Part 5

He repeated these verses in a sympathetic tone which proved that he felt their archaic charm, and that the sportsman had a nice taste for letters. He needed not to borrow a pen to write the famous work on the "History and Genealogy of the Family of Claviers-Grandchamp," a chef-d'œuvre in its way, one of those "livres de raison" to be placed on the same shelf with the eloquent "History of a Vivarois Family," published that year by another heir of a very great name. Marie de Charlus was too refined, even in her affected bad form, not to feel the picturesqueness and pathos of that figure of an old nobleman, whose originality, so vigorous to begin with, had emphasized its salience by its reaction against a too hostile age. The force of the type he represented measured the degree of his solitude. She replied, half mischievously:--

"I used to call myself the emancipated _gratin_; if all of us were like you, I think I should very soon call myself the repentant _gratin_."

"What a memory!" said Charlus admiringly. "But my grandfather was always talking to me about your grandfather's memory."

"You'll give me those verses, won't you, Geoffroy?" besought Bressieux. "I am sometimes asked for mottoes to be painted on panels in hunting lodges."

"I am the repentant _gratin_," rejoined the marquis. "Yes, for having presumed to lecture the cleverest of Maries. My grandfather's memory? Yes, I have always been told that I resembled him. There's nothing left of the army of Condé, but for that!--You shall have the verses, Louis. Although as to the mottoes on panels--Humph! when one has a motto one keeps it. When one has none, one has none. But I must excuse myself, mademoiselle, and you, my friends. I am obliged to leave you. The carriages will take you home. I do not propose to inflict on you a long détour that I have to make before I go home. Landri will come with me. We will take the automobile, mademoiselle, and I will practise at the _circuit_. _À tout l'heure_, at the château." He had taken his son's arm and was leading him toward the motor, saluting on all sides, and addressing this one and that. "You won't forget, Travers? I rely on you for dinner this evening.--You dine at Grandchamp, Hautchemin. I will send you home.--Férussac, you dine at Grandchamp with Madame de Férussac, that's understood, isn't it? Eight o'clock. If you're late, we'll wait for you."

When they were seated in the motor, after telling the chauffeur the direction to take, he said to Landri: "We shall be more than thirty at table. I don't know just how many; fancy that! I ordered for forty, at a venture. I like that sort of thing! It's almost the open house of old times. What a generous and proud expression: open house! The men of to-day talk about the social question. But our fathers had solved it. What was a _grand seigneur_? A living syndicate, nothing else. Consider how many people lived on him, how many live on us! To spend freely a handsome fortune, from father to son, on the same estate, is to support a whole district for many generations. When people prate of the luxury of the nobles of the olden time, they always think of them as like Cleopatra, drinking pearls, selfishly. But that luxury was a public service! It was the fountain which monopolizes the water in order to distribute it. The fountain was overturned, and the water is dribbling away, turning to mud, and disappearing--that's the whole story!--Ah! Auguste is going wrong!" And, seizing the megaphone, he shouted: "To the left, to the left, and then the second avenue on the right. There are three oaks in a clump and a Calvary."--And turning once more to his son: "I know the forest, tree by tree, leaf by leaf, I have ridden through it so often and on such good horses. Do you remember Toby, my gray Irish horse, and how he jumped? We are going to Père Mauchaussée's."

"Our old gardener?" inquired Landri. "What has become of him?"

"He is what he always was.

"'Qu'ils sont doux, bouteille, ma mie, Qu'ils sont doux, tes petits glouglous!'

But it's his son that I want to see. I made him second gardener when his father retired, do you remember? He crushed his foot last week, not on our land, but at his father's, cutting down a tree. The doctor thinks he won't be able to work any more. He is in despair. Fancy, a wife and five children! Chaffin wanted me to help him a little, and nothing more. 'We don't come within the law relating to accidents to workmen,' he said. 'I don't need their laws to tell me what my duty is,' I replied. 'He shall be paid his wages in full, as long as he lives, like his father.'--I am a socialist, you know, in the old way. It was different from the new way in this, that the poor received the money of the rich directly, whereas to-day the politicians keep it all. It's very _up-to-date_, as our young friend Marie de Charlus says. What do you think of her? She is charming, isn't she?"

