the threatened punishment.
M. de Kercadiou moistened his lips.
"With whom is this engagement?" he asked in a voice that by an effort
he contrived to render steady.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr bowed his handsome head, his eyes upon the
gleaming parquetry of the floor. "With myself," he answered quietly,
conscious already with a tightening of the heart that his answer must sow
dismay. He caught the sound of a faint outcry from Aline; he saw the sudden
recoil of M. de Kercadiou. And then he plunged headlong into the explanation
that he deemed necessary.
"In view of his relations with you, M. de Kercadiou, and because of my
deep regard for you, I did my best to avoid this, even though as you will
understand the death of my dear friend and cousin Chabrillane seemed to
summon me to action, even though I knew that my circumspection was becoming
matter for criticism among my friends. But yesterday this unbridled young
man made further restraint impossible to me. He provoked me deliberately and
publicly. He put upon me the very grossest affront, and... to-morrow morning
in the Bois... we meet."
He faltered a little at the end, fully conscious of the hostile
atmosphere in which he suddenly found himself. Hostility from M. de
Kercadiou, the latter's earlier change of manner had already led him to
expect; the hostility of mademoiselle came more in the nature of a surprise.
He began to understand what difficulties the course to which he was
committed must raise up for him. A fresh obstacle was to be flung across the
path which he had just cleared, as he imagined. Yet his pride and his sense
of the justice due to be done admitted of no weakening.
In bitterness he realized now, as he looked from uncle to niece
- his glance, usually so direct and bold, now oddly furtive - that
though to-morrow he might kill Andre-Louis, yet even by his death
Andre-Louis would take vengeance upon him. He had exaggerated nothing in
reaching the conclusion that this Andre-Louis Moreau was the evil genius of
his life. He saw now that do what he would, kill him even though he might,
he could never conquer him. The last word would always be with Andre-Louis
Moreau. In bitterness, in rage, and in humiliation - a thing almost unknown
to him - did he realize it, and the realization steeled his purpose for all
that he perceived its futility.
Outwardly he showed himself calm and self-contained, properly
suggesting a man regretfully accepting the inevitable. It would have been as
impossible to find fault with his bearing as to attempt to turn him from the
matter to which he was committed. And so M. de Kercadiou perceived.
"My God!" was all that he said, scarcely above his breath, yet almost
in a groan.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr did, as always, the thing that sensibility
demanded of him. He took his leave. He understood that to linger where his
news had produced such an effect would be impossible, indecent. So he
departed, in a bitterness comparable only with his erstwhile optimism, the
sweet fruit of hope turned to a thing of gall even as it touched his lips.
Oh, yes; the last word, indeed, was with Andre-Louis Moreau - always!
Uncle and niece looked at each other as he passed out, and there was
horror in the eyes of both. Aline's pallor was deathly almost, and standing
there now she wrung her hands as if in pain.
"Why did you not ask him - beg him... " She broke off.
"To what end? He was in the right, and... and there are things one
cannot ask; things it would be a useless humiliation to ask." He sat down,
groaning. "Oh, the poor boy - the poor, misguided boy."
In the mind of neither, you see, was there any doubt of what must be
the issue. The calm confidence in which La Tour d'Azyr had spoken compelled
itself to be shared. He was no vainglorious boaster, and they knew of what a
force as a swordsman he was generally accounted.
"What does humiliation matter? A life is at issue - Andre's life."
"I know. My God, don't I know? And I would humiliate myself if by
humiliating myself I could hope to prevail. But Azyr is a hard, relentless
man, and... "
Abruptly she left him.
She overtook the Marquis as he was in the act of stepping his carriage.
He turned as she called, and bowed.
"Mademoiselle?"
At once he guessed her errand, tasted in anticipation the unparalleled
bitterness of being compelled to refuse her. Yet at her invitation he
stepped back into the cool of the hall.
In the middle of the floor of chequered marbles, black and white, stood
a carved table of black oak. By this he halted, leaning lightly against it
whilst she sat enthroned in the great crimson chair beside it.
"Monsieur, I cannot allow you so to depart," she said. "You cannot
realize, monsieur, what a blow would be dealt my uncle if... if evil,
irrevocable evil were to overtake his godson to-morrow. The expressions that
he used at first... "
"Mademoiselle, I perceived their true value. Spare yourself. Believe me
I am profoundly desolated by circumstances which I had not expected to find.
You must believe me when I say that. It is all that I can say."
"Must it really be all? Andre is very dear to his godfather."
The pleading tone cut him like a knife; and then suddenly it aroused
another emotion - an emotion which he realized to be utterly unworthy, an
emotion which, in his overwhelming pride of race, seemed almost sullying,
yet not to be repressed. He hesitated to give it utterance; hesitated even
remotely to suggest so horrible a thing as that in a man of such lowly
origin he might conceivably discover a rival. Yet that sudden pang of
jealousy was stronger than his monstrous pride.
"And to you, mademoiselle? What is this Andre-Louis Moreau to you? You
will pardon the question. But I desire clearly to understand."
Watching her he beheld the scarlet stain that overspread her face. He
read in it at first confusion, until the gleam of her blue eyes announced
its source to lie in anger. That comforted him; since he had affronted her,
he was reassured. It did not occur to him that the anger might have another
source.
"Andre and I have been playmates from infancy. He is very dear to me,
too; almost I regard him as a brother. Were I in need of help, and were my
uncle not available, Andre would be the first man to whom I should turn. Are
you sufficiently answered, monsieur? Or is there more of me you would desire
revealed?"
He bit his lip. He was unnerved, he thought, this morning; otherwise
the silly suspicion with which he had offended could never have occurred to
him.
He bowed very low. "Mademoiselle, forgive that I should have troubled
you with such a question. You have answered more fully than I could have
hoped or wished."
He said no more than that. He waited for her to resume. At a loss, she
sat in silence awhile, a pucker on her white brow, her fingers nervously
drumming on the table. At last she flung herself headlong against the
impassive, polished front that he presented.
"I have come, monsieur, to beg you to put off this meeting."
She saw the faint raising of his dark eyebrows, the faintly regretful
smile that scarcely did more than tinge his fine lips, and she hurried on.
"What honour can await you in such an engagement, monsieur?"
It was a shrewd thrust at the pride of race that she accounted his
paramount sentiment, that had as often lured him into error as it had urged
him into good.
"I do not seek honour in it, mademoiselle, but - I must say it
- justice. The engagement, as I have explained, is not of my seeking.
It has been thrust upon me, and in honour I cannot draw back."
"Why, what dishonour would there be in sparing him? Surely, monsieur,
none would call your courage in question? None could misapprehend your
motives."
"You are mistaken, mademoiselle. My motives would most certainly be
misapprehended. You forget that this young man has acquired in the past week
a certain reputation that might well make a man hesitate to meet him."
She brushed that aside almost contemptuously, conceiving it the merest
quibble.
"Some men, yes. But not you, M. le Marquis."
Her confidence in him on every count was most sweetly flattering. But
there was a bitterness behind the sweet.
"Even I, mademoiselle, let me assure you. And there is more than that.
This quarrel which M. Moreau has forced upon me is no new thing. It is
merely the culmination of a long-drawn persecution.
"Which you invited," she cut in. "Be just, monsieur."
"I hope that it is not in my nature to be otherwise, mademoiselle."
"Consider, then, that you killed his friend."
"I find in that nothing with which to reproach myself. My justification
lay in the circumstances - the subsequent events in this distracted country
surely confirm it."
"And... " She faltered a little, and looked away from him for the first
time. "And that you... that you... And what of Mademoiselle Binet, whom he
was to have married?"
He stared at her for a moment in sheer surprise. "Was to have married?"
he repeated incredulously, dismayed almost.
"You did not know that?"
"But how do you?"
"Did I not tell you that we are as brother and sister almost? I have
his confidence. He told me, before... before you made it impossible."
He looked away, chin in hand, his glance thoughtful, disturbed, almost
wistful.
"There is," he said slowly, musingly. "a singular fatality at work
between that man and me, bringing us ever each by turns athwart the other's
path... "
He sighed; then swung to face her again, speaking more briskly:
"Mademoiselle, until this moment I had no knowledge - no suspicion of this
thing. But..." He broke off, considered, and then shrugged. "If I wronged
him, I did so unconsciously. It would be unjust to blame me, surely. In all
our actions it must be the intention alone that counts."
"But does it make no difference?"
"None that I can discern, mademoiselle. It gives me no justification to
withdraw from that to which I am irrevocably committed. No justification,
indeed, could ever be greater than my concern for the pain it must occasion
my good friend, your uncle, and perhaps yourself, mademoiselle."
She rose suddenly, squarely confronting him, desperate now, driven to
play the only card upon which she thought she might count.
"Monsieur," she said, "you did me the honour to-day to speak in certain
terms; to... to allude to certain hopes with which you honour me."
He looked at her almost in fear. In silence, not daring to speak, he
waited for her to continue.
"I... I... Will you please to understand, monsieur, that if you persist
in this matter, if... unless you can break this engagement of yours
to-morrow morning in the Bois, you are not to presume to mention this
subject to me again, or, indeed, ever again to approach me."
To put the matter in this negative way was as far as she could possibly
go. It was for him to make the positive proposal to which she had thus
thrown wide the door.
