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- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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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.
CHAPTER X. THE RETURNING CARRIAGE
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
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