"Monsieur le Comte," he said, rising, "I have summoned you here to discuss not the past, but the future." He was quite as tall as his son, but gaunt and with loosely hanging clothes.
"The future?" said the Chevalier. "Best a.s.sured, Monsieur, that you shall have no hand in mine."
"Be not too certain of that," replied the marquis, his lips parting in that chilling smile with which he had formerly greeted opponents on the field of honor. "And, after all, you might have the politeness to remember that I am, whatever else, still your father."
The Chevalier bowed ironically. Had he been less drunk he would have read the warning which lay in his father"s eyes, now brilliant with the spirit of conflict. But he rushed on to his doom, as it was written he should. Paris was in his mind, Paris and mademoiselle, whose letter lay warm against his heart. He turned to his mother"s portrait, and again bowed, sweeping the floor with the plume of his hat.
"Madame, yours was a fortunate escape. Would that I had gone with you on the journey. Have you a spirit? Well, then, observe me; note the bister about my eyes, the swollen lips, the shaking hand. "Twas a lesson I learned some years ago from Monsieur le Marquis, your husband, my father.
You, Madame, died at my birth, therefore I have known no mother. Am I a drunkard, a wine-bibber, a roisterer by night? Say then, who taught me?
Before I became of age my foolish heart was filled with love which must spend itself upon something. I offered this love, filial and respectful, to Monsieur le Marquis. Madame, the bottle was more responsive to this outburst of generous youth than Monsieur le Marquis, to whom I was a living plaything, a clay which he molded as a pastime--too readily, alas!
And now, behold! he speaks of respect. It would be droll if it were not sad. True, he gave me gold; but he also taught me how to use this devil-key which unlocks the pathways of the world, wine-cellars and women"s hearts. Respect? Has he ever taken me by the hand as natural fathers take their sons, and asked me to be his comrade? Has he ever taught me to rise to heights, to scorn the petty forms and molds of life?
Have I not been as the captive eagle, drawn down at every flight? And for this . . . respect? Oh, Madame, scarcely! And often I thought of the happiness of beholding my father depending on me in his old age!"
"You thought that, Monsieur?" interrupted the marquis, his eyes losing some of their metallic hardness. "You thought that?" What irony lay in the taste of this knowledge!
"Monsieur," said the Chevalier with drunken asperity, "permit me to say that you are interrupting a fine apostrophe! . . . And as a culmination, he would have me wed the daughter of your mortal enemy, his mistress! It is some mad dream, Madame; we shall soon awake."
"Even immediately," replied the marquis calmly. The Chevalier had snuffed more than candles this night. He had snuffed also the belated paternal spark of affection which had suddenly kindled in his father"s breast. "Your apostrophe, as you are pleased to term the maudlin talk of a drunken fool, is being addressed to my wife."
"Well?" insolently.
"Your mother, while worthy and beautiful, was not sufficiently n.o.ble to merit Rubens"s brush. It is to be regretted, but I never had a portrait of your mother."
The roisterers burst into song again . . . .
"_When Ma"m"selle drinks from her satin shoe With a Bacchante"s love for a Bacchic brew!_"
How this rollicking song penetrated the ominous silence which had suddenly filled the salon! The Chevalier grew rigid.
"What did I understand you to say, Monsieur?" with an unnatural quietness which somewhat confused the marquis.
"I said that I never had a portrait of your mother. Is that explicit enough? Yonder Rubens was my wife." The marquis spoke lightly. The tone hid well the hot wrath which for the moment obliterated his sense of truth and justice, two qualities the importance of which he had never till now forgotten. He watched the effect of this terrible thrust, and with monstrous satisfaction he saw the shiver which took his son in its chilling grasp and sent him staggering back. "Then you return to Paris to-morrow? . . . to be the Chevalier du Cevennes till the end? Ah well!"
How often man over-reaches himself in the gratification of an ign.o.ble revenge! "We all have our pastimes," went on the marquis, deepening the abyss into which he was finally to fall. "You were mine. I had intended to send you about some years ago; but I was lonely, and there was something in your spirit which amused me. You tickled my fancy. But now, I am weary; the pastime palls; you no longer amuse."
The Chevalier stood in the midst of chaos. He was experiencing that frightful plunge of Icarus, from the clouds to the sea. He was falling, falling. When one falls from a great height, when waters roll thunderously over one"s head, strange and significant fragments of life pa.s.s and repa.s.s the vision. And at this moment there flashed across the Chevalier"s brain, indistinctly it is true, the young Jesuit"s words, spoken at the Silver Candlestick in Paris. . . . "An object of scorn, contumely, and forgetfulness; to dream what might and should have been; to be proved guilty of a crime we did not commit; to be laughed at!"
Spots of red blurred his sight; his nails sank into his palms; his breath came painfully; there was a straining at the roots of his hair.
"Monsieur," he cried hoa.r.s.ely, "take care! Are you not telling me some dreadful lie?"
"It would be . . . . scarcely worth while." The marquis controlled his agitation by gently patting the gold k.n.o.b on his stick. His gaze wandered, seeking to rest upon some object other than his son. The first blinding heat of pa.s.sion had subsided, and in the following haze he saw that he had committed a wrong which a thousand truths might not wholly efface. And yet he remained silent, obdurate: so little a thing as a word or the lack of it has changed the destinies of empires and of men.
A species of madness seized the Chevalier. With a fierce gesture he drew his sword. For a moment the marquis thought that he was about to be impaled upon it; but he gave no sign of fear. Presently the sword deviated from its horizontal line, declined gradually till the point touched the floor. The Chevalier leaned upon it, swaying slightly. His eyes burned like opals.
