Baron Trigault's Vengeance by Emile Gaboriau (graded readers .TXT) 📖

he set him on his feet, saying in a calmer tone, but in one that admitted of no reply: “Arrange your clothes and go.”

This advice was not unnecessary. Baron Trigault had a powerful hand; and M. Wilkie’s attire was decidedly the worse for the encounter. He had lost his cravat, his shirt-front was crumpled and torn, and his waistcoat—one of those that open to the waist and are fastened by a single button—hung down in the most dejected manner. He obeyed the baron’s order without a word, but not without considerable difficulty, for his hands trembled like a leaf. When he had finished, the baron exclaimed: “Now be off; and never set foot here again—understand me—never set foot here again, never!”

M. Wilkie made no reply until he reached the door leading into the hall. But when he had opened it, he suddenly regained his powers of speech. “I’m not afraid of you,” he cried, with frantic violence. “You have taken advantage of your superior strength—you are a coward. But this shall not end here. No!—you shall answer for it. I shall find your address, and to-morrow you will receive a visit from my friends M. Costard and M. Serpillon. I am the insulted party—and I choose swords!”

A frightful oath from the baron somewhat hastened M. Wilkie’s exit. He went out into the hall, and holding the door open, in a way that would enable him to close it at the shortest notice, he shouted back, so as to be heard by all the servants: “Yes; I will have satisfaction. I will not stand such treatment. Is it any fault of mine that Madame d’Argeles is a Chalusse, and that she wishes to defraud me of my fortune. To-morrow, I call you all to witness, there will be a lawyer here. You don’t frighten me. Here is my card!” And actually, before he closed the door, he threw one of his cards into the middle of the room.

The baron did not trouble himself to pick it up; his attention was devoted to Madame d’Argeles. She was lying back in her arm-chair, white, motionless and rigid, to all appearance dead. What should the baron do? He did not wish to call the servants; they had heard too much already—but he had almost decided to do so, when his eyes fell upon a tiny aquarium, in a corner of the room. He dipped his handkerchief in it; and alternately bathed Madame d’Argeles’s temples and chafed her hands. It was not long before the cold water revived her. She trembled, a convulsive shudder shook her from head to foot, and at last she opened her eyes, murmuring: “Wilkie!”

“I have sent him away,” replied the baron.

Poor woman! with returning life came the consciousness of the terrible reality. “He is my son!” she moaned, “my son, my Wilkie!” Then with a despairing gesture she pressed her hands to her forehead as if to calm its throbbings. “And I believed that my sin was expiated,” she pursued. “I thought I had been sufficiently punished. Fool that I was! This is my chastisement, Jacques. Ah! women like me have no right to be mothers!”

A burning tear coursed down the baron’s cheek; but he concealed his emotion as well as he could, and said, in a tone of assumed gayety: “Nonsense! Wilkie is young—he will mend his ways! We were all ridiculous when we were twenty. We have all caused our mothers many anxious nights. Time will set everything to rights, and put some ballast in this young madcap’s brains. Besides, your friend Patterson doesn’t seem to me quite free from blame. In knowledge of books, he may have been unequalled; but as a guardian for youth, he must have been the worst of fools. After keeping your son on a short allowance for years, he suddenly gorges him with oats—or I should say, money—lets him loose; and then seems surprised because the boy is guilty of acts of folly. It would be a miracle if he were not. So take courage, and hope for the best, my dear Lia.”

She shook her head despondingly. “Do you suppose that my heart hasn’t pleaded for him?” she said. “I am his mother; I can never cease to love him, whatever he may do. Even now I am ready to give a drop of blood for each tear I can save him. But I am not blind; I have read his nature. Wilkie has no heart.”

“Ah! my dear friend, how do you know what shameful advice he may have received before coming to you?”

Madame d’Argeles half rose, and said, in an agitated voice: “What! you try to make me believe that? ‘Advice!’ Then he must have found a man who said to him: ‘Go to the house of this unfortunate woman who gave you birth, and order her to publish her dishonor and yours. If she refuses, insult and beat her! ‘You know, even better than I, baron, that this is impossible. In the vilest natures, and when every other honorable feeling has been lost, love for one’s mother survives. Even convicts deprive themselves of their wine, and sell their rations, in order to send a trifle now and then to their mothers—while he——”

She paused, not because she shrunk from what she was about to say, but because she was exhausted and out of breath. She rested for a moment, and then resumed in a calmer tone: “Besides, the person who sent him here had counselled coolness and prudence. I discovered this at once. It was only toward the close of the interview, and after an unexpected revelation from me, that he lost all control over himself. The thought that he would lose my brother’s millions crazed him. Oh! that fatal and accursed money! Wilkie’s adviser wished him to employ legal means to obtain an acknowledgment of his parentage; and he had copied from the Code a clause which is applicable to this case. By this one circumstance I am convinced that his adviser is a man of experience in such matters—in other words, the business agent——”

“What business agent?” inquired the baron.

“The person who called here the other day, M. Isidore Fortunat. Ah! why didn’t I not bribe him to hold his peace?”

The baron had entirely forgotten the existence of Victor Chupin’s honorable employer. “You are mistaken, Lia,” he replied. “M. Fortunat has had no hand in this.”

“Then who could have betrayed my secret?”

“Why, your former ally, the rascal for whose sake you allowed Pascal Ferailleur to be sacrificed—the Viscount de Coralth!”

The bare supposition of such treachery on the viscount’s part brought a flush of indignant anger to Madame d’Argeles’s cheek. “Ah! if I thought that!” she exclaimed. And then, remembering what reasons the baron had for hating M. de Coralth, she murmured: “No! Your animosity misleads you—he wouldn’t dare!”

The baron read her thoughts. “So you are persuaded that it is personal vengeance that I am pursuing?” said he. “You think that fear of ridicule and public odium prevents me from striking M. de Coralth in my own name, and that I am endeavoring to find some other excuse to crush him. This might have been so once; but it is not the case now. When I promised M. Ferailleur to do all in my power to save the young girl he loves, Mademoiselle Marguerite, my wife’s daughter, I renounced all thought of self, all my former plans. And why should you doubt Coralth’s treachery? You, yourself, promised me to unmask HIM. If he has betrayed YOU, my poor Lia, he has only been a little in advance of you.”