"Charming," Landri replied; "but I am surprised that she pleases you, with such ideas as she has."

"As she thinks she has," the marquis corrected him. "That will pass off. It's the impulse of youth. What will not pass off, is the old stock. She has it to the tips of her fingers and toes. Did you look at her? Ah! she's a genuine Charlus, and signed! Do you know what I said to myself when I saw her on horseback to-day?--And how beautifully she rides!--That she would make the sweetest little Comtesse de Claviers-Grandchamp.--And do you know this too? That it depends on you alone? But it does. Tell me if it doesn't begin like a chapter in a novel? A year ago she was twenty years old. She was sought in marriage--by the little Duc de Lautrec, if you please. She refused. Parents astounded. She was so young, they left her in peace. Six months ago, another offer, from Prince de la Tour Enguerrand, the widower. Another refusal. A month ago, Lautrec comes forward again. She refuses again. Then follows an explanation with the mother. Who would have thought that the 'emancipated _gratin_,' as she calls herself, that girl who puts on so many twentieth-century airs, is still governed by sentiment after the old style--the only style, on my word, that is always good and always young! 'I will marry Monsieur de Claviers,' she said, 'or I will die an old maid.'"

"That is impossible," interposed the young man; "we just speak to each other at a ball two or three times in a winter."

"You are too modest, monsieur my son," rejoined the marquis. "It seems that two or three times have sufficed.--In a word, stupefaction of the mother; stupefaction of the father. They tell the story to Madame de Bec-Crespin, their cousin, who tells it to her mother, Madame de Contay, who tells it to Jaubourg, who tells it to me; and as such a daughter-in-law would suit me marvellously, and as I have a horror of beating about the bush, I invited them all three, mother, father and daughter, and I sent for you. The mother sent her excuses. She's a little put out; she won't see you. She knows you, plant and root, I venture to say.--Ah! everything is there: wit, spirit, charm,--I don't say great beauty, but what a figure, and what eyes! A hundred thousand francs a year at this moment, of her own, if you please, left her by her uncle Prosny. Later, three hundred thousand more. And such relations! No more mésalliances in that family than in ours. One of those superb trees that resemble a noble action continued for seven hundred years: all the younger sons officers, bishops or knights of Malta; all the unmarried daughters nuns, abbesses or prioresses; twenty of the name killed in foreign wars. I have not often annoyed you with suggestions of marriage, my boy. Your dear mother would have known so well how to choose a wife for you! I waited a while for you to open your heart to me. But you are approaching thirty. I am sixty-five. Your three brothers are dead. I have no one but you to keep up the family. I should like not to go away before I have put in the saddle a Geoffroy IX of Claviers-Grandchamp. You are Landri X. We must look to it that the Geoffroys overtake the Landris. Well! what do you say?"

"I say, father," Landri replied, "that I came to Grandchamp to-day, myself, with the purpose of speaking to you about a project of marriage--a different one," he added.

"With some one whom I know?" inquired the marquis.

"No, father, a young woman of twenty-seven, the widow of one of my fellow officers in the regiment, who has a child, and no fortune, or very little. It's a far cry from the marriage-portion of Mademoiselle de Charlus. But I love her passionately, and have for more than three years."

"Another chapter of a novel," said M. de Claviers, still without losing his good-humour. "This does not displease me. I will not deny that I have been just a little disgusted with you. I was afraid that you had some wretched liaison in your life. You have a real love. That's a different matter. I love to have people love, you see--love long and dearly and faithfully. No fortune?" He repeated, "No fortune? My dear boy, how I would like to be able to say to you: 'Don't let that disturb you!'" A cloud had passed over his face, which was as transparent as the blue sky of that waning afternoon, stretching above his beloved forest, all turned to gold by the autumn.--"This is not the time to discuss that question, which I have wanted to talk to you about for a long while. We have many charges on the estate. If it still produced what it did once, we could extricate ourselves more easily--and, perhaps, if I had known better how to handle our interests. Consider that there have been two generations over which this outrageous Civil Code has passed, with its compulsory partitions, which are grinding France to powder. Of the income of a million which your great-grandmother saved during the Revolution by not emigrating, and demanding her pretended divorce, how much have I had? Three hundred thousand francs a year, and, in addition, all the burdens of the old days! I say again, this is not the time to talk about it.--For three years?" he added, after a pause. "Who is it? What is her name?"