"Mademoiselle, you cannot mean... "
"I do, monsieur... irrevocably, please to understand." He looked at her
with eyes of misery, his handsome, manly face as pale as she had ever seen
it. The hand he had been holding out in protest began to shake. He lowered
it to his side again, lest she should perceive its tremor. Thus a brief
second, while the battle was fought within him, the bitter engagement
between his desires and what he conceived to be the demands of his honour,
never perceiving how far his honour was buttressed by implacable
vindictiveness. Retreat, he conceived, was impossible without shame; and
shame was to him an agony unthinkable. She asked too much. She could not
understand what she was asking, else she would never be so unreasonable, so
unjust. But also he saw that it would be futile to attempt to make her
understand.
It was the end. Though he kill Andre-Louis Moreau in the morning as he
fiercely hoped he would, yet the victory even in death must lie with
Andre-Louis Moreau.
He bowed profoundly, grave and sorrowful of face as he was grave and
sorrowful of heart.
"Mademoiselle, my homage," he murmured, and turned to go.
"But you have not answered me!" she called after him in terror.
He checked on the threshold, and turned; and there from the cool gloom
of the hall she saw him a black, graceful silhouette against the brilliant
sunshine beyond - a memory of him that was to cling as something sinister
and menacing in the dread hours that were to follow.
"What would you, mademoiselle? I but spared myself and you the pain of
a refusal."
He was gone leaving her crushed and raging. She sank down again into
the great red chair, and sat there crumpled, her elbows on the table, her
face in her hands - a face that was on fire with shame and passion. She had
offered herself, and she had been refused! The inconceivable had befallen
her. The humiliation of it seemed to her something that could never be
effaced.
Startled, appalled, she stepped back, her hand pressed to her tortured
breast.
M. de Kercadiou wrote a letter.
"Godson," he began, without any softening adjective, "I have learnt
with pain and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by
breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater
pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short
days a byword, that you have discarded the weapon of false, insidious
arguments against my class - the class to which you owe everything - for the
sword of the assassin. It has come to my knowledge that you have an
assignation to-morrow with my good friend M. de La Tour d'Azyr. A gentleman
of his station is under certain obligations imposed upon him by his birth,
which do not permit him to draw back from an engagement. But you labour
under no such disadvantages. For a man of your class to refuse an engagement
of honour, or to neglect it when made, entails no sacrifice. Your peers will
probably be of the opinion that you display a commendable prudence.
Therefore I beg you, indeed, did I think that I still exercise over you any
such authority as the favours you have received from me should entitle me to
exercise, I would command you, to allow this matter to go no farther, and to
refrain from rendering yourself to your assignation to-morrow morning.
Having no such authority, as your past conduct now makes clear, having no
reason to hope that a proper sentiment of gratitude to me will induce to
give heed to this my most earnest request, I am compelled to add that should
you survive to-morrow's encounter, I can in no circumstances ever again
permit myself to be conscious of your existence. If any spark survives of
the affection that once you expressed for me, or if you set any value upon
the affection, which, in spite of all that you have done to forfeit it, is
the chief prompter of this letter, you will not refuse to do as I am
asking."
It was not a tactful letter. M. de Kercadiou was not a tactful man.
Read it as he would, Andre-Louis - when it was delivered to him on that
Sunday afternoon by the groom dispatched with it into Paris
- could read into it only concern for M. La Tour d'Azyr, M. de
Kercadiou's good friend, as he called him, and prospective nephew-in-law.
He kept the groom waiting a full hour while composing his answer. Brief
though it was, it cost him very considerable effort and several unsuccessful
attempts. In the end this is what he wrote:
Monsieur my godfather - You make refusal singularly hard for me when
you appeal to me upon the ground of affection. It is a thing of which all my
life I shall hail the opportunity to give you proofs, and I am therefore
desolated beyond anything I could hope to express that I cannot give you the
proof you ask to-day. There is too much between M. de La Tour d'Azyr and me.
Also you do me and my class - whatever it may be - less than justice when
you say that obligations of honour are not binding upon us. So binding do I
count them, that, if I would, I could not now draw back.
If hereafter you should persist in the harsh intention you express, I
must suffer it. That I shall suffer be assured.
Your affectionate and grateful godson
Andre-Louis
He dispatched that letter by M. de Kercadiou's groom, and conceived
this to be the end of the matter. It cut him keenly; but he bore the wound
with that outward stoicism he affected.
Next morning, at a quarter past eight, as with Le Chapelier - who had
come to break his fast with him - he was rising from table to set out for
the Bois, his housekeeper startled him by announcing Mademoiselle de
Kercadiou.
He looked at his watch. Although his cabriolet was already at the door,
he had a few minutes to spare. He excused himself from Le Chapelier, and
went briskly out to the anteroom.
She advanced to meet him, her manner eager, almost feverish.
"I will not affect ignorance of why you have come," he said quickly, to
make short work. "But time presses, and I warn you that only the most solid
of reasons can be worth stating."
It surprised her. It amounted to a rebuff at the very outset, before
she had uttered a word; and that was the last thing she had expected from
Andre-Louis. Moreover, there was about him an air of aloofness that was
unusual where she was concerned, and his voice had been singularly cold and
formal.
It wounded her. She was not to guess the conclusion to which he had
leapt. He made with regard to her - as was but natural, after all - the same
mistake that he had made with regard to yesterday's letter from his
godfather. He conceived that the mainspring of action here was solely
concern for M. de La Tour d'Azyr. That it might be concern for himself never
entered his mind. So absolute was his own conviction of what must be the
inevitable issue of that meeting that he could not conceive of any one
entertaining a fear on his behalf.
What he assumed to be anxiety on the score of the predestined victim
had irritated him in M. de Kercadiou; in Aline it filled him with a cold
anger; he argued from it that she had hardly been frank with him; that
ambition was urging her to consider with favour the suit of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr. And than this there was no spur that could have driven more
relentlessly in his purpose, since to save her was in his eyes almost as
momentous as to avenge the past.
She conned him searchingly, and the complete calm of him at such a time
amazed her. She could not repress the mention of it.
"How calm you are, Andre!"
"I am not easily disturbed. It is a vanity of mine."
"But... Oh, Andre, this meeting must not take place!" She came close up
to him, to set her hands upon his shoulders, and stood so, her face within a
foot of his own.
"You know, of course, of some good reason why it should not?" said he.
"You may be killed," she answered him, and her eyes dilated as she
spoke.
It was so far from anything that he had expected that for a moment he
could only stare at her. Then he thought he had understood. He laughed as he
removed her hands from his shoulders, and stepped back. This was a shallow
device, childish and unworthy in her.
"Can you really think to prevail by attempting to frighten me?" he
asked, and almost sneered.
"Oh, you are surely mad! M. de La Tour d'Azyr is reputed the most
dangerous sword in France."
"Have you never noticed that most reputations are undeserved?
Chabrillane was a dangerous swordsman, and Chabrillane is underground. La
Motte-Royau was an even more dangerous swordsman, and he is in a surgeon's
hands. So are the other spadassinicides who dreamt of skewering a poor sheep
of a provincial lawyer. And here to-day comes the chief, the fine flower of
these bully-swordsmen. He comes, for wages long overdue. Be sure of that. So
if you have no other reason to urge.
It was the sarcasm of him that mystified her. Could he possibly be
sincere in his assurance that he must prevail against M. de La Tour d'Azyr?
To her in her limited knowledge, her mind filled with her uncle's contrary
conviction, it seemed that Andre-Louis was only acting; he would act a part
to the very end.
Be that as it might, she shifted her ground to answer him.
"You had my uncle's letter?"
"And I answered it."
"I know. But what he said, he will fulfil. Do not dream that he will
relent if you carry out this horrible purpose."
"Come, now, that is a better reason than the other," said he. "If there
is a reason in the world that could move me it would be that. But there is
too much between La Tour d'Azyr and me. There is an oath I swore on the dead
hand of Philippe de Vilmorin. I could never have hoped that God would afford
me so great an opportunity of keeping it."
"You have not kept it yet," she warned him.
He smiled at her. "True!" he said. "But nine o'clock will soon be here.
Tell me," he asked her suddenly, "why did you not carry this request of
yours to M. de La Tour d'Azyr?"
"I did," she answered him, and flushed as she remembered her
yesterday's rejection. He interpreted the flush quite otherwise.
"And he?" he asked.
"M. de La Tour d'Azyr's obligations... " she was beginning: then she
broke off to answer shortly: "Oh, he refused."
"So, so. He must, of course, whatever it may have cost him. Yet in his
place I should have counted the cost as nothing. But men are different, you
see." He sighed. "Also in your place, had that been so, I think I should
have left the matter there. But then... "
"I don't understand you, Andre."
"I am not so very obscure. Not nearly so obscure as I can be. Turn it
over in your mind. It may help to comfort you presently." He consulted his
watch again. "Pray use this house as your own. I must be going."
Le Chapelier put his head in at the door.
"Forgive the intrusion. But we shall be late, Andre, unless you... "
"Coming," Andre answered him. "If you will await my return, Aline, you
will oblige me deeply. Particularly in view of your uncle's resolve."
She did not answer him. She was numbed. He took her silence for assent,
and, bowing, left her. Standing there she heard his steps going down the
stairs together with Le Chapelier's. He was speaking to his friend, and his
voice was calm and normal.
