The Rafael Sabatini Megapack. Rafael Sabatini
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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow’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 today. 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 manner eager, almost feverish.
“I will not affect ignorance of why you have come,” he said quickly, to make short work. “But time presses, and I warn you that only the most solid of reasons can be worth stating.”
It surprised her. It amounted to a rebuff at the very outset, before she had uttered a word; and that was the last thing she had expected from Andre-Louis. Moreover, there was about him an air of aloofness that was unusual where she was concerned, and his voice had been singularly cold and formal.
It wounded her. She was not to guess the conclusion to which he had leapt. He made with regard to her—as was but natural, after all—the same mistake that he had made with regard to yesterday’s letter from his godfather. He conceived that the mainspring of action here was solely concern for M. de La Tour d’Azyr. That it might be concern for himself never entered his mind. So absolute was his own conviction of what must be the inevitable issue of that meeting that he could not conceive of any one entertaining a fear on his behalf.
What he assumed to be anxiety on the score of the predestined victim had irritated him in M. de Kercadiou; in Aline it filled him with a cold anger; he argued from it that she had hardly been frank with him; that ambition was urging her to consider with favour the suit of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. And than this there was no spur that could have driven more relentlessly in his purpose, since to save her was in his eyes almost as momentous as to avenge the past.
She conned him searchingly, and the complete calm of him at such a time amazed her. She could not repress the mention of it.
“How calm you are, Andre!”
“I am not easily disturbed. It is a vanity of mine.”
“But… Oh, Andre, this meeting must not take place!” She came close up to him, to set her hands upon his shoulders, and stood so, her face within a foot of his own.
“You know, of course, of some good reason why it should not?” said he.
“You may be killed,” she answered him, and her eyes dilated as she spoke.
It was so far from anything that he had expected that for a moment he could only stare at her. Then he thought he had understood. He laughed as he removed her hands from his shoulders, and stepped back. This was a shallow device, childish and unworthy in her.
“Can you really think to prevail by attempting to frighten me?” he asked, and almost sneered.
“Oh, you are surely mad! M. de La Tour d’Azyr is reputed the most dangerous sword in France.”
“Have you never noticed that most reputations are undeserved? Chabrillane was a dangerous swordsman, and Chabrillane is underground. La Motte-Royau was an even more dangerous swordsman, and he is in a surgeon’s hands. So are the other spadassinicides who dreamt of skewering a poor sheep of a provincial lawyer. And here today comes the chief, the fine flower of these bully-swordsmen. He comes, for wages long overdue. Be sure of that. So if you have no other reason to urge…”
It was the sarcasm of him that mystified her. Could he possibly be sincere in his assurance that he must prevail against M. de La Tour d’Azyr? To her in her limited knowledge, her mind filled with her uncle’s contrary conviction, it seemed that Andre-Louis was only acting; he would act a part to the very end.
Be that as it might, she shifted her ground to answer him.
“You had my uncle’s letter?”
“And I answered it.”
“I know. But what he said, he will fulfil. Do not dream that he will relent if you carry out this horrible purpose.”
“Come, now, that is a better reason than the other,” said he. “If there is a reason in the world that could move me it would be that. But there is too much between La Tour d’Azyr and me. There is an oath I swore on the dead hand of Philippe de Vilmorin. I could never have hoped that God would afford me so great an opportunity of keeping it.”
“You have not kept it yet,” she warned him.
He smiled at her. “True!” he said. “But nine o’clock will soon be here. Tell me,” he asked her suddenly, “why did you not carry this request of yours to M. de La Tour d’Azyr?”
“I did,” she answered