"No, Monsieur, no! I will let you live, to die of old age, alone, in silence, surrounded by those hideous phantoms which the approach of death creates from ill-spent lives. Since you have taught me that there is no G.o.d, I shall not waste a curse upon you for this wrong. Think not that the l.u.s.t to kill is gone; no, no; but I had rather let you live to die in bed. So! I have been your pastime? I have now ceased to amuse you? . . . . as my mother, whoever she may be, ceased to amuse?" His sardonian laugh chilled the marquis in the marrow. "And I have spent your gold, thinking it lawfully mine? . . . lorded over your broad lands, believing myself to be heir to them? . . . been Monsieur le Comte this and Monsieur le Comte that? How the G.o.ds must have laughed as I walked forth among the great, arrogant in my pride of birth and riches! Poor fool! Surely, Monsieur, it must be as you say: Heaven and h.e.l.l are of our own contriving. Poor fool! And I have held my head so high, faced the world so fearlessly and contemptuously! . . . to find that I am this, this! My G.o.d, Monsieur, but you have stirred within me all the hate, the l.u.s.t to kill, the gall of envy and despair! But live," his madness increasing; "live to die in bed, no kin beside you, not even the administering hand of a friendly priest to alleviate the horror of your death-bed! G.o.d! do men go mad this way?"
The marquis was trembling violently. Words thronged to his lips, only to be crushed back by the irony of fate. For a little he would have flung himself at his son"s feet. He had lied, lied, lied! What could he say?
His tongue lay hot against the palate, paralyzed. His brain was confused, dazzled, incoherent.
"And now for these sponging fools who call themselves my friends!" The Chevalier staggered off toward the dining-hall, from whence still came the rollicking song. . . . It was all so incongruous; it was all so like a mad dream.
"What are you going to do?" cried the marquis, a vague terror lending him speech. "I have lied . . ."
"What! have you turned coward, too? What am I going to do? Patience, Monsieur, and you will see." The Chevalier flung apart the doors. His roistering friends greeted his appearance with delight. "A toast, Messieurs!" he cried, flourishing his sword.
Only the Vicomte d"Halluys and Victor saw that something unusual had taken place.
"Your friend," whispered the vicomte, "appears to be touched with a pa.s.sing madness. Look at his eyes."
"What has happened?" murmured Victor, setting down his gla.s.s.
"Bah! Monsieur le Marquis has stopped the Chevalier"s allowance;" and the vicomte sighed regretfully. From where he sat he could see the grim, motionless figure of the marquis, standing with his back to the fire.
"Fill up the goblets, Messieurs; to the brim!" The Chevalier stumbled among the fallen bottles. He reached the head of the table. Feverishly he poured out a gla.s.s of wine, spilling part of it. With a laugh he flung the bottle to the floor. "Listen!" with a sweeping glance which took in every face. "To Monsieur le Marquis, my n.o.ble father! Up, up!"
waving his rapier. Yes, madness was in his eyes; it bubbled and frothed in his veins, burned and cracked his lips. "It is droll! Up, you beggars! . . . up, all of you! You, Vicomte; you, Saumaise! Drink to the marquis, the n.o.ble marquis, the pious marquis, who gives to the Church! Drink it, you beggars; drink it, I say!" The sword-blade rang on the table.
"To the marquis!" cried the drunkards in chorus. They saw nothing; all was dead within, save appet.i.te.
"Ah, that is well! Listen. All this about you will one day be mine?
Ah! I shall be called Monsieur le Marquis; I shall possess famous chateaux and magnificent hotels? Fools! "twas all a lie! I who was am not. I vanish from the scene like a play-actor. Drink it, you beggars!
Drink it, you wine-bibbers! Drink it, you gamesters, you hunters of women! Drink to me, the marquis"s . . . b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
Twelve gla.s.ses hung in mid air; twelve faces were transfixed with horror and incredulity; twelve pairs of eyes stared stupidly at the mad toast-master. In the salon the marquis listened with eyes distended, with jaw fallen, lips sunken inward and of a color as sickly as blue chalk. . . . A maudlin sob caught one roisterer by the throat, and the tableau was broken by the falling of his gla.s.s to the table, where it lay shattered in foaming wine.
"Paul," cried Victor; "my G.o.d, Paul, are you mad?"
"I know you not." Then with a sudden wave of disgust, the Chevalier cried: "Now, one and all of you, out of my sight! Away with you! You look too hardily at the brand of pleasure on my brow. Out, you beggars, sponges and cheats! Out, I say! Back to the devil who sp.a.w.ned you!" He drove them forth with the flat of his sword. He saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing save that he was mad, possessed of a capital frenzy, the victim of some frightful dream; save that he saw through blood, that the l.u.s.t to kill, to rend, and to destroy was on him. The flat of his sword fell rudely but impartially.
Like a pack of demoralized sheep the roisterers crowded and pressed into the hall. The vicomte turned angrily and attempted to draw his sword.
"Fool!" cried Victor, seizing the vicomte"s hand; "can you not see that he is mad? He would kill you!"
"Curse it, he is striking me with his sword!"
"He is mad!"
"Well, well, Master Poet; I can wait. What a night!"
It had ceased snowing; the world lay dimly white. The roisterers flocked down the steps to the street. One fell into a drift and lay there sobbing.
"What now?" asked the vicomte.
"I am sorry," said the inebriate.
"The devil! The Chevalier has a friend here," laughed the vicomte, a.s.sisting the roisterer to his feet. "Come along, Saumaise."
"I shall wait."
"As you please;" and the vicomte continued on.