Oh, he was mad - blinded by self-confidence and vanity. As his carriage
rattled away, she sat down limply, with a sense of exhaustion and nausea.
She was sick and faint with horror. Andre-Louis was going to his death.
Conviction of it - an unreasoning conviction, the result, perhaps, of all M.
de Kercadiou's rantings - entered her soul. Awhile she sat thus, paralyzed
by hopelessness. Then she sprang up again, wringing her hands. She must do
something to avert this horror. But what could she do? To follow him to the
Bois and intervene there would be to make a scandal for no purpose. The
conventions of conduct were all against her, offering a barrier that was not
to be overstepped. Was there no one could help her?
Standing there, half-frenzied by her helplessness, she caught again a
sound of vehicles and hooves on the cobbles of the street below. A carriage
was approaching. It drew up with a clatter before the fencing-academy. Could
it be Andre-Louis returning? Passionately she snatched at that straw of
hope. Knocking, loud and urgent, fell upon the door. She heard Andre-Louis'
housekeeper, her wooden shoes clanking upon the stairs, hurrying down to
open.
She sped to the door of the anteroom, and pulling it wide stood
breathlessly to listen. But the voice that floated up to her was not the
voice she so desperately hoped to hear. It was a woman's voice asking in
urgent tones for M. Andre-Louis - a voice at first vaguely familiar, then
clearly recognized, the voice of Mme. de Plougastel.
Excited, she ran to the head of the narrow staircase in time to hear
Mme. de Plougastel exclaim in agitation:
"He has gone already! Oh, but how long since? Which way did he take?"
It was enough to inform Aline that Mme. de Plougastel's errand must be
akin to her own. At the moment, in the general distress and confusion of her
mind, her mental vision focussed entirely on the one vital point, she found
in this no matter for astonishment. The singular regard conceived by Mme. de
Plougastel for Andre-Louis seemed to her then a sufficient explanation.
Without pausing to consider, she ran down that steep staircase,
calling:
"Madame! Madame!"
The portly, comely housekeeper drew aside, and the two ladies faced
each other on that threshold. Mme. de Plougastel looked white and haggard, a
nameless dread staring from her eyes.
"Aline! You here!" she exclaimed. And then in the urgency sweeping
aside all minor considerations, "Were you also too late?" she asked.
"No, madame. I saw him. I implored him. But he would not listen."
"Oh, this is horrible!" Mme. de Plougastel shuddered as she spoke. "I
heard of it only half an hour ago, and I came at once, to prevent it at all
costs."
The two women looked blankly, despairingly, at each other. In the
sunshine-flooded street one or two shabby idlers were pausing to eye the
handsome equipage with its magnificent bay horses, and the two great ladies
on the doorstep of the fencing-academy. From across the way came the raucous
voice of an itinerant bellows-mender raised in the cry of his trade:
"A raccommoder les vieux soufflets!"
Madame swung to the housekeeper.
"How long is it since monsieur left?"
"Ten minutes, maybe; hardly more." Conceiving these great ladies to be
friends of her invincible master's latest victim, the good woman preserved a
decently stolid exterior.
Madame wrung her hands. "Ten minutes! Oh!" It was almost a moan. "Which
way did he go?"
"The assignation is for nine o'clock in the Bois de Boulogne," Aline
informed her. "Could we follow? Could we prevail if we did?"
"Ah, my God! The question is should we come in time? At nine o'clock!
And it wants but little more than a quarter of an hour. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
Madame clasped and unclasped her hands in anguish. "Do you know, at least,
where in the Bois they are to meet?"
"No - only that it is in the Bois."
"In the Bois!" Madame was flung into a frenzy. "The Bois is nearly half
as large as Paris." But she swept breathlessly on, "Come, Aline: get in, get
in!"
Then to her coachman. "To the Bois de Boulogne by way of the Cours Ia
Reine," she commanded, "as fast as you can drive. There are ten pistoles for
you if we are in time. Whip up, man!"
She thrust Aline into the carriage, and sprang after her with the
energy of a girl. The heavy vehicle - too heavy by far for this race with
time - was moving before she had taken her seat. Rocking and lurching it
went, earning the maledictions of more than one pedestrian whom it narrowly
avoided crushing against a wall or trampling underfoot.
Madame sat back with closed eyes and trembling lips. Her face showed
very white and drawn. Aline watched her in silence. Almost it seemed to her
that Mme. de Plougastel was suffering as deeply as herself, enduring an
anguish of apprehension as great as her own.
Later Aline was to wonder at this. But at the moment all the thought of
which her half-numbed mind was capable was bestowed upon their desperate
errand.
The carriage rolled across the Place Louis XV and out on to the Cours
Ia Reine at last. Along that beautiful, tree-bordered avenue between the
Champs Elysees and the Seine, almost empty at this hour of the day, they
made better speed, leaving now a cloud of dust behind them.
But fast to danger-point as was the speed, to the women in that
carriage it was too slow. As they reached the barrier at the end of the
Cours, nine o'clock was striking in the city behind them, and every stroke
of it seemed to sound a note of doom.
Yet here at the barrier the regulations compelled a momentary halt.
Aline enquired of the sergeant-in-charge how long it was since a cabriolet
such as she described had gone that way. She was answered that some twenty
minutes ago a vehicle had passed the barrier containing the deputy M. le
Chapelier and the Paladin of the Third Estate, M. Moreau. The sergeant was
very well informed. He could make a shrewd guess, he said, with a grin, of
the business that took M. Moreau that way so early in the day.
They left him, to speed on now through the open country, following the
road that continued to hug the river. They sat back mutely despairing,
staring hopelessly ahead, Aline's hand clasped tight in madame's. In the
distance, across the meadows on their right, they could see already the
long, dusky line of trees of the Bois, and presently the carriage swung
aside following a branch of the road that turned to the right, away from the
river and heading straight for the forest.
Mademoiselle broke at last the silence of hopelessness that had reigned
between them since they had passed the barrier.
"Oh, it is impossible that we should come in time! Impossible!"
"Don't say it! Don't say it!" madame cried out.
"But it is long past nine, madame! Andre would be punctual, and
these... affairs do not take long. It... it will be all over by now.
Madame shivered, and closed her eyes. Presently, however, she opened
them again, and stirred. Then she put her head from the window. "A carriage
is approaching," she announced, and her tone conveyed the thing she feared.
"Not already! Oh, not already!" Thus Aline expressed the silently
communicated thought. She experienced a difficulty in breathing, felt the
sudden need of air. Something in her throat was throbbing as if it would
suffocate her; a mist came and went before her eyes.
In a cloud of dust an open caleche was speeding towards them, coming
from the Bois. They watched it, both pale, neither venturing to speak,
Aline, indeed, without breath to do so.
As it approached, it slowed down, perforce, as they did, to effect a
safe passage in that narrow road. Aline was at the window with Mme. de
Plougastel, and with fearful eyes both looked into this open carriage that
was drawing abreast of them.
"Which of them is it, madame? Oh, which of them?" gasped Aline, scarce
daring to look, her senses swimming.
Qn the near side sat a swarthy young gentleman unknown to either of the
ladies. He was smiling as he spoke to his companion. A moment later and the
man sitting beyond came into view. He was not smiling. His face was white
and set, and it was the face of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr.
For a long moment, in speechless horror, both women stared at him,
until, perceiving them, blankest surprise invaded his stern face.
In that moment, with a long shuddering sigh Aline sank swooning to the
carriage floor behind Mme. de Plougastel.
By fast driving Andre-Louis had reached the ground some minutes ahead
of time, notwithstanding the slight delay in setting out. There he had found
M. de La Tour d'Azyr already awaiting him, supported by a M. d'Ormesson, a
swarthy young gentleman in the blue uniform of a captain in the Gardes du
Corps.
Andre-Louis had been silent and preoccupied throughout that drive. He
was perturbed by his last interview with Mademoiselle de Kercadiou and the
rash inferences which he had drawn as to her motives.
"Decidedly," he had said, "this man must be killed."
Le Chapelier had not answered him. Almost, indeed, had the Breton
shuddered at his compatriot's cold-bloodedness. He had often of late thought
that this fellow Moreau was hardly human. Also he had found him
incomprehensibly inconsistent. When first this spadassinicide business had
been proposed to him, he had been so very lofty and disdainful. Yet, having
embraced it, he went about it at times with a ghoulish flippancy that was
revolting, at times with a detachment that was more revolting still.
Their preparations were made quickly and in silence, yet without undue
haste or other sign of nervousness on either side. In both men the same grim
determination prevailed. The opponent must be killed; there could be no
half-measures here. Stripped each of coat and waistcoat, shoeless and with
shirt-sleeves rolled to the elbow, they faced each other at last, with the
common resolve of paying in full the long score that stood between them. I
doubt if either of them entertained a misgiving as to what must be the
issue.
Beside them, and opposite each other, stood Le Chapelier and the young
captain, alert and watchful.
"Allez, messieurs!"
The slender, wickedly delicate blades clashed together, and after a
momentary glizade were whirling, swift and bright as lightnings, and almost
as impossible to follow with the eye. The Marquis led the attack,
impetuously and vigorously, and almost at once Andre-Louis realized that he
had to deal with an opponent of a very different mettle from those
successive duellists of last week, not excluding La Motte-Royau, of terrible
reputation.
