Part 22

The _grand seigneur_, with whom the son of the unfaithful steward, of the villainous informer, ventured to adopt this tragic step, was in the vast, severe library, which had been the scene, a fortnight before, of a no less tragic explanation, that with Landri. He was seated at his table this time, engaged in a task which would have seemed most strange to one who was not aware of the secret resolutions of his mind. He was transcribing himself, upon detached sheets, the number of which was already very great, a schedule of all the artistic treasures preserved in the château of Grandchamp. He had proceeded methodically, room by room, and he was at that moment, as was indicated by the line written at the top of the sheet, in the apartment of the deceased marchioness. He had kept it till the last. The reason will be only too readily understood.

The work, begun several weeks before, was nearing its end. The old gentleman's handwriting had always resembled himself. It was bold, free and distinct, with an air of the great century. But a slight tremulousness in some letters testified how painful a task it had been to him to write the lines of that page. A box stood open on his desk, containing documents relating to the treasures. The "Genealogy of the House of Claviers-Grandchamp" was also there with a mark at the famous Appendix number 44, upon which Altona had formerly based his offer. The last, in blood, of the magnificent Claviers was drawing up the death-certificate of his family, in a form determined upon by himself. He had, that very morning, been assailed by distressing emotions, the reflection of which made his noble countenance more imposing than ever.

His old-fashioned courtesy brought him to his feet to receive the son of the corrupt steward. He waved him to a chair--without offering him his hand; a slight circumstance which Pierre interpreted as confirming his suspicions: the marquis was punishing his father's sins in him.

Pierre's visit was, in fact, a surprise to M. de Claviers, and a most painful surprise, but for a reason very different from that which the young man imagined. He had been Jaubourg's physician. He had been present during his last moments, when the patient had undoubtedly spoken. Although M. de Claviers knew nothing of the learned theories of modern specialists concerning "ecmnesia" and "onirism," he had seen people die. He knew what confessions the excitation of fever sometimes extorts from lips previously dumb. He explained in that way the declaration of paternity made by Jaubourg. Perhaps Pierre Chaffin had been present at that horrible scene of which the young man had told him. That was the reason that the heroic marquis had consented to receive him. He had not chosen to seem to fear the meeting.

Another detail impressed the doctor--the truly extraordinary change in that imposing countenance. M. de Claviers had aged, within the last few weeks, as much as his ex-secretary. But it was the aging of a man consumed by grief without remorse,--the despair, with undimmed eyes, of him who has naught to blame himself for in the suffering that is killing him; whereas Chaffin had exhibited to his son the mask of the unhappy wretch with sombre, veiled glance, the conscious architect of his own misery. This comparison shaped itself involuntarily in the physician's mind, as he was saying:--

"You will excuse me for disturbing you. Monsieur le Marquis, and at such an early hour. It will not be for very long."

"It is your time that is valuable, doctor, not mine," replied M. de Claviers, now wholly master of himself. He was trying to divine the motive of this unexpected visit. "Probably he isn't satisfied with his fees, as Métivier fixed them," he thought, and the other continued:--

"I shall not try to play at diplomacy with you, Monsieur le Marquis. That is not my style, and I know that it isn't yours, either. I will go straight to the goal. This then, in few words, and very simply, is the object of my visit. You parted with my father after you had had him in your service more than fifteen years. The separation was very sudden. It has caused talk. I myself have had the impression that I do not know the whole truth. My father has refused to explain himself clearly to me thereon. Or, rather, he has explained himself, but in terms which do not satisfy me, and I have come to say to you, knowing your ideas and how high you rank the family spirit, I cannot endure the idea that my father is suspected, still less to suspect him myself. If you parted for reasons which do not involve his honor, as I believe, as I wish to believe, I ask you to say so publicly two or three times, under circumstances which will cut short all rumors, especially before Monsieur le Professeur Louvet, my chief. I ask you to say so to me, too. If, on the other hand--" And in a heart-rending tone: "I must know it."

M. de Claviers had listened to the young man with a more and more distressed expression in his clouded eyes. The resemblance was too striking between the grief of this son who suspected his father and the anguish with which he had seen Landri overwhelmed, in that same place, because of his mother's sin,--the same Landri whom he continued to love so dearly even while hardening his heart against him! He was too entirely, too genuinely religious not to recognize the justice of a higher power in this punishment visited, as the Book promises, on the second generation. This view of the moral side of life harmonized perfectly with his view of its social side. He was too humane not to pity the young man whose toilsome and honorable career he had followed from childhood. On the other hand, his indignation against Chaffin was too fresh, too well-deserved.--And he was still ignorant of the wretched creature's crowning infamy!--He could not give him the certificate of honorable conduct which the son demanded. Moreover, he abhorred falsehood. These diverse feelings were reflected in his reply, which he did not make until he had taken what seemed to his visitor a very long time for reflection.

