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Wilkie Collins - "AFTER DARK"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten"

Johann Wolfgang Goethe - "West östlicher Divan"

those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an - "A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin A. Abbot"

Scaramouche

R >> Rafael Sabatini >> Scaramouche




M. de Vilmorin strode off. Mademoiselle, after a moment's blank
pause, laughed ripplingly. "Now where is he going in such a hurry?"

"To see M. de La Tour d'Azyr as well as your uncle, I should say."

"But he cannot. They cannot see him. Did I not say that they are
very closely engaged? You don't ask me why, Andre." There was an
arch mysteriousness about her, a latent something that may have
been elation or amusement, or perhaps both. Andre-Louis could not
determine it.

"Since obviously you are all eagerness to tell, why should I ask?"
quoth he.

"If you are caustic I shall not tell you even if you ask. Oh, yes,
I will. It will teach you to treat me with the respect that is my
due."

"I hope I shall never fail in that."

"Less than ever when you learn that I am very closely concerned in
the visit of M. de La Tour d'Azyr. I am the object of this visit."
And she looked at him with sparkling eyes and lips parted in
laughter.

"The rest, you would seem to imply, is obvious. But I am a dolt,
if you please; for it is not obvious to me."

"Why, stupid, he comes to ask my hand in marriage."

"Good God!" said Andre-Louis, and stared at her, chapfallen.

She drew back from him a little with a frown and an upward tilt of
her chin. "It surprises you?"

"It disgusts me," said he, bluntly. "In fact, I don't believe it.
You are amusing yourself with me."

For a moment she put aside her visible annoyance to remove his
doubts. "I am quite serious, monsieur. There came a formal letter
to my uncle this morning from M. de La Tour d'Azyr, announcing the
visit and its object. I will not say that it did not surprise us
a little...

"Oh, I see," cried Andre-Louis, in relief. "I understand. For a
moment I had almost feared... " He broke off, looked at her, and
shrugged.

"Why do you stop? You had almost feared that Versailles had been
wasted upon me. That I should permit the court-ship of me to be
conducted like that of any village wench. It was stupid of you. I
am being sought in proper form, at my uncle's hands."

"Is his consent, then, all that matters, according to Versailles?"

"What else?"

"There is your own."

She laughed. "I am a dutiful niece... when it suits me."

"And will it suit you to be dutiful if your uncle accepts this
monstrous proposal?"

"Monstrous!" She bridled. "And why monstrous, if you please?"

"For a score of reasons," he answered irritably.

"Give me one," she challenged him.

"He is twice your age."

"Hardly so much," said she.

"He is forty-five, at least."

"But he looks no more than thirty. He is very handsome - so much
you will admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very
powerful; the greatest nobleman in Brittany. He will make me a
great lady."

"God made you that, Aline."

"Come, that's better. Sometimes you can almost be polite." And she
moved along the terrace, Andre-Louis pacing beside her.

"I can be more than that to show reason why you should not let this
beast befoul the beautiful thing that God has made."

She frowned, and her lips tightened. "You are speaking of my future
husband," she reproved him.

His lips tightened too; his pale face grew paler.

"And is it so? It is settled, then? Your uncle is to agree? You
are to be sold thus, lovelessly, into bondage to a man you do not
know. I had dreamed of better things for you, Aline."

"Better than to be Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr?"

He made a gesture of exasperation. "Are men and women nothing more
than names? Do the souls of them count for nothing? Is there no
joy in life, no happiness, that wealth and pleasure and empty,
high-sounding titles are to be its only aims? I had set you high
- so high, Aline - a thing scarce earthly. There is joy in your
heart, intelligence in your mind; and, as I thought, the vision that
pierces husks and shams to claim the core of reality for its own.
Yet you will surrender all for a parcel of make-believe. You will
sell your soul and your body to be Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr."

"You are indelicate," said she, and though she frowned her eyes
laughed. "And you go headlong to conclusions. My uncle will not
consent to more than to allow my consent to be sought. We understand
each other, my uncle and I. I am not to be bartered like a turnip."

He stood still to face her, his eyes glowing, a flush creeping into
his pale cheeks.

"You have been torturing me to amuse yourself!" he cried. "Ah,
well, I forgive you out of my relief."

"Again you go too fast, Cousin Andre I have permitted my uncle to
consent that M. le Marquis shall make his court to me. I like the
look of the gentleman. I am flattered by his preference when I
consider his eminence. It is an eminence that I may find it
desirable to share. M. le Marquis does not look as if he were a
dullard. It should be interesting to be wooed by him. It may be
more interesting still to marry him, and I think, when all is
considered, that I shall probably - very probably - decide to do so."

