound of the talk, and stood facing the dark high road.
Can she, then, come back—has she, then, remembered? Did she mean to comfort me?
He breathed strongly and drew himself erect.
Why should I fear sorrow and loss? Who am I that I should hope to be free of grief and regret? I have not offended the Being who put me here, and I fear nothing.
He stood motionless, for the wind was rising higher, and passed him with a sound like the sweep of a woman’s skirt. He thought to feel a touch, a breath, to hear a voice, a sigh.
But the wind passed, and a great stillness fell.
Luc returned to the coach.
“Will you not have a glass of wine, Monsieur?” asked the man in the frieze coat. “It is a bitter night for spring.”
The Marquis declined pleasantly.
“I suppose we are near the dawn?” he added.
“I think it will be light before the next stage, Monsieur.”
They mounted the step, entered, and closed the door. A heavy smell of oil hung in the air, and the lamp burnt raggedly. From without came the clink of glasses and money, voices, and the stamp of feet.
Luc was roused from the exaltation of his inner thoughts by the question—
“How far are you travelling, Monsieur?”
“To Paris.”
“Ah, a long way.”
“Yes, a long way.”
“A fine city, Paris,” said the other, pulling on his gloves.
“Fine, indeed, Monsieur.”
They took their seats, and the coach started with a noisy effort. The elder traveller was soon asleep again, but Luc sat awake, alert, watching the blurred misty glass turn a cold white as the dawn came slowly.
CHAPTER VITHE GARRETWhen Luc looked from the window of his room across the Isle of St. Louis he realized the great gulf he had set between himself and his past.The chamber was high up in a tall, straight-fronted house that had once been of some pretensions to splendour, and a man with good vision could have seen a strange array of twisted roofs and chimney-stacks beneath the two dominant towers of Notre-Dame de Paris; and even Luc’s ruined sight could discern a vast, if blurred, sweep of houses, sky, and clouds.Looking down into the street, he could dimly see the dirty house-fronts; the kennels with their up-piled garbage; the poor wine-shop; the people between poverty and draggled fashion, who came and went in this heart of the city that was now so decayed, yet retained still some remnants of splendour; a certain air of being old and royal; a certain pretence of being prosperous and refined; a poor enough pretence, and one fast wearing thin, still there, and sometimes, as on Sundays, when the small lawyers and men of letters with their ladies walked abroad, worn jauntily enough.Newly polished swords, newly powdered wigs, gold lace, and hooped petticoats would then grace the rambling streets. Sedan-chairs would cross the cobbles, and sometimes a great man would dash past in a coach and four to one of the hotels the Isle still boasted, where the wit and learning of France gathered occasionally.Often though, too, this romantic and brave pretence would be abandoned, and the truth stick through, like sharp elbows through a threadbare coat. And bitter penury, and coarse licence, and desperate lawlessness showed openly enough in the narrow streets; and starved faces would be common enough for those who liked to count them, and rebellious talk common enough for those who cared to listen; and people at squalid doorways would curse the war, and taxes, and sometimes the nobles. Even the King did not seem so beloved in these dark streets as he was at Versailles. But the priests, and the tax-gatherers, and the little officials had the people well in hand, and Luc had seen them go, obediently enough, to the church to celebrate a victory—and victories came plentifully.Maurice de Saxe was handing brilliant laurels to Louis, who wore them gracefully, and pleased France, it seemed. For France endured the Marquise de Pompadour and certain creatures of hers, such as the brothers Paris, Devernay, and others who flourished and fattened, and used the country like a pot of gold, into which they could dip their fists and enrich themselves, under the cynical approval of the melancholy King.Luc saw France differently from this poor quarter. Paris had seemed another city viewed from the Rue du Bac. The war had been different, too, viewed in the light of the gala lamps of Versailles, or by the camp fires of Bohemia.There was no glory to gild these humble lives, no hope, no lure to lead them on. Luc