Part 18

"That is well," rejoined M. de Claviers. "I accept your promise. Each day I will write you my instructions concerning what I wish you to do. It is unnecessary for us to be alone together again unless you have some information to give me as to the inquiry you are to undertake. I do not hope very much from it.--I forgot. I asked the Charluses and Bressieux to luncheon. Be here at quarter past twelve. Now, go."

"Shall I have the strength to keep that promise of mine?" Landri asked himself as he went down at the appointed hour to the small salon where the marquis received his guests when he gave a luncheon. To reach it he had to pass through a succession of magnificent apartments, and at a distance he could hear the ringing tones of the loud voice that was associated with all the memories of his childhood and youth. Was the man who, but a short time before, by turns stoical and desperate, cold as ice and aflame with passion, accused, commanded, groaned, suspected, in such a frenzy of grief and indignation, really the same as he who greeted him with these words, in a jovial tone, as he waved his hand toward the friends whose coming he had announced:--

"Well, well! So you keep us waiting, master hero! You have no right to, being new at the game! But you have credit for some time to come, after what you have done. Hasn't he, Mademoiselle Marie?"

"Oh! a big bunch of it," said Marie de Charlus, laughing with her beautiful white teeth. "Ah! you tease me. Monsieur de Claviers, and I'll revenge myself by talking slang. But that won't prevent my going back to the French of your old France to say to your son that we are all, men and women alike, very, very proud of him."

"Very proud," echoed Charlus. "To see a fine thing finely done always gives pleasure. But when the one who does it belongs to the _comme il faut_, class, the pleasure is doubled."

"It is indeed," said Bressieux, shaking Landri's hand in his turn. "We are not spoiled in that way."

"It's because _comme il faut_ folk think too much of their cakes and ale," retorted Marie, glancing at the Seigneur de la Rochebrocante with the laughing insolence that was peculiar to her.

"It is principally because the _comme il faut_ folk are not what they should be [_comme il faudrait_]," said the marquis. "It's so easy to be of one's own party, nothing more, whereas nowadays no one is of his own opinion even; and I see none but people who, on the pretext of broad and liberal ideas, admit that their enemies are in the right. Landri was of his own party, that's the whole story, without talk and without parade. You must tell them about it, my boy, and how those excellent peasants applauded you and your dragoons when you turned on your heel in the teeth of the disgusted prefect.--But luncheon is served. Will you allow me to offer you my arm, mademoiselle? Lardin has promised to surpass himself, and we shall have, to drink this tall fellow's health, a certain Musigny of a royal year. For we still drink, and drink Burgundy too, we old fellows, just as we still eat, and with a good appetite, in that old France that you make sport of. A sweet thing your new France is! All mineral waters and diet!"

Liveried servants held the chairs for the guests around the table, the dark wood of which had no cloth, according to the old ceremonial of _déjeuners à la française_. The great garden imparted an almost rural atmosphere of peace to that room, which the host enlivened with his cordiality. To one who observed him closely the contagious warmth of his joviality was in too striking contrast with the feverish gleam of his eyes, and the traces of suffering on his face. But the pride of defending his name sustained him; and, forestalling himself any possible observation of that sort, he, who had never lied, said:--

"I was very anxious for Landri to return. 'That's the true remedy for me.' I told Louvet, when he talked about diet, apropos of those two or three attacks of vertigo I told you of, Charlus. But it seems to me that this young man doesn't seem glad enough to see us. You'll see that he'll regret the army."

And, not to fall behind the tragic heroism of that comedy, Landri, who was being served at that moment with eggs à la Grandchamp, one of the accomplished Lardin's thousand and one creations, remarked, laughing in his turn:--

"I certainly sha'n't regret the cuisine of the mess. It is true that your chef has outdone himself to celebrate my fall from grace."

He put his fork to his lips with the respectful manner of a gourmand to whom eating is a solemn affair, which drew from Bressieux the exclamation:--

"You are coming to it! The table is the least deceitful of all things, and when one of Lardin's chefs-d'œuvre is put before one, in Chantilly of such delicacy as this," he added, pointing to his plate,--and one could not tell from the twinkling of his eye whether he was giving vent to his enthusiasm for antiques or was indulging in secret sarcasm,--"one may well say, despite the famous _mot_, that one knows the joy of living!"