"Pierre," he said at last, addressing him in the familiar tone that he had formerly used with him, "give me your hand." And he suited the action to the word. "You are a very noble fellow. I have always known it. I felt it more profoundly than ever while you were speaking to me. But for the very reason that you are a very noble fellow, how could you fail to realize the enormity of this appeal you are making to me? And you say that you know my ideas! Remember, my boy, a son doesn't judge his father. He does not institute an investigation concerning his father. I shall not, by answering you, associate myself with what I consider a deplorable mistake on your part, an aberration of the mind. If I had spoken to any person whomsoever of my reasons for depriving myself of your father's services, I might, by straining a point, permit you to come and ask me to explain my words. But I have said nothing. Your father left me because he mismanaged my affairs. That is all. It is all that I have said or shall ever say about him, to you or to any one else."

"Mismanage has two meanings, Monsieur le Marquis," rejoined the physician nervously; and, anticipating M. de Claviers' protest, "if I insist it is because you have acknowledged my right to do so. Yes. You say that you would permit my question if you had spoken to any one. You meant by that, any stranger. You forgot your son. Monsieur le Comte de Claviers came to my house yesterday afternoon to question me, in his own name and yours, concerning certain papers which have been stolen, it seems, from Monsieur Charles Jaubourg's apartment. He accused my father of the theft, with my assistance. He probably knows now that he was mistaken. But it is none the less true that such a suspicion justified me in finding out upon what ground he could have conceived it. It must have been upon what you had told him. He was under arrest when the thing happened. He confronted me with that alibi when I questioned him. There was nothing left for me to do but to apply to you. Tell me what you have told him about my father. Is it unfair to ask you?"

"My son is another myself," M. de Claviers replied. To learn, even in this vague way, of the scene of the day before between the two young men wounded him where his susceptibility was tenderest. What indications had led Landri to invite an explanation which might well have been so dangerous? It might arouse suspicions concerning the nature and importance of the papers stolen at Jaubourg's. To maintain to the end the rôle of a father on perfectly cordial terms with his child, the marquis must neither ask a question upon that subject, nor seem to disavow the young man's act. But the news affected him profoundly, and his voice trembled as he continued: "You surely do not claim that I must detail to you my interviews with Landri alone? Nor that I should take you to my new man of affairs and inform you as to the details of my receipts and expenditure? And observe that that is exactly what you presume to demand of me! I excuse you because of the motive that impels you. But let us stop here."

He had risen, with contracted eyebrows and haughty bearing, thus constraining his interlocutor to do likewise, and he pressed the electric button on his desk.

"I have told you that Monsieur Chaffin had mismanaged my affairs. Wherein? How? That concerns him and myself, and us alone. I shall not add a word. So that it is useless for us to prolong a discussion which henceforth would have no meaning. You have your patients, and I"--he pointed to the table--"have to finish this urgent task.--Garnier," he added, as the maître d'hôtel for whom he had rung entered the room, "show Monsieur le Docteur Chaffin to the door.--Monsieur, I have the honor to salute you."

"No, we will not stop here," said Pierre to himself, while yielding, in spite of himself, to the extraordinary authority that emanated from the old noble when he was in a certain state of concentrated irritation.--"I am to go to Monsieur le Comte's apartments and get my father," he said to the servant; "will you take me there?"

As he followed the maître d'hôtel through the glass gallery which his father had passed through a quarter of an hour before, another person was on his way, by an interior passage, to that same room in which Landri was talking with Chaffin. It was the Marquis de Claviers. He wished to learn, and without loss of time, Landri's reasons for going to Quai de Béthune, and whether he had at last discovered a way to solve the mystery of the anonymous denunciation which had been a constant source of anxiety to him for so many days. Thus it was that he knocked at one door of the young man's smoking-room, at almost the same instant that Pierre entered at the other door.

This simultaneous double appearance, which had the air of being concerted, almost extorted a shriek from the two occupants of the room, between whom a scene had just taken place almost more distressing than that between the marquis and Pierre. Their arrival brought about a terrible dénouement.

At the moment that they entered, Chaffin was seated at a table. He had just laid aside a pen with which he had written upon an envelope before him the following address: "Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp." He was about to rise. The sight of his son caused him to fall back upon his chair, and that of the marquis, the next instant, to spring up again. He retreated backward, so demoralized by terror that his legs gave way and he had to lean against the wall.