He looked at her, looked at the sweet, challenging loveliness of that
childlike face so tightly framed in the oval of white fur, and all
the life seemed to go out of his own countenance.

"God help you, Aline!" he groaned.

She stamped her foot. He was really very exasperating, and
something presumptuous too, she thought.

"You are insolent, monsieur."

"It is never insolent to pray, Aline. And I did no more than pray,
as I shall continue to do. You'll need my prayers, I think."

"You are insufferable!" She was growing angry, as he saw by the
deepening frown, the heightened colour.

"That is because I suffer. Oh, Aline, little cousin, think well of
what you do; think well of the realities you will be bartering for
these shams - the realities that you will never know, because these
cursed shams will block your way to them. When M. de La Tour d'Azyr
comes to make his court, study him well; consult your fine instincts;
leave your own noble nature free to judge this animal by its
intuitions. Consider that... "

"I consider, monsieur, that you presume upon the kindness I have
always shown you. You abuse the position of toleration in which
you stand. Who are you? What are you, that you should have the
insolence to take this tone with me?"

He bowed, instantly his cold, detached self again, and resumed the
mockery that was his natural habit.

"My congratulations, mademoiselle, upon the readiness with which you
begin to adapt yourself to the great role you are to play."

"Do you adapt yourself also, monsieur," she retorted angrily, and
turned her shoulder to him.

"To be as the dust beneath the haughty feet of Madame la Marquise.
I hope I shall know my place in future."

The phrase arrested her. She turned to him again, and he perceived
that her eyes were shining now suspiciously. In an instant the
mockery in him was quenched in contrition.

"Lord, what a beast I am, Aline!" he cried, as he advanced.
"Forgive me if you can."

Almost had she turned to sue forgiveness from him. But his contrition
removed the need.

"I'll try," said she, "provided that you undertake not to offend
again.

"But I shall," said he. "I am like that. I will fight to save you,
from yourself if need be, whether you forgive me or not."

They were standing so, confronting each other a little breathlessly,
a little defiantly, when the others issued from the porch.

First came the Marquis of La Tour d'Azyr, Count of Solz, Knight of
the Orders of the Holy Ghost and Saint Louis, and Brigadier in the
armies of the King. He was a tall, graceful man, upright and
soldierly of carriage, with his head disdainfully set upon his
shoulders. He was magnificently dressed in a full-skirted coat of
mulberry velvet that was laced with gold. His waistcoat, of velvet
too, was of a golden apricot colour; his breeches and stockings were
of black silk, and his lacquered, red-heeled shoes were buckled in
diamonds. His powdered hair was tied behind in a broad ribbon of
watered silk; he carried a little three-cornered hat under his arm,
and a gold-hilted slender dress-sword hung at his side.

Considering him now in complete detachment, observing the
magnificence of him, the elegance of his movements, the great air,
blending in so extraordinary a manner disdain and graciousness,
Andre-Louis trembled for Aline. Here was a practised, irresistible
wooer, whose bonnes fortunes were become a by-word, a man who had
hitherto been the despair of dowagers with marriageable daughters,
and the desolation of husbands with attractive wives.

He was immediately followed by M. de Kercadiou, in completest
contrast. On legs of the shortest, the Lord of Gavrillac carried
a body that at forty-five was beginning to incline to corpulence
and an enormous head containing an indifferent allotment of
intelligence. His countenance was pink and blotchy, liberally
branded by the smallpox which had almost extinguished him in youth.
In dress he was careless to the point of untidiness, and to this
and to the fact that he had never married - disregarding the first
duty of a gentleman to provide himself with an heir - he owed the
character of misogynist attributed to him by the countryside.

After M. de Kercadiou came M. de Vilmorin, very pale and
self-contained, with tight lips and an overcast brow.

To meet them, there stepped from the carriage a very elegant young
gentleman, the Chevalier de Chabrillane, M. de La Tour d'Azyr's
cousin, who whilst awaiting his return had watched with considerable
interest - his own presence unsuspected - the perambulations of
Andre-Louis and mademoiselle.

Perceiving Aline, M. de La Tour d'Azyr detached himself from the
others, and lengthening his stride came straight across the terrace
to her.