VIII

ON A SCENT

Landri had not been mistaken--those phrases that had escaped M. de Claviers, to be instantly interrupted:--the "too much, perhaps," and the "but if it were!"--signified that for an instant at least that man, formerly so entirely a stranger to all the meannesses of suspicion, had harbored the unfortunate suspicion that Madame Olier was the denouncer of Madame de Claviers. An utterly insane idea even from a physical standpoint! How could Valentine ever have obtained the letter?--And even more insane morally. It attributed to a young woman, gratuitously, without the slightest evidence, the most shameless of schemes: to separate Landri forever from the man who had hitherto believed him to be his son! And with what object? To marry him with less difficulty?--That theory would not stand a single instant. The wound must in truth have been very deep, that the great-souled _grand seigneur_ should have come so quickly to such a transformation of character.

On leaving the house on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, at the end of that luncheon which had left him with the impression of a nightmare, Landri recalled those words among all the rest, and that insinuation so insulting to his Valentine. He found therein an additional reason for desiring to know who had committed that two-fold private crime, unpunishable by law, yet truly ferocious: that theft of a correspondence, aggravated by an anonymous denunciation. In that interview, the strain of which was almost beyond human endurance, he had seen distinctly that only that knowledge could relieve in any degree the agony with which the marquis was suffocating. He himself realized the necessity of the destruction of those "other documents," as the anonymous writer had said, in heartless official phraseology. Such letters, if retained, constituted a too formidable menace against the dead wife's honor, which the betrayed husband was generously determined to save. How could the son have failed to feel that his self-esteem required him to take part in that work of salvation? And how could Valentine's lover not have it at heart that not even the shadow of the shade of that most unreasonable suspicion should be let hover above the woman whom he was to marry and whom M. de Claviers would never know?

That he could have thought so of her, even in a moment of suffering and frenzy, was enough to intensify the young man's longing to see the light in that abhorrent darkness. But what scent was he to follow, and upon what indications? He asked himself this question, set free at last from that constraint against his natural instincts to which he whom he had so long called the "Émigré" had condemned him--while condemning himself thereto through a sense of honor worthy of another age.

He bent his steps to Valentine's house, to seek in her soft eyes, in her dear smile, in her loved presence, strength to endure this test, the end of which it was not for him to fix. Would he question her, as M. de Claviers had not hesitated to advise him to do? To learn what? That the disinherited relations had told her of Jaubourg's will, and that she had drawn therefrom a conclusion only too evident to one already informed? That she was informed, Landri knew only too well. In the long solitary meditations of his weeks of arrest at Saint-Mihiel, he had succeeded in piecing together the whole story, and in understanding why the Privats had always treated him with a coolness which he had noticed only at a distance.--Yes, what was the use of trying to learn anything more? If it were the Privats from whom the anonymous letter came, Valentine did not know it, and what purpose would it serve to introduce her to such villainy? True lovers have a passionate and rapturous respect for that fine flower of delicacy and of illusion which constitutes the spotless charm of the feminine heart, when it has not been prematurely brutalized by the blighting realities of life. This sentiment alone would have deterred Landri from questioning his sweetheart, even if he had not felt a sort of spasm of horror at the thought of accusing his mother to her. Silence is the pious charity of the son to whom reverence is forbidden. And then, too, even if he had essayed to speak, the young woman would have arrested the blasphemous words on his lips.

He had no sooner crossed the threshold of the little salon on Rue Monsieur, where she awaited him, than from the glance with which she greeted him he became aware that she too dreaded a painful explanation. And how could he mar the delight of their meeting by such a hideous disclosure, finding her as he found her, so youthful and lovely, still in black--although the approaching end of her mourning could already be detected!

Valentine wore a gown of crêpe de Chine and lace, the soft fabrics admirably in harmony with the slender grace of her whole person. On her neck a string of pearls glistened softly, a bunch of violets bloomed at her waist, and on the light curls of her ash-colored hair was a _torsade_ of black tulle. It was, as it were, the rebirth of the woman,--those jewels and flowers, and that evident yet artless desire to please which imparted a flush as of a rose-petal to her thin cheeks, a gleam to her blue eyes, a quiver to her smile.

She had her son with her, and was feverishly smoothing his hair, of a golden shade like the pale gold of her own. She pushed him gently toward Landri as he entered the room, as if he were a symbol of the union of which she dreamed--a union in which nothing of the child's happiness should be sacrificed, in which he should always remain with her and his second father.

"Give Monsieur de Claviers a kiss, Ludovic," she said, "and tell him that you and your mother prayed for him while he was in prison, so unjustly."

"It's true," said the child, "and I am glad you've come out! They won't put you in again, will they, monsieur?" he added apprehensively.

