The Champdoce Mystery, Emile Gaboriau [ebooks that read to you .TXT] 📗

“Think!” stammered Norbert. “Really I——”

“Pshaw,” replied the old gentleman; “I thought that you had begun to use your eyes. And look here, Marquis, you must adopt a different style of dress. You can go over with me to Poitiers to-morrow, and one of the tailors there will make you some clothes suitable to your rank, for I don’t suppose that you wish to alarm your future wife by the uncouthness of your appearance.”

“But, father—”

“Wait a moment, if you please. I shall have a suite of apartments reserved for you and your bride, and you can pass your honeymoon here. Take care you do not prolong it for too lengthened a period; and when it is all over, we can break the young woman into all our ways.”

“But,” interrupted Norbert hastily, “suppose I do not fancy this young lady?”

“Well, what then?”

“Suppose I should beg you to save me from a marriage which will render me most unhappy?”

The Duke shrugged his shoulders. “Why this is mere childishness,” said he. “The marriage is a most suitable one, and it is my desire that it should take place.”

“But, father,” again commenced Norbert.

“What! Are you opposing my will?” asked his father angrily. “Pray, do you hesitate?”

“No,” answered his son coldly, “I do not hesitate.”

“Very good, then. A man of no position can consult the dictates of his heart when he takes a wife, but with a nobleman of rank and station it is certainly a different matter, for with the latter, marriage should be looked upon as a mere business transaction. I have made excellent arrangements. Let me repeat to you the conditions. The Count will give two-thirds of his fortune, which is estimated at five millions—just think of that!—and when we get that, we shall be able to screw and save with better heart. Think of the restoration of our house, and the colossal fortune that our descendants will one day inherit, and realize all the beauties of a life of self-denial.”

While the Duke was uttering this string of incoherent sentences, he was pacing up and down the room, and now he halted immediately in front of his son. “You understand,” said he; “to-morrow you will go to Poitiers, and on Sunday we will dine at the house of your future father-in-law.”

In this fearful crisis Norbert did not know what to say or how to act.

“Father,” he once more commenced, “I have no wish to go to Poitiers to-morrow.”

“What are you saying? What in heaven’s name do you mean?”

“I mean that as I shall never love Mademoiselle de Puymandour, she will never be my wife.”

The Duke had never foreseen the chance of rebellion on the part of his son, and he could not bring his mind to receive such an unlooked-for event.

“You are mad,” said he at last, “and do not know what you are saying.”

“I know very well.”

“Think of what you are doing.”

“I have reflected.”

The Duke was making a violent effort to compose his ordinarily violent temper.

“Do you imagine,” answered he disdainfully, “that I shall be satisfied with an answer of this kind? I hope that you will submit to my wishes, for I think that, as the head of the family, I have conceived a splendid plan for its future aggrandizement; and do you think that, for the mere whim of a boy, I will be turned aside from my fixed determination?”

“No, father,” answered Norbert, “it is no boyish whim that makes me oppose your wishes. Tell me, have I not ever been a dutiful son to you? Have I ever refused to do what I was ordered? No; I have obeyed you implicitly. I am the son of the wealthiest man in Poitiers, and I have lived like a laborer’s child. Whatever your mandates were, I have never complained or murmured at them.”

“Well, and now I order you to marry Mademoiselle de Puymandour.”

“Anything but that; I do not love her, and I shall never do so. Do you wish my whole life to be blighted? I entreat you to spare me this sacrifice!”

“My orders are given, and you must comply with them.”

“No,” answered Norbert quietly, “I will not comply with them.”

A purple flush passed across the Duke’s face, then it faded away, leaving every feature of a livid whiteness.

“Great heavens!” said he in a voice before which Norbert, at one time, would have quailed. “Whence comes the audacity that makes you venture to dispute my orders?”

“From the feeling that I am acting rightly.”

“How long is it that it has been right for children to disobey their parents’ commands?”

“Ever since parents began to issue unjust commands.”

This speech put the finishing stroke to the Duke’s rage. He made a step across the room, towards his son, raising the stick that he usually carried high in the air. For a moment he stood thus, and then, casting it aside, he exclaimed,—

“No, I cannot strike a Champdoce.”

Perhaps it was Norbert’s intrepid attitude that restrained the Duke’s frenzy, for he had not moved a muscle, but stood still, with his arms folded, and his head thrown haughtily back.

“No, this is an act of disobedience that I will not put up with,” exclaimed the old man in a voice of thunder, and, springing upon his son, he grasped him by the collar and dragged him up to a room on the second floor, and thrust him violently through the doorway.

“You have twenty-four hours in which to reflect whether you will be willing to accept the wife that I have chosen for you,” said he.

“I have already decided on that point,” answered Norbert quietly.

The Duke made no reply, but slammed the door, which was of massive oak, and secured by a lock of enormous proportions.

Norbert gazed round; the only other exit from the room was by means of a window some forty feet from the ground. The young man, however, imagined that some one would surely come to make up his bed for the night; that would give him two sheets; these he could knot together and thus secure a means of escape. He might not be able to see Diana at once, but he could easily send her a message by Daumon, warning her of what had taken place. Having arranged his plans, he threw himself into an armchair with a more easy mind than he had experienced for many months past. The decisive step had been