To Andre-Louis the Marquis inclined his head with that mixture of
courtliness and condescension which he used. Socially, the young
lawyer stood in a curious position. By virtue of the theory of his
birth, he ranked neither as noble nor as simple, but stood somewhere
between the two classes, and whilst claimed by neither he was used
familiarly by both. Coldly now he returned M. de La Tour d'Azyr's
greeting, and discreetly removed himself to go and join his friend.

The Marquis took the hand that mademoiselle extended to him, and
bowing over it, bore it to his lips.

"Mademoiselle," he said, looking into the blue depths of her eyes,
that met his gaze smiling and untroubled, "monsieur your uncle does
me the honour to permit that I pay my homage to you. Will you,
mademoiselle, do me the honour to receive me when I come to-morrow?
I shall have something of great importance for your ear."

"Of importance, M. le Marquis? You almost frighten me." But there
was no fear on the serene little face in its furred hood. It was
not for nothing that she had graduated in the Versailles school of
artificialities.

"That," said he, "is very far from my design."

"But of importance to yourself, monsieur, or to me?"

"To us both, I hope," he answered her, a world of meaning in his
fine, ardent eyes.

"You whet my curiosity, monsieur; and, of course, I am a dutiful
niece. It follows that I shall be honoured to receive you."

"Not honoured, mademoiselle; you will confer the honour. To-morrow
at this hour, then, I shall have the felicity to wait upon you."

He bowed again; and again he bore her fingers to his lips, what time
she curtsied. Thereupon, with no more than this formal breaking of
the ice, they parted.

She was a little breathless now, a little dazzled by the beauty of
the man, his princely air, and the confidence of power he seemed to
radiate. Involuntarily almost, she contrasted him with his critic
- the lean and impudent Andre-Louis in his plain brown coat and
steel-buckled shoes - and she felt guilty of an unpardonable offence
in having permitted even one word of that presumptuous criticism.
To-morrow M. le Marquis would come to offer her a great position, a
great rank. And already she had derogated from the increase of
dignity accruing to her from his very intention to translate her to
so great an eminence. Not again would she suffer it; not again
would she be so weak and childish as to permit Andre-Louis to utter
his ribald comments upon a man by comparison with whom he was no
better than a lackey.

Thus argued vanity and ambition with her better self and to her vast
annoyance her better self would not admit entire conviction.

Meanwhile, M. de La Tour d'Azyr was climbing into his carriage. He
had spoken a word of farewell to M. de Kercadiou, and he had also
had a word for M. de Vilmorin in reply to which M. de Vilmorin had
bowed in assenting silence. The carriage rolled away, the powdered
footman in blue-and-gold very stiff behind it, M. de La Tour d'Azyr
bowing to mademoiselle, who waved to him in answer.

Then M. de Vilmorin put his arm through that of Andre Louis, and said
to him, "Come, Andre."

"But you'll stay to dine, both of you!" cried the hospitable Lord
of Gavrillac. "We'll drink a certain toast," he added, winking an
eye that strayed towards mademoiselle, who was approaching. He had
no subtleties, good soul that he was.

M. de Vilmorin deplored an appointment that prevented him doing
himself the honour. He was very stiff and formal.

"And you, Andre?"

"I? Oh, I share the appointment, godfather," he lied, "and I have
a superstition against toasts." He had no wish to remain. He was
angry with Aline for her smiling reception of M. de La Tour d'Azyr
and the sordid bargain he saw her set on making. He was suffering
from the loss of an illusion.



CHAPTER III

THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORIN


As they walked down the hill together, it was now M. de Vilmorin
who was silent and preoccupied, Andre-Louis who was talkative. He
had chosen Woman as a subject for his present discourse. He claimed
- quite unjustifiably - to have discovered Woman that morning; and
the things he had to say of the sex were unflattering, and
occasionally almost gross. M. de Vilmorin, having ascertained the
subject, did not listen. Singular though it may seem in a young
French abbe of his day, M. de Vilmorin was not interested in Woman.
Poor Philippe was in several ways exceptional. Opposite the Breton
arme - the inn and posting-house at the entrance of the village of
Gavrillac - M. de Vilmorin interrupted his companion just as he was
soaring to the dizziest heights of caustic invective, and
Andre-Louis, restored thereby to actualities, observed the carriage
of M. de La Tour d'Azyr standing before the door of the hostelry.

"I don't believe you've been listening to me," said he.

"Had you been less interested in what you were saying, you might
have observed it sooner and spared your breath. The fact is, you
disappoint me, Andre. You seem to have forgotten what we went for.
I have an appointment here with M. le Marquis. He desires to hear
me further in the matter. Up there at Gavrillac I could accomplish
nothing. The time was ill-chosen as it happened. But I have hopes
of M. le Marquis."