watched, and was troubled. Could France flower from such a soil? Would the light of the coming age of freedom ever overcome the dark windings of the religion of Pompadour and peasant, ever dissipate the errors taught by the ignorant to the ignorant, by dirty priests to sullen minds?Luc watched the sky at evening. That was as pure, as remote, as golden above the stale odours of the crooked streets as above the untouched fields of Provence. And he dared to hope that the golden age was coming.For himself, he did not wince from the ignoble melancholy of his surroundings. His poverty did not trouble him, nor had he once regretted the impulse that had driven him from home. He was living on about five francs a day. His money, that had come from the sale of what was left of his personal property after the expenses of the war, would, at this rate, last him three years, and he did not think to live so long. Indeed, his weakness increased so on him, his attacks of illness were so frequent and severe, that he often thought it might be weeks only before the end.Sometimes he would lie all day alone on his poor bed, gazing up at the strip of sky, unable to move or sleep, smiling at the sunshine which, towards evening (the hour he loved the most), would dazzle over his bare boards like the skirts of Glory herself.When his strength was with him, he wrote. Many of his papers were with his brother Joseph, who had once shown a furtive interest in them. Luc sent a noble letter asking for them, but received no reply. He smiled, thinking of the furious Joseph casting the manuscripts into the fire.Such as he had in his own possession, and those his solitary meditations had produced, he collected, and sent to one of the great booksellers.The work was taken. For the sake of those who had disowned him, Luc made the last sacrifice, and the modest little volume appeared without any name on the title-page.It made no success whatever, fell dead from its birth, and was forgotten. No one made any remark upon it, for no one read it.“They would say I was a complete failure,” smiled Luc.He sent a copy of his book to M. de Voltaire, with some timidity, for the great man was now historiographer to the Court and deep in politics, being the acknowledged protégé of the Marquise; and then, with the slow, painful effort of his infirmities, he commenced to write another. He had so elevated himself that he was not even disappointed by the failure of the book that contained the inmost convictions of his soul. He saw now that glory was not only reached by the road of success.Six months after he had come to Paris, and a few days after he had sent his book to Voltaire, one fair, clear afternoon in October, he sat at his window, overlooking Paris. It seemed to him that he overlooked the future too; that this window of his poor room was the outlook of some watch-tower, from which he could see the doings of posterity unfold into the distance.Wars and ministries, kings and soldiers, shrank to the size of puppet-shows viewed on the fringe of the changing future. Soon, everything that agitated the world now would be a mere name. Soon again—not even that—fresh creeds, fresh codes, would replace the old; and through all the changing dynasties of thought that would reign, nothing would count but the memory of the few men who had risen above their age, and handed from one generation to another the pure lamp of the truth as it had been revealed to them; of virtue, as it had been permitted to them to practise; of heroism, as they had been able to accomplish it.It was easier on the battle-field or in the Cabinet, but it was possible in a garret. It was easier with a body vigorous and healthy; it was possible with a body broken and dying. It was easier when surrounded by encouragement, attention, acclaim; but it was possible, alone and unnoticed, to win a place in that galaxy of glory that lights eternity.Luc had on his window-sill an evergreen plant with gold leaves, straight and tall in shape, like the silver fir of Bohemia, or the poplars of the Rue Deauville.He opened the window now, and moved the pot, and admired the glint of the sun on the glossy leaves. The sight of this little plant, so strong, so silent, gave him an extraordinary sensation—it was so noble in its intense life, and yet so helpless. Luc sometimes felt abashed before the gold foliage rising out of the common pot on the dirty sill.He thought now that the soil felt dry, and turned to get water. In that moment the door opened and a man stepped into the room.