Here was a man whom much and constant practice had given extraordinary
speed and a technique that was almost perfect. In addition, he enjoyed over
Andre-Louis physical advantages of strength and length of reach, which
rendered him altogether formidable. And he was cool, too; cool and
self-contained; fearless and purposeful. Would anything shake that calm,
wondered Andre-Louis?
He desired the punishment to be as full as he could make it. Not
content to kill the Marquis as the Marquis had killed Philippe, he desired
that he should first know himself as powerless to avert that death as
Philippe had been. Nothing less would content Andre-Louis. M. le Marquis
must begin by tasting of that cup of despair. It was in the account; part of
the quittance due.
As with a breaking sweep Andre-Louis parried the heavy lunge in which
that first series of passes culminated, he actually laughed
- gleefully, after the fashion of a boy at a sport he loves.
That extraordinary, ill-timed laugh made M. de La Tour d'Azyr's
recovery hastier and less correctly dignified than it would otherwise have
been. It startled and discomposed him, who had already been discomposed by
the failure to get home with a lunge so beautifully timed and so truly
delivered.
He, too, had realized that his opponent's force was above anything that
he could have expected, fencing-master though he might be, and on that
account he had put forth his utmost energy to make an end at once.
More than the actual parry, the laugh by which it was accompanied
seemed to make of that end no more than a beginning. And yet it was the end
of something. It was the end of that absolute confidence that had hitherto
inspired M. de La Tour d'Azyr. He no longer looked upon the issue as a thing
forgone. He realized that if he was to prevail in this encounter, he must go
warily and fence as he had never fenced yet in all his life.
They settled down again; and again - on the principle this time that
the soundest defence is in attack - it was the Marquis who made the game.
Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so; desired him to spend
himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that
whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the
master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept
himself completely covered in that second bout, which once more culminated
in a lunge.
Expecting it now, Andre-Louis parried it by no more than a deflecting
touch. At the same moment he stepped suddenly forward, right within the
other's guard, thus placing his man so completely at his mercy that, as if
fascinated, the Marquis did not even attempt to recover himself.
This time Andre-Louis did not laugh: He just smiled into the dilating
eyes of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and made no shift to use his advantage.
"Come, come, monsieur!" he bade him sharply. "Am I to run my blade
through an uncovered man?" Deliberately he fell back, whilst his shaken
opponent recovered himself at last.
M. d'Ormesson released the breath which horror had for a moment caught.
Le Chapelier swore softly, muttering:
"Name of a name! It is tempting Providence to play the fool in this
fashion!"
Andre-Louis observed the ashen pallor that now over spread the face of
his opponent.
"I think you begin to realize, monsieur, what Philippe de Vilmorin must
have felt that day at Gavrillac. I desired that you should first do so.
Since that is accomplished, why, here's to make an end."
He went in with lightning rapidity. For a moment his point seemed to La
Tour d'Azyr to be everywhere at once, and then from a low engagement in
sixte, Andre-Louis stretched forward with swift and vigorous ease to lunge
in tierce. He drove his point to transfix his opponent whom a series of
calculated disengages uncovered in that line. But to his amazement and
chagrin, La Tour d'Azyr parried the stroke; infinitely more to his chagrin
La Tour d'Azyr parried it just too late. Had he completely parried it, all
would yet have been well. But striking the blade in the last fraction of a
second, the Marquis deflected the point from the line of his body, yet not
so completely but that a couple of feet of that hard-driven steel tore
through the muscles of his sword-arm.
To the seconds none of these details had been visible. All that they
had seen had been a swift whirl of flashing blades, and then Andre-Louis
stretched almost to the ground in an upward lunge that had pierced the
Marquis' right arm just below the shoulder.
The sword fell from the suddenly relaxed grip of La Tour d'Azyr's
fingers, which had been rendered powerless, and he stood now disarmed, his
lip in his teeth, his face white, his chest heaving, before his opponent,
who had at once recovered. With the blood-tinged tip of his sword resting on
the ground, Andre-Louis surveyed him grimly, as we survey the prey that
through our own clumsiness has escaped us at the last moment.
In the Assembly and in the newspapers this might be hailed as another
victory for the Paladin of the Third Estate; only himself could know the
extent and the bitternest of the failure.
M. d'Ormesson had sprung to the side of his principal.
"You are hurt!" he had cried stupidly.
"It is nothing," said La Tour d'Azyr. "A scratch." But his lip writhed,
and the torn sleeve of his fine cambric shirt was full of blood.
D'Ormesson, a practical man in such matters, produced a linen kerchief,
which he tore quickly into strips to improvise a bandage.
Still Andre-Louis continued to stand there, looking on as if bemused.
He continued so until Le Chapelier touched him on the arm. Then at last he
roused himself, sighed, and turned away to resume his garments, nor did he
address or look again at his late opponent, but left the ground at once.
As, with Le Chapelier, he was walking slowly and in silent dejection
towards the entrance of the Bois, where they had left their carriage, they
were passed by the caleche conveying La Tour d'Azyr and his second - which
had originally driven almost right up to the spot of the encounter. The
Marquis' wounded arm was carried in a sling improvised from his companion's
sword-belt. His sky-blue coat with three collars had been buttoned over
this, so that the right sleeve hung empty. Otherwise, saving a certain
pallor, he looked much his usual self.
And now you understand how it was that he was the first to return, and
that seeing him thus returning, apparently safe and sound, the two ladies,
intent upon preventing the encounter, should have assumed that their worst
fears were realized.
Mme. de Plougastel attempted to call out, but her voice refused its
office. She attempted to throw open the door of her own carriage; but her
fingers fumbled clumsily and ineffectively with the handle. And meanwhile
the caleche was slowly passing, La Tour d'Azyr's fine eyes sombrely yet
intently meeting her own anguished gaze. And then she saw something else. M.
d'Ormesson, leaning back again from the forward inclination of his body to
join his own to his companion's salutation of the Countess, disclosed the
empty right sleeve of M. de La Tour d'Azyr's blue coat. More, the near side
of the coat itself turned back from the point near the throat where it was
caught together by single button, revealed the slung arm beneath in its
blood. sodden cambric sleeve.
Even now she feared to jump to the obvious conclusion feared lest
perhaps the Marquis, though himself wounded, might have dealt his adversary
a deadlier wound.
She found her voice at last, and at the same moment signalled to the
driver of the caleche to stop.
As it was Pulled to a standstill, M. d'Ormesson alighted, and so met
madame in the little space between the two carriages.
"Where is M. Moreau?" was the question with which she surprised him.
"Following at his leisure, no doubt, madame," he answered, recovering.
"He is not hurt?"
"Unfortunately it is we who... " M. d'Ormesson was beginning, when from
behind him M. de La Tour d'Azyr's voice cut in crisply:
"This interest on your part in M. Moreau, dear Countess... "
He broke off, observing a vague challenge in the air with which she
confronted him. But indeed his sentence did not need completing.
There was a vaguely awkward pause. And then she looked at M.
d'Ormesson. Her manner changed. She offered what appeared to be an
explanation of her concern for M. Moreau.
"Mademoiselle de Kercadiou is with me. The poor child has fainted."
There was more, a deal more, she would have said just then, but for M.
d'Ormesson's presence.
Moved by a deep solicitude for Mademoiselle de Kertadiou, de La Tour
d'Azyr sprang up despite his wound.
"I am in poor case to render assistance, madame," he said, an
apologetic smile on his pale face. "But... "
With the aid of d'Ormesson, and in spite of the latter's protestations,
he got down from the caleche, which then moved on a little way, so as to
leave the road clear - for another carriage that was approaching from the
direction of the Bois.
And thus it happened that when a few moments later that approaching
cabriolet overtook and passed the halted vehicles, Andre-Louis beheld a very
touching scene. Standing up to obtain a better view, he saw Aline in a
half-swooning condition - she was beginning to revive by now - seated in the
doorway of the carriage, supported by Mme. de Plougastel. In an attitude of
deepest concern, M. de La Tour d'Azyr, his wound notwithstanding, was
bending over the girl, whilst behind him stood M. d'Ormesson and madame's
footman.
The Countess looked up and saw him as he was driven past. Her face
lighted; almost it seemed to him she was about to greet him or to call him,
wherefore, to avoid a difficulty, arising out of the presence there of his
late antagonist, he anticipated her by bowing frigidly - for his mood was
frigid, the more frigid by virtue of what he saw - and then resumed his seat
with eyes that looked deliberately ahead.
Could anything more completely have confirmed him in his conviction
that it was on M. de La Tour d'Azyr's account that Aline had come to plead
with him that morning? For what his eyes had seen, of course, was a lady
overcome with emotion at the sight of blood of her dear friend, and that
same dear friend restoring her with assurances that his hurt was very far
from mortal. Later, much later, he was to blame his own perverse stupidity.
Almost is he too severe in his self-condemnation. For how else could he have
interpreted the scene he beheld, his preconceptions being what they were?