"Madame Olier," replied the young man.

"Ah!" exclaimed the father, "and she was born--?"

"Mademoiselle Barral."

"Olier?--Barral?--Why, in that case, she is not a person of your own rank? Answer me frankly, my boy. I am your father, the head of your family. You owe it to me. You are her lover? You have a misstep to repair? The child is yours?"

"No, father, I give you my word of honor. Twice in my life I have told her that I loved her. Once when her husband was alive. She refused to see me again except on my promise that I would never speak to her again of my sentiments. The second time was to-day. That was the reason of my being late."

M. de Claviers had listened to this confession with contracted brow and lips tightly closed. His blue eyes took on that sombre hue which his son knew too well. It indicated the clash of profound emotions in that violent temperament. There was between the two men a further pause coincident with the stopping of the motor before the Mauchaussées' house, a dainty structure which the châtelain of Grandchamp placed at the disposal of his former retainer, without rent. The curtains at the windows and the thread of smoke issuing from the chimney bore witness to the physical well-being of these vassals of his charity. He had, however, the countenance of a magistrate rather than an alms-giver as he alighted from the automobile, without speaking to his son, who did not follow him.

The ten minutes which his father passed in the little house seemed immeasurably long to Landri. To be sure he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his heart: the first part of his confession was made, the part that had seemed to him the most formidable to put in words. It touched such a sensitive spot in his heart! Would he have the courage to make the second part, and to inflict another blow upon that man, whom he felt once more to be so impassioned, so loving and so impetuous? By what sort of an explosion would the wrath vent itself, with which he had seen that powerful brow suddenly overcast? Other questions arose in his mind: why had the marquis, whose repugnance for financial affairs was so intense, spoken with such detail of the wealth of the Charluses, and of his own with that reserve laden with hidden meaning? Landri was too unselfish to think of his own future and of the possible diminution of his inheritance. He knew that his father was very wealthy, and he had never wondered at a lavish expenditure which the marquis had seemed always able to support. He had never even asked for his own property after the guardianship accounts were once settled. The marquis gave him an allowance which represented the fifteen hundred thousand francs he had inherited from his mother. Did this enigmatic plaint mean that the _grand seigneur_ would be compelled eventually to reduce an establishment which was as necessary to him as breathing and moving? At the same time that he revolved this question in his mind without putting it to himself so plainly, the young man was thinking of the negotiator of the Charlus marriage.

"What an idea of Jaubourg's to meddle again in my affairs! It's just as it was before about Saint-Cyr. He has never shown anything but antipathy to me, and he is always putting himself between my father and me. That is why he wanted them to send me up to him.--But the door is opening--I must prepare to sustain the assault!--Courage! it's for Valentine."

The charming image passed before his mind. It was exorcised instantly by a chorus of voices saying in the accent of the countryside: "Bonjour, Monsieur le Comte. Is everything right with you. Monsieur le Comte?"--It was the five Mauchaussée children, their mother, grandmother and grandfather, whom the marquis was driving before him toward his son. The wondering, laughing eyes of the little boys and girls, the timid and humble bearing of the two women, the jovial bloated face of the drunkard, supplied a comic illustration of the speech with which M. de Claviers presented them to their future patron.

"Do you recognize them?" he said. "The little monkeys are growing. They are pushing us aside, Mauchaussée, and you too, Madame Martine. Soon they'll be pushing you too, Landri, but you have the time. Come, children, shout, 'Vive Monsieur le Comte!'"

"Vive Monsieur le Comte!" chirped the five children.

"And vive Monsieur le Marquis!" exclaimed Mauchaussée. It was amid acclamations as paradoxical, in the year 1906, as the existence of M. de Claviers himself, that the automobile resumed its journey.