M. de Claviers, thunderstruck himself by the presence of his former secretary, and of his son, whom he had just left, gazed at them both and at Landri. Then, addressing the latter,--

"I have to talk with you," he said, "when you have finished with these gentlemen."

At that moment his eye fell on the envelope lying on the desk. He recognized his own name. He took it up and opened it. Chaffin had not had time to seal it, a circumstance which made more striking the exact parallel between that moment and another, when the betrayed husband had compelled the adulterine son to read the proof of their common shame. The envelope contained the three letters from Jaubourg to Madame de Claviers stolen by the tutor, and, on a separate sheet, these lines in his hand, written at Landri's dictation:--

"The wretch who, in a moment of insanity, sent an anonymous letter to M. le Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp, restores to him the other papers mentioned in that letter, and, while asking his forgiveness, appeals to his generosity not to dishonor him in the eyes of his son."

The marquis read the note. He recognized on the other sheets the detested handwriting of his wife's lover, his villainous friend. He looked at Chaffin and said: "So it was you!"--Then he took two steps towards him with an expression so threatening that the unhappy wretch--ah! he well deserved that title at that cruel moment!--fell on his knees, crying, "Pardon!"

The doctor rushed between his father and M. de Claviers. The marquis stopped, plainly struggling against himself, to refrain from revenging himself with his own hands. At last, pointing to the door, he commanded: "Go! go, I say!" in so imperative a tone that his former secretary, still on his knees, crawled towards the door. His nerveless fingers had difficulty in opening it. He escaped at last, while Landri said to the horrified Pierre, who no longer needed to have any one tell him the truth about his father:--

"Follow him. Do not leave him alone."

"You're afraid that he'll kill himself," said M. de Claviers, when the door had closed on the two men. "I suppose that he played that comedy for you," he continued with a bitter smile. "It is not he, but his son, who should not be left alone. Cowards live. It's the men of courage who think of suicide in the presence of disgrace. And when one does not believe in God! On that boy's account, I tried to control myself. I could not do it.--But no," he continued, with a fierce energy wherein the stern inheritance of a warlike race reappeared. "We are too much afraid of suffering and of causing others to suffer. The grief of the sons is the redemption of the fathers in this world and the next. We must learn to atone for the sins that we did not commit, as we profit by virtues that we never had."

He had spoken as if to himself, and he seemed to have forgotten the existence of Landri, who watched him pace the floor, silent now. Chaffin's note and Jaubourg's three letters still lay on the table, where he had left them when he rushed upon the traitor. The young man trembled lest, when he emerged from that fit of excited meditation, the sight of those sheets should increase the smart of the wound from which his noble heart was bleeding. So that he was amazed by the calm tone in which M. de Claviers, upon returning to himself and spying the papers, said to him, pointing to them as he spoke: "Do as you did before!" He resumed his walk while the proofs of the terrible secret were being consumed. At last, halting in front of Landri, he said to him:--

"You have done what you promised. It is well. It is very well. I am relieved of a horrible weight. We are entitled to think that all the letters are destroyed. The Chaffins will not talk. They cannot talk. Our honor is safe, thanks to you. Once more, it is well, and I thank you."

"You thank me? O monsieur!" exclaimed Landri; and he continued, choking with emotion: "If you really think that I have at least tried to satisfy you, allow me to implore one favor--that you will hasten the time when this pretence of intimacy that you have imposed upon me, that you have rightly imposed upon me, shall come to an end. This life in society, among all those indifferent people, is too hard. I haven't the strength for it any longer. You must have seen that I have not shirked it. I venture to say that no one can have guessed what I have suffered these last weeks. But I am at the end. I can do no more."

"And I?" said the marquis; "do you think that I am not weary of it, too?--But it is true: the test has been a severe one. The world will never dream now of supposing that we parted on a pretence. Your marriage will suffice to explain everything. The author of that infamous anonymous letter is unmasked and disarmed. We have nothing more to fear now. We can put an end to it.--These are my wishes," he continued after another pause: "You will write me a letter that I can show. You will inform me of your purpose to marry Madame Olier, despite my prohibition, and to employ such legal measures as the Code places at your disposal. I don't know what they are, so you will specify them. You will leave the house this very day, and let me know your address, so that I can communicate with you at once in case of urgent need. I do not anticipate such a contingency. Métivier, in conformity with my orders, should have turned into cash by this time the property that you inherit from your mother. It is fully understood that the share that she left me by her will is to be added to it. I ask you to deposit the money at the Bank of France, until further orders. In that way it will be easier for me to turn over to your account, without intermediary, another fortune, which you know about and which you accept. You have pledged yourself to do it. Last of all, I ask you not to settle in Paris, so long as I last. It won't be very long."