That which he had already been suspecting, he now accounted proven to
him. Aline had been wanting in candour on the subject of her feelings
towards M. de La Tour d'Azyr. It was, he supposed, a woman's way to be
secretive in such matters, and he must not blame her. Nor could he blame her
in his heart for having succumbed to the singular charm of such a man as the
Marquis - for not even his hostility could blind him to M. de La Tour
d'Azyr's attractions. That she had succumbed was betrayed, he thought, by
M. de Kercadiou moistened his lips.
"With whom is this engagement?" he asked in a voice that by an effort
he contrived to render steady.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr bowed his handsome head, his eyes upon the
gleaming parquetry of the floor. "With myself," he answered quietly,
conscious already with a tightening of the heart that his answer must sow
dismay. He caught the sound of a faint outcry from Aline; he saw the sudden
recoil of M. de Kercadiou. And then he plunged headlong into the explanation
that he deemed necessary.
"In view of his relations with you, M. de Kercadiou, and because of my
deep regard for you, I did my best to avoid this, even though as you will
understand the death of my dear friend and cousin Chabrillane seemed to
summon me to action, even though I knew that my circumspection was becoming
matter for criticism among my friends. But yesterday this unbridled young
man made further restraint impossible to me. He provoked me deliberately and
publicly. He put upon me the very grossest affront, and... to-morrow morning
in the Bois... we meet."
He faltered a little at the end, fully conscious of the hostile
atmosphere in which he suddenly found himself. Hostility from M. de
Kercadiou, the latter's earlier change of manner had already led him to
expect; the hostility of mademoiselle came more in the nature of a surprise.
He began to understand what difficulties the course to which he was
committed must raise up for him. A fresh obstacle was to be flung across the
path which he had just cleared, as he imagined. Yet his pride and his sense
of the justice due to be done admitted of no weakening.
In bitterness he realized now, as he looked from uncle to niece
- his glance, usually so direct and bold, now oddly furtive - that
though to-morrow he might kill Andre-Louis, yet even by his death
Andre-Louis would take vengeance upon him. He had exaggerated nothing in
reaching the conclusion that this Andre-Louis Moreau was the evil genius of
his life. He saw now that do what he would, kill him even though he might,
he could never conquer him. The last word would always be with Andre-Louis
Moreau. In bitterness, in rage, and in humiliation - a thing almost unknown
to him - did he realize it, and the realization steeled his purpose for all
that he perceived its futility.
Outwardly he showed himself calm and self-contained, properly
suggesting a man regretfully accepting the inevitable. It would have been as
impossible to find fault with his bearing as to attempt to turn him from the
matter to which he was committed. And so M. de Kercadiou perceived.
"My God!" was all that he said, scarcely above his breath, yet almost
in a groan.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr did, as always, the thing that sensibility
demanded of him. He took his leave. He understood that to linger where his
news had produced such an effect would be impossible, indecent. So he
departed, in a bitterness comparable only with his erstwhile optimism, the
sweet fruit of hope turned to a thing of gall even as it touched his lips.
Oh, yes; the last word, indeed, was with Andre-Louis Moreau - always!
Uncle and niece looked at each other as he passed out, and there was
horror in the eyes of both. Aline's pallor was deathly almost, and standing
there now she wrung her hands as if in pain.
"Why did you not ask him - beg him... " She broke off.
"To what end? He was in the right, and... and there are things one
cannot ask; things it would be a useless humiliation to ask." He sat down,
groaning. "Oh, the poor boy - the poor, misguided boy."
In the mind of neither, you see, was there any doubt of what must be
the issue. The calm confidence in which La Tour d'Azyr had spoken compelled
itself to be shared. He was no vainglorious boaster, and they knew of what a
force as a swordsman he was generally accounted.
"What does humiliation matter? A life is at issue - Andre's life."
"I know. My God, don't I know? And I would humiliate myself if by
humiliating myself I could hope to prevail. But Azyr is a hard, relentless
man, and... "
Abruptly she left him.
She overtook the Marquis as he was in the act of stepping his carriage.
He turned as she called, and bowed.
"Mademoiselle?"
At once he guessed her errand, tasted in anticipation the unparalleled
bitterness of being compelled to refuse her. Yet at her invitation he
stepped back into the cool of the hall.
In the middle of the floor of chequered marbles, black and white, stood
a carved table of black oak. By this he halted, leaning lightly against it
whilst she sat enthroned in the great crimson chair beside it.
"Monsieur, I cannot allow you so to depart," she said. "You cannot
realize, monsieur, what a blow would be dealt my uncle if... if evil,
irrevocable evil were to overtake his godson to-morrow. The expressions that
he used at first... "
"Mademoiselle, I perceived their true value. Spare yourself. Believe me
I am profoundly desolated by circumstances which I had not expected to find.
You must believe me when I say that. It is all that I can say."
"Must it really be all? Andre is very dear to his godfather."
The pleading tone cut him like a knife; and then suddenly it aroused
another emotion - an emotion which he realized to be utterly unworthy, an
emotion which, in his overwhelming pride of race, seemed almost sullying,
yet not to be repressed. He hesitated to give it utterance; hesitated even
remotely to suggest so horrible a thing as that in a man of such lowly
origin he might conceivably discover a rival. Yet that sudden pang of
jealousy was stronger than his monstrous pride.
"And to you, mademoiselle? What is this Andre-Louis Moreau to you? You
will pardon the question. But I desire clearly to understand."
Watching her he beheld the scarlet stain that overspread her face. He
read in it at first confusion, until the gleam of her blue eyes announced
its source to lie in anger. That comforted him; since he had affronted her,
he was reassured. It did not occur to him that the anger might have another
source.
"Andre and I have been playmates from infancy. He is very dear to me,
too; almost I regard him as a brother. Were I in need of help, and were my
uncle not available, Andre would be the first man to whom I should turn. Are
you sufficiently answered, monsieur? Or is there more of me you would desire
revealed?"
He bit his lip. He was unnerved, he thought, this morning; otherwise
the silly suspicion with which he had offended could never have occurred to
him.
He bowed very low. "Mademoiselle, forgive that I should have troubled
you with such a question. You have answered more fully than I could have
hoped or wished."
He said no more than that. He waited for her to resume. At a loss, she
sat in silence awhile, a pucker on her white brow, her fingers nervously
drumming on the table. At last she flung herself headlong against the
impassive, polished front that he presented.
"I have come, monsieur, to beg you to put off this meeting."
She saw the faint raising of his dark eyebrows, the faintly regretful
smile that scarcely did more than tinge his fine lips, and she hurried on.
"What honour can await you in such an engagement, monsieur?"
It was a shrewd thrust at the pride of race that she accounted his
paramount sentiment, that had as often lured him into error as it had urged
him into good.
"I do not seek honour in it, mademoiselle, but - I must say it
- justice. The engagement, as I have explained, is not of my seeking.
It has been thrust upon me, and in honour I cannot draw back."
"Why, what dishonour would there be in sparing him? Surely, monsieur,
none would call your courage in question? None could misapprehend your
motives."
"You are mistaken, mademoiselle. My motives would most certainly be
misapprehended. You forget that this young man has acquired in the past week
a certain reputation that might well make a man hesitate to meet him."
She brushed that aside almost contemptuously, conceiving it the merest
quibble.
"Some men, yes. But not you, M. le Marquis."
Her confidence in him on every count was most sweetly flattering. But
there was a bitterness behind the sweet.
"Even I, mademoiselle, let me assure you. And there is more than that.
This quarrel which M. Moreau has forced upon me is no new thing. It is
merely the culmination of a long-drawn persecution.
"Which you invited," she cut in. "Be just, monsieur."
"I hope that it is not in my nature to be otherwise, mademoiselle."
"Consider, then, that you killed his friend."
"I find in that nothing with which to reproach myself. My justification
lay in the circumstances - the subsequent events in this distracted country
surely confirm it."
"And... " She faltered a little, and looked away from him for the first
time. "And that you... that you... And what of Mademoiselle Binet, whom he
was to have married?"
He stared at her for a moment in sheer surprise. "Was to have married?"
he repeated incredulously, dismayed almost.
"You did not know that?"
"But how do you?"
"Did I not tell you that we are as brother and sister almost? I have
his confidence. He told me, before... before you made it impossible."
He looked away, chin in hand, his glance thoughtful, disturbed, almost
wistful.
"There is," he said slowly, musingly. "a singular fatality at work
between that man and me, bringing us ever each by turns athwart the other's
path... "
He sighed; then swung to face her again, speaking more briskly:
"Mademoiselle, until this moment I had no knowledge - no suspicion of this
thing. But..." He broke off, considered, and then shrugged. "If I wronged
him, I did so unconsciously. It would be unjust to blame me, surely. In all
our actions it must be the intention alone that counts."
"But does it make no difference?"
"None that I can discern, mademoiselle. It gives me no justification to
withdraw from that to which I am irrevocably committed. No justification,
indeed, could ever be greater than my concern for the pain it must occasion
my good friend, your uncle, and perhaps yourself, mademoiselle."
She rose suddenly, squarely confronting him, desperate now, driven to
play the only card upon which she thought she might count.
"Monsieur," she said, "you did me the honour to-day to speak in certain
terms; to... to allude to certain hopes with which you honour me."
He looked at her almost in fear. In silence, not daring to speak, he
waited for her to continue.
"I... I... Will you please to understand, monsieur, that if you persist
in this matter, if... unless you can break this engagement of yours
to-morrow morning in the Bois, you are not to presume to mention this
subject to me again, or, indeed, ever again to approach me."
To put the matter in this negative way was as far as she could possibly
go. It was for him to make the positive proposal to which she had thus
thrown wide the door.