"Hopes of what?"

"That he will make what reparation lies in his power. Provide for
the widow and the orphans. Why else should he desire to hear me
further?"

"Unusual condescension," said Andre-Louis, and quoted "Timeo Danaos
et dona ferentes."

"Why?" asked Philippe.

"Let us go and discover - unless you consider that I shall be in
the way."

Into a room on the right, rendered private to M. le Marquis for so
long as he should elect to honour it, the young men were ushered by
the host. A fire of logs was burning brightly at the room's far
end, and by this sat now M. de La Tour d'Azyr and his cousin, the
Chevalier de Chabrillane. Both rose as M. de Vilmorin came in.
Andre-Louis following, paused to close the door.

"You oblige me by your prompt courtesy, M. de Vilmorin," said the
Marquis, but in a tone so cold as to belie the politeness of his
words. "A chair, I beg. Ah, Moreau?" The note was frigidly
interrogative. "He accompanies you, monsieur?" he asked.

"If you please, M. le Marquis."

"Why not? Find yourself a seat, Moreau." He spoke over his shoulder
as to a lackey.

"It is good of you, monsieur," said Philippe, "to have offered me
this opportunity of continuing the subject that took me so
fruitlessly, as it happens, to Gavrillac."

The Marquis crossed his legs, and held one of his fine hands to the
blaze. He replied, without troubling to turn to the young man, who
was slightly behind him.

"The goodness of my request we will leave out of question for the
moment," said he, darkly, and M. de Chabrillane laughed. Andre-Louis
thought him easily moved to mirth, and almost envied him the faculty.

"But I am grateful," Philippe insisted, "that you should condescend
to hear me plead their cause."

The Marquis stared at him over his shoulder. "Whose cause?" quoth he.

"Why, the cause of the widow and orphans of this unfortunate Mabey."

The Marquis looked from Vilmorin to the Chevalier, and again the
Chevalier laughed, slapping his leg this time.

"I think," said M. de La Tour d'Azyr, slowly, "that we are at
cross-purposes. I asked you to come here because the Chateau de
Gavrillac was hardly a suitable place in which to carry our
discussion further, and because I hesitated to incommode you by
suggesting that you should come all the way to Azyr. But my object
is connected with certain expressions that you let fall up there.
It is on the subject of those expressions, monsieur, that I would
hear you further - if you will honour me."

Andre-Louis began to apprehend that there was something sinister in
the air. He was a man of quick intuitions, quicker far than those
of M. de Vilmorin, who evinced no more than a mild surprise.

"I am at a loss, monsieur," said he. "To what expressions does
monsieur allude?"

"It seems, monsieur, that I must refresh your memory." The Marquis
crossed his legs, and swung sideways on his chair, so that at last
he directly faced M. de Vilmorin. "You spoke, monsieur - and however
mistaken you may have been, you spoke very eloquently, too eloquently
almost, it seemed to me - of the infamy of such a deed as the act of
summary justice upon this thieving fellow Mabey, or whatever his name
may be. Infamy was the precise word you used. You did not retract
that word when I had the honour to inform you that it was by my orders
that my gamekeeper Benet proceeded as he did."

"If," said M. de Vilmorin, "the deed was infamous, its infamy is not
modified by the rank, however exalted, of the person responsible.
Rather is it aggravated."

"Ah!" said M. le Marquis, and drew a gold snuffbox from his pocket.
"You say, 'if the deed was infamous,' monsieur. Am I to understand
that you are no longer as convinced as you appeared to be of its
infamy?"

M. de Vilmorin's fine face wore a look of perplexity. He did not
understand the drift of this.

"It occurs to me, M. le Marquis, in view of your readiness to assume
responsibility, that you must believe justification for the deed
which is not apparent to myself."

"That is better. That is distinctly better." The Marquis took
snuff delicately, dusting the fragments from the fine lace at his
throat. "You realize that with an imperfect understanding of these
matters, not being yourself a landowner, you may have rushed to
unjustifiable conclusions. That is indeed the case. May it be a
warning to you, monsieur. When I tell you that for months past I
have been annoyed by similar depredations, you will perhaps
understand that it had become necessary to employ a deterrent
sufficiently strong to put an end to them. Now that the risk is
known, I do not think there will be any more prowling in my coverts.
And there is more in it than that, M. de Vilmorin. It is not the
poaching that annoys me so much as the contempt for my absolute and
inviolable rights. There is, monsieur, as you cannot fail to have
observed, an evil spirit of insubordination in the air, and there
is one only way in which to meet it. To tolerate it, in however
slight a degree, to show leniency, however leniently disposed, would
entail having recourse to still harsher measures to-morrow. You
understand me, I am sure, and you will also, I am sure, appreciate
the condescension of what amounts to an explanation from me where I
cannot admit that any explanations were due. If anything in what I
have said is still obscure to you, I refer you to the game laws, which
your lawyer friend there will expound for you at need."