"I will repeat what I said the first day," Landri replied: "I have no wish but to obey you. As to the last point, I propose, not only not to live in Paris, but to leave France, to undertake the farming business in Canada. On my return from Saint-Mihiel, you said to me--I remember your exact words: 'It is a horrible thing to me that the family you will found will bear the name of mine.' It would be no less horrible to me, knowing that that name is not my own. I cannot change it in France, without causing people to seek the cause of such a resolution. By expatriating myself, to engage in a new business in an absolutely new country, I shall escape all comments. I intend to adopt one of the names which belonged to my mother's family, and which no one has borne for more than a hundred years. You spoke of legal measures. If there is any possible means by which the title of Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp can pass, after you, to some one of your young kinsmen, I will assent to it, in whatever form you prefer."

"You would do that?" cried M. de Claviers. The trembling born of an emotion stronger than all his resolutions strangled his voice in his throat. "You would change your name? But she--that woman--"

"Madame Olier?" Landri interrupted. "I have told her of my plan. She assented to it in advance, without asking for any explanation."

"Yes," continued the marquis. "It is the truth. That is the true remedy." He was no longer able to control himself, and his words echoed his thoughts. "I saw it, from the first moment. But the suggestion could not come from me.--Adopt another son,--who is not you? Never!--Ah!" he continued, with increasing excitement, "I can truly say, like that widow of the Middle Ages: 'You were stolen from me.'--No, I will have no other son. The Claviers-Grandchamps will die with me. I shall be the last of the name, as I am the last of the race. It is what they would have wished, if they could have looked ahead. Our house will end, as it has lived, nobly. By assisting therein, you have wiped out the insult. For your sake, I can forgive.--We must do our duty to the end," he added, at the conclusion of another pause, during which Landri waited, hoping for a different word, a gesture, an embrace, a kiss. But the old nobleman considered, doubtless, that he had said too much already, and, too, he was doubtless afraid of himself, of that wave of affection which was rushing from his heart, drowning every other sentiment; for he concluded abruptly: "Go you to your goal. I go to mine. Adieu!"

"Adieu," Landri replied.

The marquis hesitated another second. He had his hand on the door-knob. He opened the door and disappeared, without even turning his head. He walked with the inert step that had characterized him since the ghastly discovery had stricken him in his magnificent vitality--his head bent forward, his back slightly bowed. When he was in his library once more, and alone, his prostration was so complete that he let himself drop into the first arm-chair within his reach and sat there an indefinite time, gazing at--what? a portrait of Landri as a child that he had had in that room for years. All that past of paternal love throbbed in his heart, and he reflected that at that very moment the young man, who was the object of his passionate affection, was preparing to go away, and forever.

But when he roused himself from that savage immobility, it was not to return to the apartment where Landri undoubtedly still was. No. He took from the table once more the bulky volume in which he had written the history of his family, and opened it at the genealogical tree. He had to unfold the enormous sheet on which were inscribed more than four hundred names. The first two, Geoffroy and Aude, had above them the date 1060. The blue eyes of Geoffroy IX, of 1906, embraced with a burning glance that table which was, as it were, the imaginary cemetery of all his dead. When he closed the book, he was calm. His hand traced, this time without a tremor, the lines of a note which evidently represented a decisive episode in a fully matured resolution. For he read it twice before sealing it and writing the address on the envelope.

"Is the automobile in the courtyard?" he asked Garnier, who appeared in answer to another ring. "Let Auguste take this line to Monsieur le Comte de Bressieux at once. If Monsieur de Bressieux is at home, let him bring him back. If not, let him leave the note."--And, alone once more, "If any one can resume the negotiations for the sale of the furniture of Grandchamp with that Altona, he is the man," he said to himself. "Altona will give four millions merely for the articles enumerated in Appendix number 44. If I add all the rest, he will give five."--And he put in order the papers on his desk, which were nothing less than a schedule prepared by him of "the rest": plate, Dresden ware, weapons, books, linen--in a word, all the furniture of the château.--"That wretched money is to be returned. Suppose that, while I am waiting for Bressieux, I write to Charlus to announce the marriage? Poor Marie! She loved Landri. It's fortunate, however, that he did not love her as well. I should have had to prevent their union. Should I have had the strength? One has strength for anything when the honor of the name is at stake. And all the great names stand together. The Claviers would not have inflicted upon the Charluses, by my hand, the outrage of vitiating their blood."

As the suddenly evoked vision of the treachery restored his energy, he began the letter to Marie's father which should justify his quarrel with his supposititious son, in the eyes of the world; and this new upheaval of resentment neutralized for a moment his misery at that parting.

X

EPILOGUE