The Quest of Glory, Marjorie Bowen [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

choicest hopes. His soul rose up against this

exacting, tender love, that burdened him with responsibility; morally

and mentally he stood alone, not desiring support, and strong to meet

anything, yet through his heart and affections he was made captive to

his father’s chair and his mother’s apron.

 

Autumn passed into winter. Joseph married and left home; this was

another reason for Luc to remain. His mother clung to him with piteous

fondness; his father deferred to him in matters of business, relied on

him, treated him with courteous affection, dismissed all idea of his

leaving them—had not M. de Biron and M. de Richelieu both declared

politics hopeless?

 

Luc listened and waited; the chains became heavier every day. The

Marquise was preparing another in the shape of Clémence de Séguy, a good

girl, beautiful and well-dowered. Luc, looking into her fair

countenance, knew that she had never known an aspiration nor a sorrow in

all her life; she bloomed in Aix like the late lilies he had seen in the

garden the day of his return; pure flowers, modest with their own

sweetness, they kept their heads bent towards the earth, and never

lifted their petals towards heaven or the sun. Luc never looked at

Clémence that he did not think of the Countess Carola; red like the

trellis roses he pictured her, and, like them, for ever climbing and

breathing perfume to the utmost clouds.

 

Yet these days were not wholly wasted; in the evenings, he would revive

his forgotten knowledge of music, and play the clavichord to his

mother’s harp; and then his thoughts would fly wide, and drink at

immortal wells of unquenchable longing, and see the ineffable hues of

skies only to be glimpsed at by mortals.

 

Sometimes, when he was playing thus in the dark parlour, he would have

flashing premonitions of immortality in which this life seemed a mere

nothing that he could afford to waste; there was all eternity in which

to join Hippolyte and Georges in the quest for glory.

 

In these moments he felt an unbounded ecstasy, and his playing would

take on a richness and colour that transfigured the light music he

interpreted; then a veil would be dropped over the vision, and there

would come unbidden thoughts of the hopelessness of all high endeavour,

the sad end, the open failure of all noble, unselfish lives, the

uselessness of all great enthusiasms, all the gallant efforts of the

pure minorities of the world, all the eager aspirations of reformers,

preachers, prophets, swept away and forgotten in the commonplace

corruptions, needs, vices, failings, and blindness of humanity. And

these reflections were as a bitter blankness of soul to Luc, and the

comfortable room would darken round him like the jaw of hell itself.

 

But with equal conviction would come the afterthought that these broken

lives, these lost causes, these ridiculed endeavours, these failures,

these minorities had handed on the light from one century to another,

and kept alive truth, courage, and all that is beautiful in the heart of

man. Luc felt the intense force of the stirrings in his own bosom to be

a response to these prophets, martyrs, lonely standard-bearers who were

calling him to be one of them, to come forth from the sheltered

happiness of common men and join the shadowy multitude who had climbed

and perished and left a glimmering name behind. Life was little, yet

tremendous; it was all a man had. Though its doings, its greatest events

were so small, yet some could make marvels out of those few short years.

 

Millions did nothing with their lives, but all were not the same; the

oak is large compared to the cherry tree, thought Luc, and some men can

lift themselves. After the playing was over, and he was alone in his

chamber, he would put some of his thoughts on paper for want of a better

confidant—carefully concealing them, for his father considered it

degradation for a gentleman to compose a line of verse or prose.

 

So the winter passed, and Luc remained in Aix doing homage to custom and

family pride and family tradition and family affection. It happened

that, at Christmas, a friend came from Paris and spent a few days with

the de Clapiers; he was neither fashionable, nor of the Court, nor any

admirer of M. de Voltaire and the new school of thought, but his speech

unconsciously betrayed knowledge of a world that was alive with energy,

change, and endeavour. Luc did not speak much with him, and never

questioned him on any of those subjects on which he was burning to be

enlightened; but when the visitor had left, Luc went to his chamber and

wrote two letters, one to the King, one to M. Amelot, Minister for

Foreign Affairs, both with the same request—that they would find him

some employment for his eager abilities.

 

It was an extraordinary act of courage on the part of a nature reserved,

shy, and socially timid; no one who knew him would have credited him

with it; but he made no confidant of any. When the two letters were

written, sealed, and lying ready for dispatch, Luc, with a flush like

fever in his cheek, took up the pen again and wrote a third—

 

To M. de Voltaire.

 

A thousand hopes and questions rose in his bosom, eager for expression;

but modesty and pride together forbade that he should put anything

intimate before a stranger. He made the subject of his letter his

opinion of Corneille and Racine; he asked the judgment of the great

arbitrator of letters as to the relative merits of the two geniuses; he

expressed the criticism he had conceived on the rival masters, and

begged to know if he was right or wrong. He gave the address of an inn

he knew in Paris, and prayed that the answer might be sent there, if M.

de Voltaire deigned to answer.