“Who are you, Monsieur?” asked Luc pleasantly.The other swept off his hat.“Do you not know me, Monsieur le Marquis?”Luc strained his eyes.“Come a little nearer. Ah!”—as the other obeyed—“Monsieur de Richelieu!”“Yes.”The Duke glanced round the plaster walls, the raftered ceiling, the shabby furniture. Then his bold dark eyes rested on the meagre figure of Luc, clothed in garments still too good for his surroundings, and he flushed, and a shade came over his broad low brow.“Do you live here?” he asked.“Yes, Maréchal.”Luc indicated a chair, and M. de Richelieu seated himself. The splendour of his velvets, laces, brilliants, and all his extravagant appointments, looked strange enough in this room. His charming face was red between the flowing curls, and he gazed at Luc with an expression of amazement.“Yesterday,” he said, “M. de Voltaire brought your book to the Hôtel d’Antin, and I was reading it last night. Good God—a man of your quality! I wish you could have accepted the Spanish appointment.”Luc seated himself on the low chair by the hearth, on which a few sticks were burning.“I wished so also,” he said quietly. “But you see for yourself, Monseigneur, that my health would not permit.”The Maréchal seemed unable to find words.Luc leant forward and narrowed his weak eyes.“Have you come to offer me patronage, Monsieur?” he asked.The Duke answered with a noble air—“It would not be possible for anyone to offer M. de Vauvenargues patronage. I heard from M. de Voltaire that you were here, and I came to be instructed in philosophy.”“A Maréchal de France comes to be instructed in philosophy in a garret!” smiled Luc; “and from one with whom he discovered long since that he had nothing in common!”The Duke looked down at his open hand, that he lightly struck with his gauntlet, which was heavily embroidered with wreaths of roses, of gold ribbon, and of violets.“We have something in common,” he said—“Madame la Comtesse Koklinska.”Luc rose and leant against the mean mantelshelf.“Yes, we have that memory in common,” he answered calmly.“When did you see her last?” asked the Duke.“She is dead,” said Luc, looking at him.M. de Richelieu glanced up swiftly. There was a curious sense of stillness in the room. When the Duke spoke, his tone was also low.“When did she die?”“In a convent in Aix—nearly a year ago. So you did not know?”“But I might have guessed that no other reason would have prevented her from coming back.”“If she had lived, M. de Maréchal, she would never have come back. She died in the habit of a novice.”“Ah—well, after all, that is what they all do. Did she speak of me?”“She said, Monsieur, you had done—what they all do.”M. de Richelieu laughed softly.“She was a clever woman. I never knew her deceived. She was, in her way, quite marvellous. But I did not come to speak of her.”“No, Monsieur, but to look on a curiosity, I suppose?”M. de Richelieu rose to his feet with a shimmer of his violet watered silks, and said a curious thing.“Are you—with the world forgone—happy?” he asked.Luc looked over the house-tops at the setting sun that glittered over the roofs of the Isle of St. Louis.“Yes,” he answered. He coughed, put his hand to the plain linen ruffles on his bosom, and sat down again in the worn chair.“And yet you have lost everything!” exclaimed the Maréchal.“I keep my soul,” smiled Luc; and his pallid, disfigured face glowed for a second into its old likeness.“I havemysoul,” said the Maréchal, “and all the world besides. What have you that I have not?”“Nothing, maybe,” replied Luc gravely.“Ah,” insisted the Court favourite, “you have the power to come and live—like this.” His superb gesture was as if he indicated a kennel. “You have the power to sacrifice things that must be sweet to you. What inspires you?”“The love of glory, Monsieur,” smiled Luc. “Call it that. But what is the use of words? My life marches to a different music from yours.”“Do you despise me?” asked the Maréchal quickly, eagerly.Luc considered a moment before he lifted his head and answered quietly—“I think I do.”“So M. de Voltaire says sometimes; but he is not a man of quality. I thought you despised me when we first met. Why?”“You had such great opportunities,” answered Luc.“I have made great use of them. There is no one more powerful in France, except La Pompadour.”