"To the château," he said to Auguste. Then, taking his son's hand and pressing it: "That is why you cannot make the marriage of which you spoke to me just now. It is because of the Mauchaussées and their like,--and they are legion,--who live on us, on the house of Claviers-Grandchamp; for there is a house of Claviers-Grandchamp. Surely you cannot wish to assist in destroying it. When one demolishes a roof, one destroys all the nests in that roof. When one cuts the trunk of one of these trees, all the branches die. Our family, as I told you just now, is like that of the Charluses. Not a mésalliance since 1260. One can count them on one's fingers, such lineages as that. You will not demean yourself."

"Is it demeaning myself," demanded Landri impatiently, "to bring you as your daughter-in-law a woman of irreproachable character, whom I love profoundly and who loves me,--pretty, refined and intelligent? One demeans one's self by lacking a sense of honor. Does it show such a lack to marry according to one's heart, without regard to money, without any secret prompting of ambition? In what way would Madame Olier, having become Comtesse de Claviers-Grandchamp, embarrass the Mauchaussées and all this generous task of supporting traditionary dependents, which forms one of the moral appanages of great families and a _raison d'être_ of the nobility, I fully agree with you;--in what way?"

"In this,--that she is Madame Olier, born Barral, simply; that her child has Olier uncles and aunts and Olier cousins, and she has Barral cousins, perhaps brother and sisters,--a whole social circle. That circle, by marrying her, you make akin to us. That family you ally with ours. You ally it! Dig into that word, so profound in its significance, like all those in which the language simply translates instinctively the experience of ages. That means that between the Oliers, the Barrals, and the Claviers-Grandchamps, you establish a bond of fellowship, that all those existences are bound together.--I will suggest but one question to you: tell the Mauchaussées that Madame de Claviers' cousin keeps a shop, for instance, that he is like one of their own relations. Do you think that Madame de Claviers will retain the same prestige in their eyes? And let us assume that there are no Oliers, no Barrals in this case,--do you think that our kinsfolk, the Candales, the Vardes, the Nançays, the Tillières, in France, and all the others, and the Ardrahans in Scotland, the Gorkas in Poland, and the Stenos in Italy, will be altogether the same to your wife as if she were a Charlus? So that our family unity will be impaired. You will have diminished the importance of the house of Claviers, without failing in honor--that goes without saying. But, do you see, a name like ours is honor with something more."

"Or less," retorted Landri. "Why, yes," he insisted, as his father recoiled in amazement, "less life, life, to which all men have a right, but not I. No right to individual happiness,--you just told me so. No right to individual action. How much it cost you to allow me even to enter the army! What else is there for us to do? Defend tombs? You have the strength for that, but I haven't."

He had never said so much concerning his secret thoughts. It had been too painful to him to hear from the marquis's lips the same objections, in almost the same words, as from Valentine's. He had felt too strongly their implacable and brutal truth. The pain had been all the keener. He had no sooner uttered that cry of rebellion, than he had a passionate reflux of emotion toward his father. He took his hand, saying: "Forgive me!" while M. de Claviers returned the pressure, and answered in an affectionate voice, but so firm, so virile,--the voice of a man who, having reached the evening of his days, girds up his loins and declares that he has not gone astray in his faith.

"Forgive you, and for what, my poor boy? For loving, and for feeling an impulse of rebellion of your whole heart before an obstacle in which all boys of your age, and even of your class, would see to-day, as you do, only a prejudice? For being young, and for having this longing to employ your energy to some purpose, which you cheat by playing at soldiering,--for it is only a game and you know it perfectly well? Suppose that to-morrow the people who rule us order you to execute one of their infamous jobs, the burglarizing of a church, what shall you do?"

As he uttered these words, which by their unconscious divination proved how much he thought about his son, the marquis was looking at his idea. He did not notice the young man's sudden start. On the latter's lips was an exclamation which he did not utter. He listened to the words in which his father continued, with an interest all the more intense, because M. de Claviers was not in the habit of discussing his convictions. He asserted them by his mere presence. Doubtless his affection for Landri warned him that that was a fateful moment, such as most frequently occurs unexpectedly, in the relations of a father and son, when a word misunderstood may lead to tragic dissensions; and as if he were determined to justify in advance the sternness of his veto by arguments impossible of refutation even by him who was destined to be their victim, he explained himself, he confessed himself, or, better still, he thought aloud:--