"Mademoiselle, you cannot mean... "
"I do, monsieur... irrevocably, please to understand." He looked at her
with eyes of misery, his handsome, manly face as pale as she had ever seen
it. The hand he had been holding out in protest began to shake. He lowered
it to his side again, lest she should perceive its tremor. Thus a brief
second, while the battle was fought within him, the bitter engagement
between his desires and what he conceived to be the demands of his honour,
never perceiving how far his honour was buttressed by implacable
vindictiveness. Retreat, he conceived, was impossible without shame; and
shame was to him an agony unthinkable. She asked too much. She could not
understand what she was asking, else she would never be so unreasonable, so
unjust. But also he saw that it would be futile to attempt to make her
understand.
It was the end. Though he kill Andre-Louis Moreau in the morning as he
fiercely hoped he would, yet the victory even in death must lie with
Andre-Louis Moreau.
He bowed profoundly, grave and sorrowful of face as he was grave and
sorrowful of heart.
"Mademoiselle, my homage," he murmured, and turned to go.
"But you have not answered me!" she called after him in terror.
He checked on the threshold, and turned; and there from the cool gloom
of the hall she saw him a black, graceful silhouette against the brilliant
sunshine beyond - a memory of him that was to cling as something sinister
and menacing in the dread hours that were to follow.
"What would you, mademoiselle? I but spared myself and you the pain of
a refusal."
He was gone leaving her crushed and raging. She sank down again into
the great red chair, and sat there crumpled, her elbows on the table, her
face in her hands - a face that was on fire with shame and passion. She had
offered herself, and she had been refused! The inconceivable had befallen
her. The humiliation of it seemed to her something that could never be
effaced.
Startled, appalled, she stepped back, her hand pressed to her tortured
breast.
M. de Kercadiou wrote a letter.
"Godson," he began, without any softening adjective, "I have learnt
with pain and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by
breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater
pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short
days a byword, that you have discarded the weapon of false, insidious
arguments against my class - the class to which you owe everything - for the
sword of the assassin. It has come to my knowledge that you have an
assignation to-morrow with my good friend M. de La Tour d'Azyr. A gentleman
of his station is under certain obligations imposed upon him by his birth,
which do not permit him to draw back from an engagement. But you labour
under no such disadvantages. For a man of your class to refuse an engagement
of honour, or to neglect it when made, entails no sacrifice. Your peers will
probably be of the opinion that you display a commendable prudence.
Therefore I beg you, indeed, did I think that I still exercise over you any
such authority as the favours you have received from me should entitle me to
exercise, I would command you, to allow this matter to go no farther, and to
refrain from rendering yourself to your assignation to-morrow morning.
Having no such authority, as your past conduct now makes clear, having no
reason to hope that a proper sentiment of gratitude to me will induce to
give heed to this my most earnest request, I am compelled to add that should
you survive to-morrow's encounter, I can in no circumstances ever again
permit myself to be conscious of your existence. If any spark survives of
the affection that once you expressed for me, or if you set any value upon
the affection, which, in spite of all that you have done to forfeit it, is
the chief prompter of this letter, you will not refuse to do as I am
asking."
It was not a tactful letter. M. de Kercadiou was not a tactful man.
Read it as he would, Andre-Louis - when it was delivered to him on that
Sunday afternoon by the groom dispatched with it into Paris
- could read into it only concern for M. La Tour d'Azyr, M. de
Kercadiou's good friend, as he called him, and prospective nephew-in-law.
He kept the groom waiting a full hour while composing his answer. Brief
though it was, it cost him very considerable effort and several unsuccessful
attempts. In the end this is what he wrote:
Monsieur my godfather - You make refusal singularly hard for me when
you appeal to me upon the ground of affection. It is a thing of which all my
life I shall hail the opportunity to give you proofs, and I am therefore
desolated beyond anything I could hope to express that I cannot give you the
proof you ask to-day. There is too much between M. de La Tour d'Azyr and me.
Also you do me and my class - whatever it may be - less than justice when
you say that obligations of honour are not binding upon us. So binding do I
count them, that, if I would, I could not now draw back.
If hereafter you should persist in the harsh intention you express, I
must suffer it. That I shall suffer be assured.
Your affectionate and grateful godson
Andre-Louis
He dispatched that letter by M. de Kercadiou's groom, and conceived
this to be the end of the matter. It cut him keenly; but he bore the wound
with that outward stoicism he affected.
Next morning, at a quarter past eight, as with Le Chapelier - who had
come to break his fast with him - he was rising from table to set out for
the Bois, his housekeeper startled him by announcing Mademoiselle de
Kercadiou.
He looked at his watch. Although his cabriolet was already at the door,
he had a few minutes to spare. He excused himself from Le Chapelier, and
went briskly out to the anteroom.
She advanced to meet him, her manner eager, almost feverish.
"I will not affect ignorance of why you have come," he said quickly, to
make short work. "But time presses, and I warn you that only the most solid
of reasons can be worth stating."
It surprised her. It amounted to a rebuff at the very outset, before
she had uttered a word; and that was the last thing she had expected from
Andre-Louis. Moreover, there was about him an air of aloofness that was
unusual where she was concerned, and his voice had been singularly cold and
formal.
It wounded her. She was not to guess the conclusion to which he had
leapt. He made with regard to her - as was but natural, after all - the same
mistake that he had made with regard to yesterday's letter from his
godfather. He conceived that the mainspring of action here was solely
concern for M. de La Tour d'Azyr. That it might be concern for himself never
entered his mind. So absolute was his own conviction of what must be the
inevitable issue of that meeting that he could not conceive of any one
entertaining a fear on his behalf.
What he assumed to be anxiety on the score of the predestined victim
had irritated him in M. de Kercadiou; in Aline it filled him with a cold
anger; he argued from it that she had hardly been frank with him; that
ambition was urging her to consider with favour the suit of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr. And than this there was no spur that could have driven more
relentlessly in his purpose, since to save her was in his eyes almost as
momentous as to avenge the past.
She conned him searchingly, and the complete calm of him at such a time
amazed her. She could not repress the mention of it.
"How calm you are, Andre!"
"I am not easily disturbed. It is a vanity of mine."
"But... Oh, Andre, this meeting must not take place!" She came close up
to him, to set her hands upon his shoulders, and stood so, her face within a
foot of his own.
"You know, of course, of some good reason why it should not?" said he.
"You may be killed," she answered him, and her eyes dilated as she
spoke.
It was so far from anything that he had expected that for a moment he
could only stare at her. Then he thought he had understood. He laughed as he
removed her hands from his shoulders, and stepped back. This was a shallow
device, childish and unworthy in her.
"Can you really think to prevail by attempting to frighten me?" he
asked, and almost sneered.
"Oh, you are surely mad! M. de La Tour d'Azyr is reputed the most
dangerous sword in France."
"Have you never noticed that most reputations are undeserved?
Chabrillane was a dangerous swordsman, and Chabrillane is underground. La
Motte-Royau was an even more dangerous swordsman, and he is in a surgeon's
hands. So are the other spadassinicides who dreamt of skewering a poor sheep
of a provincial lawyer. And here to-day comes the chief, the fine flower of
these bully-swordsmen. He comes, for wages long overdue. Be sure of that. So
if you have no other reason to urge.
It was the sarcasm of him that mystified her. Could he possibly be
sincere in his assurance that he must prevail against M. de La Tour d'Azyr?
To her in her limited knowledge, her mind filled with her uncle's contrary
conviction, it seemed that Andre-Louis was only acting; he would act a part
to the very end.
Be that as it might, she shifted her ground to answer him.
"You had my uncle's letter?"
"And I answered it."
"I know. But what he said, he will fulfil. Do not dream that he will
relent if you carry out this horrible purpose."
"Come, now, that is a better reason than the other," said he. "If there
is a reason in the world that could move me it would be that. But there is
too much between La Tour d'Azyr and me. There is an oath I swore on the dead
hand of Philippe de Vilmorin. I could never have hoped that God would afford
me so great an opportunity of keeping it."
"You have not kept it yet," she warned him.
He smiled at her. "True!" he said. "But nine o'clock will soon be here.
Tell me," he asked her suddenly, "why did you not carry this request of
yours to M. de La Tour d'Azyr?"
"I did," she answered him, and flushed as she remembered her
yesterday's rejection. He interpreted the flush quite otherwise.
"And he?" he asked.
"M. de La Tour d'Azyr's obligations... " she was beginning: then she
broke off to answer shortly: "Oh, he refused."
"So, so. He must, of course, whatever it may have cost him. Yet in his
place I should have counted the cost as nothing. But men are different, you
see." He sighed. "Also in your place, had that been so, I think I should
have left the matter there. But then... "
"I don't understand you, Andre."
"I am not so very obscure. Not nearly so obscure as I can be. Turn it
over in your mind. It may help to comfort you presently." He consulted his
watch again. "Pray use this house as your own. I must be going."
Le Chapelier put his head in at the door.
"Forgive the intrusion. But we shall be late, Andre, unless you... "
"Coming," Andre answered him. "If you will await my return, Aline, you
will oblige me deeply. Particularly in view of your uncle's resolve."
She did not answer him. She was numbed. He took her silence for assent,
and, bowing, left her. Standing there she heard his steps going down the
stairs together with Le Chapelier's. He was speaking to his friend, and his
voice was calm and normal.