“That is a proud boast,” said the Marquis. “I recommend it for your epitaph, Monsieur le Maréchal.”The Duke put his hand swiftly to the gold lace on his bosom.“You hold me in contempt,” he said, with a fine smile, “but I can feel no scorn for you. How do you do it?”Luc lifted his head.“Are you so discontented with your own life that you must come prying into mine?” he said evenly. “You have what you wanted. Be satisfied, as I am.”M. de Richelieu’s face paled with a sudden passion.“There isnothingcan satisfy me! I begin to find the world very stale, so much of it is foolish. Butyouseem to have found something new. Tell me, for I no longer see anything gilded in all the world. There is a tarnish over the gold pieces, and over the women’s hair—and both were bright enough to me once.”Luc leant forward, and with a bent poker stirred the fire into a sparkle of embers.“I fear, Monsieur le Maréchal,” he said, “that you begin to grow old.”The Duke laughed.“Old!” he repeated. “Old!” He rose. “My God! do you think I amold? Look at me, Monsieur—am Iold?”Luc turned his head towards him.“I can scarcely see you at all,” he said serenely. “I only see something gold and purple. I am, Monsieur, half blind.”The Duke stared at him.“If I was stricken like you, I would fall on my sword!” he exclaimed impulsively.“Each has his own courage,” replied Luc.“How long will you stay here?” asked the Maréchal abruptly.“Until I die, Monsieur.”“By Heaven, no. Come to the Hôtel d’Antin. You are a great man. Since I am growing old I need a philosopher at my side, and—I always liked you, Luc de Vauvenargues.”The Marquis rose.“I suppose it was you who obtained me the Spanish appointment after all?” he asked suddenly.“Do you bear me malice for that?”“No,” said Luc, “no. But I am glad that I have chosen a way where I can walk unaided.”“Will you come to the Hôtel d’Antin?”“Monseigneur, this time I have not come to Paris to become a pensioner of the great.”This answer, spoken with pride, but sweetly, caused the blood to flush to M. de Richelieu’s side curls.“So my philosopher rejects me!” he cried. “And I have prostrated myself at the feet of the wise man without learning the secret of perpetual youth or happiness! Farewell, Monsieur de Vauvenargues.”He bowed and stepped towards the door. When he had opened it he paused with the latch in his hand.“Where is she buried?” he asked.Luc did not answer.“I mean La Koklinska,” insisted the resplendent Maréchal.“In our hearts,” answered the Marquis swiftly. “Let her lie at peace.”“Your pardon,” said M. de Richelieu. “I would have dedicated something to her memory.”“You can, Monsieur—your silence.”The Duke bowed again.“My silence, then, until we three meet in the Elysian Fields, when we shall be able to have an interesting conversation. Again, and till then, farewell.”“Farewell, Monsieur le Maréchal.”The door closed on the gorgeous courtier, and Luc was alone as usual in the cold, darkening room, with the fire sinking on the hearth and the sun fading without over the roofs of Paris.
When Luc looked from the window of his room across the Isle of St. Louis he realized the great gulf he had set between himself and his past.
The chamber was high up in a tall, straight-fronted house that had once been of some pretensions to splendour, and a man with good vision could have seen a strange array of twisted roofs and chimney-stacks beneath the two dominant towers of Notre-Dame de Paris; and even Luc’s ruined sight could discern a vast, if blurred, sweep of houses, sky, and clouds.
Looking down into the street, he could dimly see the dirty house-fronts; the kennels with their up-piled garbage; the poor wine-shop; the people between poverty and draggled fashion, who came and went in this heart of the city that was now so decayed, yet retained still some remnants of splendour; a certain air of being old and royal; a certain pretence of being prosperous and refined; a poor enough pretence, and one fast wearing thin, still there, and sometimes, as on Sundays, when the small lawyers and men of letters with their ladies walked abroad, worn jauntily enough.
Newly polished swords, newly powdered wigs, gold lace, and hooped petticoats would then grace the rambling streets. Sedan-chairs would cross the cobbles, and sometimes a great man would dash past in a coach and four to one of the hotels the Isle still boasted, where the wit and learning of France gathered occasionally.