"No," replied Landri; and he, too, caressed the golden curls, while the mother said:--

"I kept you here only because you wanted to see Monsieur de Claviers. You have seen him, so go to your lessons.--He is fond of you," she continued, when the door had closed behind the little fellow, "and that is so sweet to me!" And, taking the young man's hand in her own, she added: "Yes, I prayed so earnestly for you,--but before your arrest,--that you would do what you did do, and I am so proud, so proud! When I read in the newspapers what happened at Hugueville, I felt so proud of you!"

"And I," he said, "it is so sweet to be with you once more!"

And it was true that the affectionate welcome of that passionately loved woman, after the heart-rending scenes of the morning, which had themselves followed upon a succession of racking and corroding emotions, was like the divine coolness of the oasis between two wearisome journeys over the scorching sand of the desert--a feast of the heart almost too intoxicating, so that it seemed as if the contrast could not be true, that that rapture was a lie and on the point of vanishing.

"Yes," he continued, "so sweet. For, you see, I have no one but you in all the world."

"Have you spoken to Monsieur de Claviers of your plans?" she asked. "You have never written me about it."

She interpreted Landri's words only in part in their real meaning, not wishing to seem to have divined the other part. Keen as was her intuition, she had not discerned the whole of the drama in which her dearly loved friend was involved. She had guessed that he was Jaubourg's son and that he knew it. She had no idea that the marquis also knew it.

"I have spoken to him."

"And he has refused his consent?"

"He has refused it."

"Landri," she resumed after a pause, "you know now that I love you, and how dearly! When I answered yes to your question five weeks ago, I did so without any illusions. I was certain that Monsieur de Claviers would never agree to our marriage. I disregarded that, because I saw, I thought I saw, that you really could not live without me, and because I loved you. Do not seek in what I say something that is not there. I love you still. I am, I shall always be, ready to give you my life. But if you must face difficulties that are too great, engage in a contest that is too painful, I want you to know that you are free. I will wait for you one year, two years, ten years, twenty years, if necessary--forever." She repeated: "Forever."

"After what Monsieur de Claviers and I have said to each other," Landri replied, "everything is at an end between us, whether I marry you or not."

She looked at him while he uttered these words in so melancholy a tone that she shuddered at it. He turned a little pale, realizing that she understood; and in an outrush of pity like that of the other day she drew him to her, pressing his hand against her heart.

"I will try to wipe that out, too," she said, quivering with emotion.

It was his part to seem not to comprehend all that that protestation signified, and he rejoined:--

"He was not content with refusing. He insists that, when I am married, I shall not live in Paris."

"I will answer you like Ruth," she said. "'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.'"

"Even if I do not simply leave Paris--even away from France?"

"Even away from France."

A little sign disclosed the intensity of the emotion with which she was overflowing. The pupils of her eyes dilated so that her blue eyes seemed to be black; and enveloping, caressing, embracing Landri in that sombre glance, she said:--

"You have no idea of the affection that I have been heaping up for you in my heart during these three years when I have hidden from you so much of what I felt, in order not to ruin you. That love has burrowed into me to such a depth that it would make me tremble if you were not you, if I were not sure that you will never expect of me anything except my duty, that you will never ask me to live under such conditions that my son would not be brought up, as he must be, so as to remain, even away from his country, a child of France!" She repeated: "Even away from his country;" then asked, timidly: "Does Monsieur de Claviers really demand it?"

"He demands nothing," Landri replied.

"But you think that that's the only way to reconcile him in some degree to the idea of our marriage, eh?" she asked; and, as he bowed: "Then we must not hesitate," she added. "You do not know either how much you have taught me to love him, even without knowing him; how grateful I am to him for the influence he has had on you, for the traces of his wonderful sense of delicacy which I find in yours. When I said yes to you the other day, I had a feeling of remorse for taking you from your duty and from his affection. You tell me that there is no occasion for it, that all is at an end between you. That takes away my remorse but makes me so sorry for you. Remember at all events that to part is not to forget each other. You may retain an image of each other against which you have no reproach to make. I hope that it may be so between Monsieur de Claviers and you, and that when he thinks of you he will realize that you loved him, that you still love him, as he deserves, and that there is only this life between you."