Oh, he was mad - blinded by self-confidence and vanity. As his carriage
rattled away, she sat down limply, with a sense of exhaustion and nausea.
She was sick and faint with horror. Andre-Louis was going to his death.
Conviction of it - an unreasoning conviction, the result, perhaps, of all M.
de Kercadiou's rantings - entered her soul. Awhile she sat thus, paralyzed
by hopelessness. Then she sprang up again, wringing her hands. She must do
something to avert this horror. But what could she do? To follow him to the
Bois and intervene there would be to make a scandal for no purpose. The
conventions of conduct were all against her, offering a barrier that was not
to be overstepped. Was there no one could help her?
Standing there, half-frenzied by her helplessness, she caught again a
sound of vehicles and hooves on the cobbles of the street below. A carriage
was approaching. It drew up with a clatter before the fencing-academy. Could
it be Andre-Louis returning? Passionately she snatched at that straw of
hope. Knocking, loud and urgent, fell upon the door. She heard Andre-Louis'
housekeeper, her wooden shoes clanking upon the stairs, hurrying down to
open.
She sped to the door of the anteroom, and pulling it wide stood
breathlessly to listen. But the voice that floated up to her was not the
voice she so desperately hoped to hear. It was a woman's voice asking in
urgent tones for M. Andre-Louis - a voice at first vaguely familiar, then
clearly recognized, the voice of Mme. de Plougastel.
Excited, she ran to the head of the narrow staircase in time to hear
Mme. de Plougastel exclaim in agitation:
"He has gone already! Oh, but how long since? Which way did he take?"
It was enough to inform Aline that Mme. de Plougastel's errand must be
akin to her own. At the moment, in the general distress and confusion of her
mind, her mental vision focussed entirely on the one vital point, she found
in this no matter for astonishment. The singular regard conceived by Mme. de
Plougastel for Andre-Louis seemed to her then a sufficient explanation.
Without pausing to consider, she ran down that steep staircase,
calling:
"Madame! Madame!"
The portly, comely housekeeper drew aside, and the two ladies faced
each other on that threshold. Mme. de Plougastel looked white and haggard, a
nameless dread staring from her eyes.
"Aline! You here!" she exclaimed. And then in the urgency sweeping
aside all minor considerations, "Were you also too late?" she asked.
"No, madame. I saw him. I implored him. But he would not listen."
"Oh, this is horrible!" Mme. de Plougastel shuddered as she spoke. "I
heard of it only half an hour ago, and I came at once, to prevent it at all
costs."
The two women looked blankly, despairingly, at each other. In the
sunshine-flooded street one or two shabby idlers were pausing to eye the
handsome equipage with its magnificent bay horses, and the two great ladies
on the doorstep of the fencing-academy. From across the way came the raucous
voice of an itinerant bellows-mender raised in the cry of his trade:
"A raccommoder les vieux soufflets!"
Madame swung to the housekeeper.
"How long is it since monsieur left?"
"Ten minutes, maybe; hardly more." Conceiving these great ladies to be
friends of her invincible master's latest victim, the good woman preserved a
decently stolid exterior.
Madame wrung her hands. "Ten minutes! Oh!" It was almost a moan. "Which
way did he go?"
"The assignation is for nine o'clock in the Bois de Boulogne," Aline
informed her. "Could we follow? Could we prevail if we did?"
"Ah, my God! The question is should we come in time? At nine o'clock!
And it wants but little more than a quarter of an hour. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
Madame clasped and unclasped her hands in anguish. "Do you know, at least,
where in the Bois they are to meet?"
"No - only that it is in the Bois."
"In the Bois!" Madame was flung into a frenzy. "The Bois is nearly half
as large as Paris." But she swept breathlessly on, "Come, Aline: get in, get
in!"
Then to her coachman. "To the Bois de Boulogne by way of the Cours Ia
Reine," she commanded, "as fast as you can drive. There are ten pistoles for
you if we are in time. Whip up, man!"
She thrust Aline into the carriage, and sprang after her with the
energy of a girl. The heavy vehicle - too heavy by far for this race with
time - was moving before she had taken her seat. Rocking and lurching it
went, earning the maledictions of more than one pedestrian whom it narrowly
avoided crushing against a wall or trampling underfoot.
Madame sat back with closed eyes and trembling lips. Her face showed
very white and drawn. Aline watched her in silence. Almost it seemed to her
that Mme. de Plougastel was suffering as deeply as herself, enduring an
anguish of apprehension as great as her own.
Later Aline was to wonder at this. But at the moment all the thought of
which her half-numbed mind was capable was bestowed upon their desperate
errand.
The carriage rolled across the Place Louis XV and out on to the Cours
Ia Reine at last. Along that beautiful, tree-bordered avenue between the
Champs Elysees and the Seine, almost empty at this hour of the day, they
made better speed, leaving now a cloud of dust behind them.
But fast to danger-point as was the speed, to the women in that
carriage it was too slow. As they reached the barrier at the end of the
Cours, nine o'clock was striking in the city behind them, and every stroke
of it seemed to sound a note of doom.
Yet here at the barrier the regulations compelled a momentary halt.
Aline enquired of the sergeant-in-charge how long it was since a cabriolet
such as she described had gone that way. She was answered that some twenty
minutes ago a vehicle had passed the barrier containing the deputy M. le
Chapelier and the Paladin of the Third Estate, M. Moreau. The sergeant was
very well informed. He could make a shrewd guess, he said, with a grin, of
the business that took M. Moreau that way so early in the day.
They left him, to speed on now through the open country, following the
road that continued to hug the river. They sat back mutely despairing,
staring hopelessly ahead, Aline's hand clasped tight in madame's. In the
distance, across the meadows on their right, they could see already the
long, dusky line of trees of the Bois, and presently the carriage swung
aside following a branch of the road that turned to the right, away from the
river and heading straight for the forest.
Mademoiselle broke at last the silence of hopelessness that had reigned
between them since they had passed the barrier.
"Oh, it is impossible that we should come in time! Impossible!"
"Don't say it! Don't say it!" madame cried out.
"But it is long past nine, madame! Andre would be punctual, and
these... affairs do not take long. It... it will be all over by now.
Madame shivered, and closed her eyes. Presently, however, she opened
them again, and stirred. Then she put her head from the window. "A carriage
is approaching," she announced, and her tone conveyed the thing she feared.
"Not already! Oh, not already!" Thus Aline expressed the silently
communicated thought. She experienced a difficulty in breathing, felt the
sudden need of air. Something in her throat was throbbing as if it would
suffocate her; a mist came and went before her eyes.
In a cloud of dust an open caleche was speeding towards them, coming
from the Bois. They watched it, both pale, neither venturing to speak,
Aline, indeed, without breath to do so.
As it approached, it slowed down, perforce, as they did, to effect a
safe passage in that narrow road. Aline was at the window with Mme. de
Plougastel, and with fearful eyes both looked into this open carriage that
was drawing abreast of them.
"Which of them is it, madame? Oh, which of them?" gasped Aline, scarce
daring to look, her senses swimming.
Qn the near side sat a swarthy young gentleman unknown to either of the
ladies. He was smiling as he spoke to his companion. A moment later and the
man sitting beyond came into view. He was not smiling. His face was white
and set, and it was the face of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr.
For a long moment, in speechless horror, both women stared at him,
until, perceiving them, blankest surprise invaded his stern face.
In that moment, with a long shuddering sigh Aline sank swooning to the
carriage floor behind Mme. de Plougastel.
By fast driving Andre-Louis had reached the ground some minutes ahead
of time, notwithstanding the slight delay in setting out. There he had found
M. de La Tour d'Azyr already awaiting him, supported by a M. d'Ormesson, a
swarthy young gentleman in the blue uniform of a captain in the Gardes du
Corps.
Andre-Louis had been silent and preoccupied throughout that drive. He
was perturbed by his last interview with Mademoiselle de Kercadiou and the
rash inferences which he had drawn as to her motives.
"Decidedly," he had said, "this man must be killed."
Le Chapelier had not answered him. Almost, indeed, had the Breton
shuddered at his compatriot's cold-bloodedness. He had often of late thought
that this fellow Moreau was hardly human. Also he had found him
incomprehensibly inconsistent. When first this spadassinicide business had
been proposed to him, he had been so very lofty and disdainful. Yet, having
embraced it, he went about it at times with a ghoulish flippancy that was
revolting, at times with a detachment that was more revolting still.
Their preparations were made quickly and in silence, yet without undue
haste or other sign of nervousness on either side. In both men the same grim
determination prevailed. The opponent must be killed; there could be no
half-measures here. Stripped each of coat and waistcoat, shoeless and with
shirt-sleeves rolled to the elbow, they faced each other at last, with the
common resolve of paying in full the long score that stood between them. I
doubt if either of them entertained a misgiving as to what must be the
issue.
Beside them, and opposite each other, stood Le Chapelier and the young
captain, alert and watchful.
"Allez, messieurs!"
The slender, wickedly delicate blades clashed together, and after a
momentary glizade were whirling, swift and bright as lightnings, and almost
as impossible to follow with the eye. The Marquis led the attack,
impetuously and vigorously, and almost at once Andre-Louis realized that he
had to deal with an opponent of a very different mettle from those
successive duellists of last week, not excluding La Motte-Royau, of terrible
reputation.