Often though, too, this romantic and brave pretence would be abandoned, and the truth stick through, like sharp elbows through a threadbare coat. And bitter penury, and coarse licence, and desperate lawlessness showed openly enough in the narrow streets; and starved faces would be common enough for those who liked to count them, and rebellious talk common enough for those who cared to listen; and people at squalid doorways would curse the war, and taxes, and sometimes the nobles. Even the King did not seem so beloved in these dark streets as he was at Versailles. But the priests, and the tax-gatherers, and the little officials had the people well in hand, and Luc had seen them go, obediently enough, to the church to celebrate a victory—and victories came plentifully.
Maurice de Saxe was handing brilliant laurels to Louis, who wore them gracefully, and pleased France, it seemed. For France endured the Marquise de Pompadour and certain creatures of hers, such as the brothers Paris, Devernay, and others who flourished and fattened, and used the country like a pot of gold, into which they could dip their fists and enrich themselves, under the cynical approval of the melancholy King.
Luc saw France differently from this poor quarter. Paris had seemed another city viewed from the Rue du Bac. The war had been different, too, viewed in the light of the gala lamps of Versailles, or by the camp fires of Bohemia.
There was no glory to gild these humble lives, no hope, no lure to lead them on. Luc watched, and was troubled. Could France flower from such a soil? Would the light of the coming age of freedom ever overcome the dark windings of the religion of Pompadour and peasant, ever dissipate the errors taught by the ignorant to the ignorant, by dirty priests to sullen minds?
Luc watched the sky at evening. That was as pure, as remote, as golden above the stale odours of the crooked streets as above the untouched fields of Provence. And he dared to hope that the golden age was coming.
For himself, he did not wince from the ignoble melancholy of his surroundings. His poverty did not trouble him, nor had he once regretted the impulse that had driven him from home. He was living on about five francs a day. His money, that had come from the sale of what was left of his personal property after the expenses of the war, would, at this rate, last him three years, and he did not think to live so long. Indeed, his weakness increased so on him, his attacks of illness were so frequent and severe, that he often thought it might be weeks only before the end.
Sometimes he would lie all day alone on his poor bed, gazing up at the strip of sky, unable to move or sleep, smiling at the sunshine which, towards evening (the hour he loved the most), would dazzle over his bare boards like the skirts of Glory herself.
When his strength was with him, he wrote. Many of his papers were with his brother Joseph, who had once shown a furtive interest in them. Luc sent a noble letter asking for them, but received no reply. He smiled, thinking of the furious Joseph casting the manuscripts into the fire.
Such as he had in his own possession, and those his solitary meditations had produced, he collected, and sent to one of the great booksellers.
The work was taken. For the sake of those who had disowned him, Luc made the last sacrifice, and the modest little volume appeared without any name on the title-page.
It made no success whatever, fell dead from its birth, and was forgotten. No one made any remark upon it, for no one read it.
“They would say I was a complete failure,” smiled Luc.
He sent a copy of his book to M. de Voltaire, with some timidity, for the great man was now historiographer to the Court and deep in politics, being the acknowledged protégé of the Marquise; and then, with the slow, painful effort of his infirmities, he commenced to write another. He had so elevated himself that he was not even disappointed by the failure of the book that contained the inmost convictions of his soul. He saw now that glory was not only reached by the road of success.
Six months after he had come to Paris, and a few days after he had sent his book to Voltaire, one fair, clear afternoon in October, he sat at his window, overlooking Paris. It seemed to him that he overlooked the future too; that this window of his poor room was the outlook of some watch-tower, from which he could see the doings of posterity unfold into the distance.
Wars and ministries, kings and soldiers, shrank to the size of puppet-shows viewed on the fringe of the changing future. Soon, everything that agitated the world now would be a mere name. Soon again—not even that—fresh creeds, fresh codes, would replace the old; and through all the changing dynasties of thought that would reign, nothing would count but the memory of the few men who had risen above their age, and handed from one generation to another the pure lamp of the truth as it had been revealed to them; of virtue, as it had been permitted to them to practise; of heroism, as they had been able to accomplish it.
