Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution, Rafael Sabatini [bookstand for reading txt] 📗

La Tour d’Azyr had spoken compelled itself to be shared. He was no vainglorious boaster, and they knew of what a force as a swordsman he was generally accounted.

“What does humiliation matter? A life is at issue—Andre’s life.”

“I know. My God, don’t I know? And I would humiliate myself if by humiliating myself I could hope to prevail. But Azyr is a hard, relentless man, and...”

Abruptly she left him.

She overtook the Marquis as he was in the act of stepping his carriage. He turned as she called, and bowed.

“Mademoiselle?”

At once he guessed her errand, tasted in anticipation the unparalleled bitterness of being compelled to refuse her. Yet at her invitation he stepped back into the cool of the hall.

In the middle of the floor of chequered marbles, black and white, stood a carved table of black oak. By this he halted, leaning lightly against it whilst she sat enthroned in the great crimson chair beside it.

“Monsieur, I cannot allow you so to depart,” she said. “You cannot realize, monsieur, what a blow would be dealt my uncle if... if evil, irrevocable evil were to overtake his godson to-morrow. The expressions that he used at first...”

“Mademoiselle, I perceived their true value. Spare yourself. Believe me I am profoundly desolated by circumstances which I had not expected to find. You must believe me when I say that. It is all that I can say.”

“Must it really be all? Andre is very dear to his godfather.”

The 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,