Here was a man whom much and constant practice had given extraordinary
speed and a technique that was almost perfect. In addition, he enjoyed over
Andre-Louis physical advantages of strength and length of reach, which
rendered him altogether formidable. And he was cool, too; cool and
self-contained; fearless and purposeful. Would anything shake that calm,
wondered Andre-Louis?
He desired the punishment to be as full as he could make it. Not
content to kill the Marquis as the Marquis had killed Philippe, he desired
that he should first know himself as powerless to avert that death as
Philippe had been. Nothing less would content Andre-Louis. M. le Marquis
must begin by tasting of that cup of despair. It was in the account; part of
the quittance due.
As with a breaking sweep Andre-Louis parried the heavy lunge in which
that first series of passes culminated, he actually laughed
- gleefully, after the fashion of a boy at a sport he loves.
That extraordinary, ill-timed laugh made M. de La Tour d'Azyr's
recovery hastier and less correctly dignified than it would otherwise have
been. It startled and discomposed him, who had already been discomposed by
the failure to get home with a lunge so beautifully timed and so truly
delivered.
He, too, had realized that his opponent's force was above anything that
he could have expected, fencing-master though he might be, and on that
account he had put forth his utmost energy to make an end at once.
More than the actual parry, the laugh by which it was accompanied
seemed to make of that end no more than a beginning. And yet it was the end
of something. It was the end of that absolute confidence that had hitherto
inspired M. de La Tour d'Azyr. He no longer looked upon the issue as a thing
forgone. He realized that if he was to prevail in this encounter, he must go
warily and fence as he had never fenced yet in all his life.
They settled down again; and again - on the principle this time that
the soundest defence is in attack - it was the Marquis who made the game.
Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so; desired him to spend
himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that
whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the
master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept
himself completely covered in that second bout, which once more culminated
in a lunge.
Expecting it now, Andre-Louis parried it by no more than a deflecting
touch. At the same moment he stepped suddenly forward, right within the
other's guard, thus placing his man so completely at his mercy that, as if
fascinated, the Marquis did not even attempt to recover himself.
This time Andre-Louis did not laugh: He just smiled into the dilating
eyes of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and made no shift to use his advantage.
"Come, come, monsieur!" he bade him sharply. "Am I to run my blade
through an uncovered man?" Deliberately he fell back, whilst his shaken
opponent recovered himself at last.
M. d'Ormesson released the breath which horror had for a moment caught.
Le Chapelier swore softly, muttering:
"Name of a name! It is tempting Providence to play the fool in this
fashion!"
Andre-Louis observed the ashen pallor that now over spread the face of
his opponent.
"I think you begin to realize, monsieur, what Philippe de Vilmorin must
have felt that day at Gavrillac. I desired that you should first do so.
Since that is accomplished, why, here's to make an end."
He went in with lightning rapidity. For a moment his point seemed to La
Tour d'Azyr to be everywhere at once, and then from a low engagement in
sixte, Andre-Louis stretched forward with swift and vigorous ease to lunge
in tierce. He drove his point to transfix his opponent whom a series of
calculated disengages uncovered in that line. But to his amazement and
chagrin, La Tour d'Azyr parried the stroke; infinitely more to his chagrin
La Tour d'Azyr parried it just too late. Had he completely parried it, all
would yet have been well. But striking the blade in the last fraction of a
second, the Marquis deflected the point from the line of his body, yet not
so completely but that a couple of feet of that hard-driven steel tore
through the muscles of his sword-arm.
To the seconds none of these details had been visible. All that they
had seen had been a swift whirl of flashing blades, and then Andre-Louis
stretched almost to the ground in an upward lunge that had pierced the
Marquis' right arm just below the shoulder.
The sword fell from the suddenly relaxed grip of La Tour d'Azyr's
fingers, which had been rendered powerless, and he stood now disarmed, his
lip in his teeth, his face white, his chest heaving, before his opponent,
who had at once recovered. With the blood-tinged tip of his sword resting on
the ground, Andre-Louis surveyed him grimly, as we survey the prey that
through our own clumsiness has escaped us at the last moment.
In the Assembly and in the newspapers this might be hailed as another
victory for the Paladin of the Third Estate; only himself could know the
extent and the bitternest of the failure.
M. d'Ormesson had sprung to the side of his principal.
"You are hurt!" he had cried stupidly.
"It is nothing," said La Tour d'Azyr. "A scratch." But his lip writhed,
and the torn sleeve of his fine cambric shirt was full of blood.
D'Ormesson, a practical man in such matters, produced a linen kerchief,
which he tore quickly into strips to improvise a bandage.
Still Andre-Louis continued to stand there, looking on as if bemused.
He continued so until Le Chapelier touched him on the arm. Then at last he
roused himself, sighed, and turned away to resume his garments, nor did he
address or look again at his late opponent, but left the ground at once.
As, with Le Chapelier, he was walking slowly and in silent dejection
towards the entrance of the Bois, where they had left their carriage, they
were passed by the caleche conveying La Tour d'Azyr and his second - which
had originally driven almost right up to the spot of the encounter. The
Marquis' wounded arm was carried in a sling improvised from his companion's
sword-belt. His sky-blue coat with three collars had been buttoned over
this, so that the right sleeve hung empty. Otherwise, saving a certain
pallor, he looked much his usual self.
And now you understand how it was that he was the first to return, and
that seeing him thus returning, apparently safe and sound, the two ladies,
intent upon preventing the encounter, should have assumed that their worst
fears were realized.
Mme. de Plougastel attempted to call out, but her voice refused its
office. She attempted to throw open the door of her own carriage; but her
fingers fumbled clumsily and ineffectively with the handle. And meanwhile
the caleche was slowly passing, La Tour d'Azyr's fine eyes sombrely yet
intently meeting her own anguished gaze. And then she saw something else. M.
d'Ormesson, leaning back again from the forward inclination of his body to
join his own to his companion's salutation of the Countess, disclosed the
empty right sleeve of M. de La Tour d'Azyr's blue coat. More, the near side
of the coat itself turned back from the point near the throat where it was
caught together by single button, revealed the slung arm beneath in its
blood. sodden cambric sleeve.
Even now she feared to jump to the obvious conclusion feared lest
perhaps the Marquis, though himself wounded, might have dealt his adversary
a deadlier wound.
She found her voice at last, and at the same moment signalled to the
driver of the caleche to stop.
As it was Pulled to a standstill, M. d'Ormesson alighted, and so met
madame in the little space between the two carriages.
"Where is M. Moreau?" was the question with which she surprised him.
"Following at his leisure, no doubt, madame," he answered, recovering.
"He is not hurt?"
"Unfortunately it is we who... " M. d'Ormesson was beginning, when from
behind him M. de La Tour d'Azyr's voice cut in crisply:
"This interest on your part in M. Moreau, dear Countess... "
He broke off, observing a vague challenge in the air with which she
confronted him. But indeed his sentence did not need completing.
There was a vaguely awkward pause. And then she looked at M.
d'Ormesson. Her manner changed. She offered what appeared to be an
explanation of her concern for M. Moreau.
"Mademoiselle de Kercadiou is with me. The poor child has fainted."
There was more, a deal more, she would have said just then, but for M.
d'Ormesson's presence.
Moved by a deep solicitude for Mademoiselle de Kertadiou, de La Tour
d'Azyr sprang up despite his wound.
"I am in poor case to render assistance, madame," he said, an
apologetic smile on his pale face. "But... "
With the aid of d'Ormesson, and in spite of the latter's protestations,
he got down from the caleche, which then moved on a little way, so as to
leave the road clear - for another carriage that was approaching from the
direction of the Bois.
And thus it happened that when a few moments later that approaching
cabriolet overtook and passed the halted vehicles, Andre-Louis beheld a very
touching scene. Standing up to obtain a better view, he saw Aline in a
half-swooning condition - she was beginning to revive by now - seated in the
doorway of the carriage, supported by Mme. de Plougastel. In an attitude of
deepest concern, M. de La Tour d'Azyr, his wound notwithstanding, was
bending over the girl, whilst behind him stood M. d'Ormesson and madame's
footman.
The Countess looked up and saw him as he was driven past. Her face
lighted; almost it seemed to him she was about to greet him or to call him,
wherefore, to avoid a difficulty, arising out of the presence there of his
late antagonist, he anticipated her by bowing frigidly - for his mood was
frigid, the more frigid by virtue of what he saw - and then resumed his seat
with eyes that looked deliberately ahead.
Could anything more completely have confirmed him in his conviction
that it was on M. de La Tour d'Azyr's account that Aline had come to plead
with him that morning? For what his eyes had seen, of course, was a lady
overcome with emotion at the sight of blood of her dear friend, and that
same dear friend restoring her with assurances that his hurt was very far
from mortal. Later, much later, he was to blame his own perverse stupidity.
Almost is he too severe in his self-condemnation. For how else could he have
interpreted the scene he beheld, his preconceptions being what they were?
That which he had already been suspecting, he now accounted proven to
him. Aline had been wanting in candour on the subject of her feelings
towards M. de La Tour d'Azyr. It was, he supposed, a woman's way to be
secretive in such matters, and he must not blame her. Nor could he blame her
in his heart for having succumbed to the singular charm of such a man as the
Marquis - for not even his hostility could blind him to M. de La Tour
d'Azyr's attractions. That she had succumbed was betrayed, he thought, by