It was easier on the battle-field or in the Cabinet, but it was possible in a garret. It was easier with a body vigorous and healthy; it was possible with a body broken and dying. It was easier when surrounded by encouragement, attention, acclaim; but it was possible, alone and unnoticed, to win a place in that galaxy of glory that lights eternity.
Luc had on his window-sill an evergreen plant with gold leaves, straight and tall in shape, like the silver fir of Bohemia, or the poplars of the Rue Deauville.
He opened the window now, and moved the pot, and admired the glint of the sun on the glossy leaves. The sight of this little plant, so strong, so silent, gave him an extraordinary sensation—it was so noble in its intense life, and yet so helpless. Luc sometimes felt abashed before the gold foliage rising out of the common pot on the dirty sill.
He thought now that the soil felt dry, and turned to get water. In that moment the door opened and a man stepped into the room.
“Who are you, Monsieur?” asked Luc pleasantly.
The other swept off his hat.
“Do you not know me, Monsieur le Marquis?”
Luc strained his eyes.
“Come a little nearer. Ah!”—as the other obeyed—“Monsieur de Richelieu!”
“Yes.”
The Duke glanced round the plaster walls, the raftered ceiling, the shabby furniture. Then his bold dark eyes rested on the meagre figure of Luc, clothed in garments still too good for his surroundings, and he flushed, and a shade came over his broad low brow.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
“Yes, Maréchal.”
Luc indicated a chair, and M. de Richelieu seated himself. The splendour of his velvets, laces, brilliants, and all his extravagant appointments, looked strange enough in this room. His charming face was red between the flowing curls, and he gazed at Luc with an expression of amazement.
“Yesterday,” he said, “M. de Voltaire brought your book to the Hôtel d’Antin, and I was reading it last night. Good God—a man of your quality! I wish you could have accepted the Spanish appointment.”
Luc seated himself on the low chair by the hearth, on which a few sticks were burning.
“I wished so also,” he said quietly. “But you see for yourself, Monseigneur, that my health would not permit.”
The Maréchal seemed unable to find words.
Luc leant forward and narrowed his weak eyes.
“Have you come to offer me patronage, Monsieur?” he asked.
The Duke answered with a noble air—
“It would not be possible for anyone to offer M. de Vauvenargues patronage. I heard from M. de Voltaire that you were here, and I came to be instructed in philosophy.”
“A Maréchal de France comes to be instructed in philosophy in a garret!” smiled Luc; “and from one with whom he discovered long since that he had nothing in common!”
The Duke looked down at his open hand, that he lightly struck with his gauntlet, which was heavily embroidered with wreaths of roses, of gold ribbon, and of violets.
“We have something in common,” he said—“Madame la Comtesse Koklinska.”
Luc rose and leant against the mean mantelshelf.
“Yes, we have that memory in common,” he answered calmly.
“When did you see her last?” asked the Duke.
“She is dead,” said Luc, looking at him.
M. de Richelieu glanced up swiftly. There was a curious sense of stillness in the room. When the Duke spoke, his tone was also low.
“When did she die?”
“In a convent in Aix—nearly a year ago. So you did not know?”
“But I might have guessed that no other reason would have prevented her from coming back.”
“If she had lived, M. de Maréchal, she would never have come back. She died in the habit of a novice.”
“Ah—well, after all, that is what they all do. Did she speak of me?”
“She said, Monsieur, you had done—what they all do.”
M. de Richelieu laughed softly.
“She was a clever woman. I never knew her deceived. She was, in her way, quite marvellous. But I did not come to speak of her.”
“No, Monsieur, but to look on a curiosity, I suppose?”
M. de Richelieu rose to his feet with a shimmer of his violet watered silks, and said a curious thing.
“Are you—with the world forgone—happy?” he asked.
Luc looked over the house-tops at the setting sun that glittered over the roofs of the Isle of St. Louis.
“Yes,” he answered. He coughed, put his hand to the plain linen ruffles on his bosom, and sat down again in the worn chair.
“And yet you have lost everything!” exclaimed the Maréchal.
