The Rafael Sabatini Megapack. Rafael Sabatini
pleading tone cut him like a knife; and then suddenly it aroused another emotion—an emotion which he realized to be utterly unworthy, an emotion which, in his overwhelming pride of race, seemed almost sullying, yet not to be repressed. He hesitated to give it utterance; hesitated even remotely to suggest so horrible a thing as that in a man of such lowly origin he might conceivably discover a rival. Yet that sudden pang of jealousy was stronger than his monstrous pride.
“And to you, mademoiselle? What is this Andre-Louis Moreau to you? You will pardon the question. But I desire clearly to understand.”
Watching her he beheld the scarlet stain that overspread her face. He read in it at first confusion, until the gleam of her blue eyes announced its source to lie in anger. That comforted him; since he had affronted her, he was reassured. It did not occur to him that the anger might have another source.
“Andre and I have been playmates from infancy. He is very dear to me, too; almost I regard him as a brother. Were I in need of help, and were my uncle not available, Andre would be the first man to whom I should turn. Are you sufficiently answered, monsieur? Or is there more of me you would desire revealed?”
He bit his lip. He was unnerved, he thought, this morning; otherwise the silly suspicion with which he had offended could never have occurred to him.
He bowed very low. “Mademoiselle, forgive that I should have troubled you with such a question. You have answered more fully than I could have hoped or wished.”
He said no more than that. He waited for her to resume. At a loss, she sat in silence awhile, a pucker on her white brow, her fingers nervously drumming on the table. At last she flung herself headlong against the impassive, polished front that he presented.
“I have come, monsieur, to beg you to put off this meeting.”
She saw the faint raising of his dark eyebrows, the faintly regretful smile that scarcely did more than tinge his fine lips, and she hurried on. “What honour can await you in such an engagement, monsieur?”
It was a shrewd thrust at the pride of race that she accounted his paramount sentiment, that had as often lured him into error as it had urged him into good.
“I do not seek honour in it, mademoiselle, but—I must say it—justice. The engagement, as I have explained, is not of my seeking. It has been thrust upon me, and in honour I cannot draw back.”
“Why, what dishonour would there be in sparing him? Surely, monsieur, none would call your courage in question? None could misapprehend your motives.”
“You are mistaken, mademoiselle. My motives would most certainly be misapprehended. You forget that this young man has acquired in the past week a certain reputation that might well make a man hesitate to meet him.”
She brushed that aside almost contemptuously, conceiving it the merest quibble.
“Some men, yes. But not you, M. le Marquis.”
Her confidence in him on every count was most sweetly flattering. But there was a bitterness behind the sweet.
“Even I, mademoiselle, let me assure you. And there is more than that. This quarrel which M. Moreau has forced upon me is no new thing. It is merely the culmination of a long-drawn persecution.
“Which you invited,” she cut in. “Be just, monsieur.”
“I hope that it is not in my nature to be otherwise, mademoiselle.”
“Consider, then, that you killed his friend.”
“I find in that nothing with which to reproach myself. My justification lay in the circumstances—the subsequent events in this distracted country surely confirm it.”
“And…” She faltered a little, and looked away from him for the first time. “And that you…that you… And what of Mademoiselle Binet, whom he was to have married?”
He stared at her for a moment in sheer surprise. “Was to have married?” he repeated incredulously, dismayed almost.
“You did not know that?”
“But how do you?”
“Did I not tell you that we are as brother and sister almost? I have his confidence. He told me, before…before you made it impossible.”
He looked away, chin in hand, his glance thoughtful, disturbed, almost wistful.
“There is,” he said slowly, musingly, “a singular fatality at work between that man and me, bringing us ever each by turns athwart the other’s path…”
He sighed; then swung to face her again, speaking more briskly: “Mademoiselle, until this moment I had no knowledge—no suspicion of this thing. But…” He broke off, considered, and then shrugged. “If I wronged him, I did so unconsciously. It would be unjust to blame me, surely. In all our actions it must be the intention alone that counts.”
“But does it make no difference?”
“None that I can discern, mademoiselle. It gives me no justification to withdraw from that to which I am irrevocably committed. No justification, indeed, could ever be greater than my concern for the pain it must occasion my good friend, your uncle, and perhaps yourself, mademoiselle.”
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 today 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 tomorrow 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