With that the gentleman swung round again to face the fire. It
appeared to convey the intimation that the interview was at an end.
And yet this was not by any means the intimation that it conveyed
to the watchful, puzzled, vaguely uneasy Andre-Louis. It was,
thought he, a very curious, a very suspicious oration. It affected
to explain, with a politeness of terms and a calculated insolence
of tone; whilst in fact it could only serve to stimulate and goad
a man of M. de Vilmorin's opinions. And that is precisely what it
did. He rose.

"Are there in the world no laws but game laws?" he demanded, angrily.
"Have you never by any chance heard of the laws of humanity?"

The Marquis sighed wearily. "What have I to do with the laws of
humanity?" he wondered.

M. de Vilmorin looked at him a moment in speechless amazement.

"Nothing, M. le Marquis. That is - alas! - too obvious. I hope
you will remember it in the hour when you may wish to appeal to
those laws which you now deride."

M. de La Tour d'Azyr threw back his head sharply, his high-bred face
imperious.

"Now what precisely shall that mean? It is not the first time
to-day that you have made use of dark sayings that I could almost
believe to veil the presumption of a threat."

"Not a threat, M. le Marquis - a warning. A warning that such deeds
as these against God's creatures... Oh, you may sneer, monsieur,
but they are God's creatures, even as you or I - neither more nor
less, deeply though the reflection may wound your pride, In His
eyes... "

"Of your charity, spare me a sermon, M. l'abbe!"

"You mock, monsieur. You laugh. Will you laugh, I wonder, when God
presents His reckoning to you for the blood and plunder with which
your hands are full?"

"Monsieur!" The word, sharp as the crack of a whip, was from M. de
Chabrillane, who bounded to his feet. But instantly the Marquis
repressed him.

"Sit down, Chevalier. You are interrupting M. l'abbe, and I should
like to hear him further. He interests me profoundly."

In the background Andre-Louis, too, had risen, brought to his feet by
alarm, by the evil that he saw written on the handsome face of M. de
La Tour d'Azyr. He approached, and touched his friend upon the arm.

"Better be going, Philippe," said he.

But M. de Vilmorin, caught in the relentless grip of passions long
repressed, was being hurried by them recklessly along.

"Oh, monsieur," said he, "consider what you are and what you will
be. Consider how you and your kind live by abuses, and consider the
harvest that abuses must ultimately bring."

"Revolutionist!" said M. le Marquis, contemptuously. "You have the
effrontery to stand before my face and offer me this stinking cant
of your modern so-called intellectuals!"

"Is it cant, monsieur? Do you think - do you believe in your soul
- that it is cant? Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all
things that live, crushing them like grapes in the press, to its
own profit? Does it not exercise its rights upon the waters of the
river, the fire that bakes the poor man's bread of grass and barley,
on the wind that turns the mill? The peasant cannot take a step
upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of
cloth in the village market, without meeting feudal rapacity,
without being taxed in feudal dues. Is not that enough, M. le
Marquis? Must you also demand his wretched life in payment for the
least infringement of your sacred privileges, careless of what
widows or orphans you dedicate to woe? Will naught content you but
that your shadow must lie like a curse upon the land? And do you
think in your pride that France, this Job among the nations, will
suffer it forever?"

He paused as if for a reply. But none came. The Marquis considered
him, strangely silent, a half smile of disdain at the corners of his
lips, an ominous hardness in his eyes.

Again Andre-Louis tugged at his friend's sleeve.

"Philippe."

Philippe shook him off, and plunged on, fanatically.

"Do you see nothing of the gathering clouds that herald the coming
of the storm? You imagine, perhaps, that these States General
summoned by M. Necker, and promised for next year, are to do nothing
but devise fresh means of extortion to liquidate the bankruptcy of
the State? You delude yourselves, as you shall find. The Third
Estate, which you despise, will prove itself the preponderating
force, and it will find a way to make an end of this canker of
privilege that is devouring the vitals of this unfortunate country."

M. le Marquis shifted in his chair, and spoke at last.

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