“I keep my soul,” smiled Luc; and his pallid, disfigured face glowed for a second into its old likeness.
“I havemysoul,” said the Maréchal, “and all the world besides. What have you that I have not?”
“Nothing, maybe,” replied Luc gravely.
“Ah,” insisted the Court favourite, “you have the power to come and live—like this.” His superb gesture was as if he indicated a kennel. “You have the power to sacrifice things that must be sweet to you. What inspires you?”
“The love of glory, Monsieur,” smiled Luc. “Call it that. But what is the use of words? My life marches to a different music from yours.”
“Do you despise me?” asked the Maréchal quickly, eagerly.
Luc considered a moment before he lifted his head and answered quietly—
“I think I do.”
“So M. de Voltaire says sometimes; but he is not a man of quality. I thought you despised me when we first met. Why?”
“You had such great opportunities,” answered Luc.
“I have made great use of them. There is no one more powerful in France, except La Pompadour.”
“That is a proud boast,” said the Marquis. “I recommend it for your epitaph, Monsieur le Maréchal.”
The Duke put his hand swiftly to the gold lace on his bosom.
“You hold me in contempt,” he said, with a fine smile, “but I can feel no scorn for you. How do you do it?”
Luc lifted his head.
“Are you so discontented with your own life that you must come prying into mine?” he said evenly. “You have what you wanted. Be satisfied, as I am.”
M. de Richelieu’s face paled with a sudden passion.
“There isnothingcan satisfy me! I begin to find the world very stale, so much of it is foolish. Butyouseem to have found something new. Tell me, for I no longer see anything gilded in all the world. There is a tarnish over the gold pieces, and over the women’s hair—and both were bright enough to me once.”
Luc leant forward, and with a bent poker stirred the fire into a sparkle of embers.
“I fear, Monsieur le Maréchal,” he said, “that you begin to grow old.”
The Duke laughed.
“Old!” he repeated. “Old!” He rose. “My God! do you think I amold? Look at me, Monsieur—am Iold?”
Luc turned his head towards him.
“I can scarcely see you at all,” he said serenely. “I only see something gold and purple. I am, Monsieur, half blind.”
The Duke stared at him.
“If I was stricken like you, I would fall on my sword!” he exclaimed impulsively.
“Each has his own courage,” replied Luc.
“How long will you stay here?” asked the Maréchal abruptly.
“Until I die, Monsieur.”
“By Heaven, no. Come to the Hôtel d’Antin. You are a great man. Since I am growing old I need a philosopher at my side, and—I always liked you, Luc de Vauvenargues.”
The Marquis rose.
“I suppose it was you who obtained me the Spanish appointment after all?” he asked suddenly.
“Do you bear me malice for that?”
“No,” said Luc, “no. But I am glad that I have chosen a way where I can walk unaided.”
“Will you come to the Hôtel d’Antin?”
“Monseigneur, this time I have not come to Paris to become a pensioner of the great.”
This answer, spoken with pride, but sweetly, caused the blood to flush to M. de Richelieu’s side curls.
“So my philosopher rejects me!” he cried. “And I have prostrated myself at the feet of the wise man without learning the secret of perpetual youth or happiness! Farewell, Monsieur de Vauvenargues.”
He bowed and stepped towards the door. When he had opened it he paused with the latch in his hand.
“Where is she buried?” he asked.
Luc did not answer.
“I mean La Koklinska,” insisted the resplendent Maréchal.
“In our hearts,” answered the Marquis swiftly. “Let her lie at peace.”
“Your pardon,” said M. de Richelieu. “I would have dedicated something to her memory.”
“You can, Monsieur—your silence.”
The Duke bowed again.
“My silence, then, until we three meet in the Elysian Fields, when we shall be able to have an interesting conversation. Again, and till then, farewell.”
“Farewell, Monsieur le Maréchal.”
The door closed on the gorgeous courtier, and Luc was alone as usual in the cold, darkening room, with the fire sinking on the hearth and the sun fading without over the roofs of Paris.