“You conceive me slaying him for the very lust of slaying, like some beast of the jungle flinging itself upon its natural prey. That has been your error from the first. I did what I did with the very heaviest heart — oh, spare me your sneer! — I do not lie, I have never lied. And I swear to you here and now, by my every hope of Heaven, that what I say is true. I loathed the thing I did. Yet for my own sake and the sake of my order I must do it. Ask yourself whether M. de Vilmorin would have hesitated for a moment if by procuring my death he could have brought the Utopia of his dreams a moment nearer realization.
“After that. You determined that the sweetest vengeance would be to frustrate my ends by reviving in yourself the voice that I had silenced, by yourself carrying forward the fantastic apostleship of equality that was M. de Vilmorin’s. You lacked the vision that would have shown you that God did not create men equals. Well, you are in case to-night to judge which of us was right, which wrong. You see what is happening here in Paris. You see the foul spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land fallen into confusion. Probably you have enough imagination to conceive something of what must follow. And do you deceive yourself that out of this filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal form of society? Don’t you understand that society must re-order itself presently out of all this?
“But why say more? I must have said enough to make you understand the only thing that really matters — that I killed M. de Vilmorin as a matter of duty to my order. And the truth — which though it may offend you should also convince you — is that to-night I can look back on the deed with equanimity, without a single regret, apart from what lies between you and me.
“When, kneeling beside the body of your friend that day at Gavrillac, you insulted and provoked me, had I been the tiger you conceived me I must have killed you too. I am, as you may know, a man of quick passions. Yet I curbed the natural anger you aroused in me, because I could forgive an affront to myself where I could not overlook a calculated attack upon my order.”
He paused a moment. Andre–Louis stood rigid listening and wondering. So, too, the others. Then M. le Marquis resumed, on a note of less assurance. “In the matter of Mlle. Binet I was unfortunate. I wronged you through inadvertence. I had no knowledge of the relations between you.”
Andre–Louis interrupted him sharply at last with a question: “Would it have made a difference if you had?”
“No,” he was answered frankly. “I have the faults of my kind. I cannot pretend that any such scruple as you suggest would have weighed with me. But can you — if you are capable of any detached judgment — blame me very much for that?”
“All things considered, monsieur, I am rapidly being forced to the conclusion that it is impossible to blame any man for anything in this world; that we are all of us the sport of destiny. Consider, monsieur, this gathering — this family gathering — here to-night, whilst out there . . . O my God, let us make an end! Let us go our ways and write ‘finis’ to this horrible chapter of our lives.”
M. le La Tour considered him gravely, sadly, in silence for a moment.
“Perhaps it is best,” he said, at length, in a small voice. He turned to Mme. de Plougastel. “If a wrong I have to admit in my life, a wrong that I must bitterly regret, it is the wrong that I have done to you, my dear . . . ”
“Not now, Gervais! Not now!” she faltered, interrupting him.
“Now — for the first and the last time. I am going. It is not likely that we shall ever meet again — that I shall ever see any of you again — you who should have been the nearest and dearest to me. We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose. In life we pay for the evil that in life we do. That is the lesson that I have learnt to-night. By an act of betrayal I begot unknown to me a son who, whilst as ignorant as myself of our relationship, has come to be the evil genius of my life, to cross and thwart me, and finally to help to pull me down in ruin. It is just — poetically just. My full and resigned acceptance of that fact is the only atonement I can offer you.”
He stooped and took one of madame’s hands that lay limply in her lap.
“Good-bye, Therese!” His voice broke. He had reached the end of his iron self-control.
She rose and clung to him a moment, unashamed before them. The ashes of that dead romance had been deeply stirred this night, and deep down some lingering embers had been found that glowed brightly now before their final extinction. Yet she made no attempt to detain him. She understood that their son had pointed out the only wise, the only possible course, and was thankful that M. de La Tour d’Azyr accepted it.
“God keep you, Gervais,” she murmured. “You will take the safe-conduct, and . . . and you will let me know when you are safe?”
He held her face between his hands an instant; then very gently kissed her and put her from him. Standing erect, and outwardly calm again, he looked across at Andre–Louis who was proffering him a sheet of paper.
“It is the safe-conduct. Take it, monsieur. It is my first and last gift to you, and certainly the last gift I should ever have thought of making you — the gift of life. In a sense it makes us quits. The irony, sir, is not mine, but Fate’s. Take it, monsieur, and go in peace.”
M. de La Tour d’Azyr took it. His eyes looked hungrily into the lean face confronting him, so sternly set. He thrust the paper into his bosom, and then abruptly, convulsively, held out his hand. His son’s eyes asked a question.
“Let there be peace between us, in God’s name,” said the Marquis thickly.
Pity stirred at last in Andre–Louis. Some of the sternness left his face. He sighed. “Good-bye, monsieur,” he said.
“You are hard,” his father told him, speaking wistfully. “But perhaps you are in the right so to be. In other circumstances I should have been proud to have owned you as my son. As it is . . . ” He broke off abruptly, and as abruptly added, “Good-bye.”
He loosed his son’s hand and stepped back. They bowed formally to each other. And then M. de La Tour d’Azyr bowed to Mlle. de Kercadiou in utter silence, a bow that contained something of utter renunciation, of finality.
That done he turned and walked stiffly out of the room, and so out of all their lives. Months later they were to hear of him in the service of the Emperor of Austria.
CHAPTER 16
SUNRISE
Andre–Louis took the air next morning on the terrace at Meudon. The hour was very early, and the newly risen sun was transmuting into diamonds the dewdrops that still lingered on the lawn. Down in the valley, five miles away, the morning mists were rising over Paris. Yet early as it was that house on the hill was astir already, in a bustle of preparation for the departure that