 

He sealed this letter with more agitation than he had felt when writing

either to the King or to the Minister, and with all three in his pocket

went downstairs to post them.

 

When he reached the hall, he hesitated a moment, then turned into the

sombre withdrawing-room in the front. The candles had just been lit and

the curtains drawn, for, though not late, it was a wet, dreary day.

 

Round the hearth sat his mother, Joseph’s wife, and Clémence de Séguy;

Joseph was at the clavichord, his father on the sofa with a little book

in his hand.

 

The tender figures and light dresses of the women were surrounded with

soft shadows from the rosy firelight; Clémence held up a pink silk

hand-screen which cast a full glow of radiant light over her small sweet

features and pale curls.

 

The pretty whisper of talk was hushed as Luc entered and there was a

second’s pause, caused, though he did not guess it, by the instant

impression of extreme delicacy he made as he stood before the open door,

the candlelight full on him, and behind him the background of the dark

shadows of the hall.

 

He was unusually pale, and his eyes were too lustrous, too wide and

bright, too deeply shadowed for health. His dark, simple, and rather

careless dress, the plain waves of his smooth hair, accentuated the

impression he made of something uncommon, exceptional; but this sense of

difference was mainly caused by his expression, by a certain smile and

flash in his eyes, by an extraordinary sweetness in the lines of the

mouth and chin, by a proud look of motion in his carriage which was like

swiftness arrested.

 

His sudden silent appearance made all who gazed at him realize in a

flash his exceeding, uncommon beauty; it was as if they regarded a

stranger, they even felt afraid of him.

 

He, all unconscious, came to the table where his mother’s tambour frame

lay, and affectionately turned over the lengths of silks.

 

“How quickly you work!” he smiled.

 

Joseph, to conceal an unaccountable sense of confusion, commenced

playing a little old-fashioned “coranto,” which was the only piece he

knew perfectly by heart.

 

Clémence expressed her sense of the inexpressible in another way.

 

“How silent we all are!” she exclaimed, and rose. Luc looked up

instantly.

 

“I fear I disturbed you,” he said; she had come a few steps from the

hearth, and their eyes met.

 

“You look strange to-night,” murmured Clémence, as if they had been

alone.

 

“I have come to a resolution, that is all,” he answered quietly.

“Nothing so very momentous.” He smiled, and looked from the girl to his

father.

 

“Monseigneur, I have decided to go to Paris.”

 

The old Marquis put down his book.

 

“I thought you wished to remain in Aix,” he said, in a low voice.

 

“I cannot,” replied Luc. “Father, I must go.”

 

There was a note of almost entreaty in his voice, for his mother had

risen and Joseph ceased playing, and he foresaw protest and complaint;

Clémence had hung her head; all the old chains tightening about him.

 

“I must go,” he repeated.

 

“You have been away so much,” said the Marquise. “Will you not stay at

home now, Luc?”

 

“Madame,” he answered, “I shall return, but I must go, and soon, to

Paris.”

 

His father rose.

 

“But, dear Heaven, what chance have you in Paris?”

 

“I must make my own chances,” smiled Luc.

 

The old Marquis and Joseph both surveyed him with a certain pride. Luc

was indescribably touched to see that mingled look of satisfaction and

solicitude on their faces.

 

He crossed impulsively to the clavichord and the sofa, and held out his

hands, one to his father, one to his brother.

 

“Do not think I am eager to be gone,” he said, with a fine flush. “It

is only that I have not earned this home—yet.”

 

Joseph thought he referred to his fortune spent at the war, leaving him

dependent on their father, and blushed furiously.

 

“Luc—” he began desperately.

 

Their father interrupted.

 

“Joseph, he must go. I understand. He will be the head of the family,

and, bred a soldier, he finds this a poor life…You shall go, Luc, but

we must see you back soon…Your place is at Aix.”

 

*

 

PART II # THE QUEST SORROWFUL

 

“Voyez ce que fait la gloire: le tombeau ne peut l’obscurcir, son nom

regne encore sur la terre qu’elle a décorée; féconde jusque dans les

ruines et la nudité de la mort, ses exemples la réproduisent, et elle

s’accroit d’âge en âge. Cultivez-là donc, car si vous la négligiez

bientôt vous négligeriez la vertu même, dont elle est la fleur. Ne

croyez pas qu’on puisse obtenir la vraie gloire sans la vraie vertu, ni

qu’on puisse se maintenir dans la vertu sans l’aide de la

gloire.”—MARQUIS DE VAUVENAROUES.