The trees in the little garden beyond the door-window were as desolate as those which spread their leafless branches outside the high windows of the dining-room on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. The leaden sky of that winter's day was as depressing. The young woman's words, albeit not especially significant, and so considerately vague, affirmed none the less, by their very reticences, the same ghastly and incontrovertible fact which had weighed so heavily upon Landri's heart during the agonizing formal luncheon an hour earlier. But once more Valentine had the miraculous double sight of love. She had appealed to the only sentiment in that suffering heart which could assist him to live through the far too trying period that was to precede the ostensible rupture with the marquis. He could find the requisite strength only in his passionate craving to prove to him the depth of an affection which had never been more intensely alive.

At those words of his compassionate friend and loving monitress, Landri's heart, always so susceptible to affection, was once more inspired with a genuine purpose, and when he left Rue Monsieur, he was conscious, even in his distress, of that species of inward satisfaction which one derives from a determined plan of action, when it is based upon a courageous acceptance of circumstances, even the most hostile, and upon the most deep-rooted attachments of our being. Yes, although the rôle of dissimulation imposed upon him by M. de Claviers was most painful, he would summon strength to go on with it as long as it should be necessary. Difficult as was the task of discovering the anonymous informer, he would devote himself to it. He was able to offer that reparation to the great and noble-hearted victim of the falsehood of which he himself was born. He would offer it to him before leaving Paris--and, perhaps, other reparation too. When he had spoken to Valentine of the project of making their home far away from France, he had given voice to one of the ideas that had been most constantly in his mind during those last weeks. In a voluntary exile to the western part of the United States,--or perhaps of Canada; there he would still be at home!--he saw a possibility of laying aside, without exciting comment, that name of Claviers-Grandchamp, which was not his own. With what emotion he had heard the dear woman's reply: "Even away from France!"--And that assurance added to his courage.

He needed that reinforcement of courage to endure the dinner which he was obliged to eat that evening at the club on Rue Scribe, sitting opposite M. de Claviers. The latter had transmitted to him his commands to that effect, as had been agreed, in a note which contained this line only: "Dinner at the club, at eight o'clock."--He needed it again, and more, the next day, to consent to take his seat beside the marquis, at ten o'clock, in the box at the Opéra which had been Madame de Claviers'. Charles Jaubourg had passed so many evenings there gazing at his mistress enthroned in all the splendor of her social royalty. Something of that liaison floated still about the hangings of the box, which the châtelain of Grandchamp had retained in pious regard for her memory.

And what courage again, on the days that followed, to appear at banquet after banquet, at reception after reception, always beside that companion, who, in the presence of witnesses, continued to treat him with the old-time warmth and cordiality! And as soon as they were alone, in the automobile which took them from or to the house, not a word, not a glance; and upon that face, more haggard and more aged from day to day, was the stamp of the haughty grief that will never complain or forgive.

How many times, as they drove home thus, Landri was tempted to ask: "Are you satisfied with me?"

Satisfied! What a word to be uttered between them! Would the time ever come when he could utter a different word? when he could say to him: "I know the name of the anonymous villain who wrote that infamous letter. Here are the other documents that he threatened you with?"

Between the moments that he passed in this way, in this heart-rending attitude of dissimulation before the world, and the hours which he had at once adopted the delicious habit of devoting, every afternoon, to the comforter of Rue Monsieur, his only preoccupation was this: to find a scent and follow it. But what scent? But how?

"I must proceed upon the definite facts," he said to himself the first day. Now, what were these "definite facts?" That the sending of Madame de Claviers' letter to her husband was coincident with the publication of Jaubourg's will. What could the sender have hoped? That M. de Claviers would refuse to accept the property. Who would have profited by his refusal? The heirs-at-law. It was advisable therefore to investigate in that direction, leaving Privat out of the question. Landri knew that officer too well to suppose for an instant that he, who was rich in his own right and through his wife, would have been guilty of so base an action. For whose benefit, indeed? The Privats had no children.

Certain inquiries, cautiously instituted, convinced him that the other three heirs were no more open to suspicion. One was a wholesale tradesman on Rue du Sentier, Paris; another, the owner of extensive vineyards near Lectoure, where the Jaubourgs originally came from; the third, a magistrate of distinction, held the office of procureur-général in one of the courts of appeal in the Nord.

There was a whole course of social philosophy in this list of Charles Jaubourg's cousinships. He himself had been the fashionable bourgeois who becomes an aristocrat. He had, unconsciously, in a liaison with a great lady, gratified the craving for being ennobled which is the natural instinct, and if well directed, perfectly legitimate and praiseworthy, of the best representatives of the middle classes. To Landri's mind the stations occupied by the dead man's relations were simply a guaranty that no one of them was the denouncer he sought. These first "definite facts" suggested no tenable hypothesis.