Rafael Sabatini - The Greatest Works of Rafael Sabatini

“That on the day after to-morrow you are returning to Gavrillac. M. de La Tour d’Azyr will most likely follow at his leisure.”

“You mean when this dirty candle is burnt out?”

“Call it what you will.” Madame, you see, despaired by now of controlling the impropriety of her niece’s expressions. “At Gavrillac there will be no Mlle. Binet. This thing will be in the past. It is unfortunate that he should have met her at such a moment. The chit is very attractive, after all. You cannot deny that. And you must make allowances.”

“M. le Marquis formally proposed to me a week ago. Partly to satisfy the wishes of the family, and partly . . . ” She broke off, hesitating a moment, to resume on a note of dull pain, “Partly because it does not seem greatly to matter whom I marry, I gave him my consent. That consent, for the reasons I have given you, madame, I desire now definitely to withdraw.”

Madame fell into agitation of the wildest. “Aline, I should never forgive you! Your uncle Quintin would be in despair. You do not know what you are saying, what a wonderful thing you are refusing. Have you no sense of your position, of the station into which you were born?”

“If I had not, madame, I should have made an end long since. If I have tolerated this suit for a single moment, it is because I realize the importance of a suitable marriage in the worldly sense. But I ask of marriage something more; and Uncle Quintin has placed the decision in my hands.”

“God forgive him!” said madame. And then she hurried on: “Leave this to me now, Aline. Be guided by me — oh, be guided by me!” Her tone was beseeching. “I will take counsel with your uncle Charles. But do not definitely decide until this unfortunate affair has blown over. Charles will know how to arrange it. M. le Marquis shall do penance, child, since your tyranny demands it; but not in sackcloth and ashes. You’ll not ask so much?”

Aline shrugged. “I ask nothing at all,” she said, which was neither assent nor dissent.

So Mme. de Sautron interviewed her husband, a slight, middle-aged man, very aristocratic in appearance and gifted with a certain shrewd sense. She took with him precisely the tone that Aline had taken with herself and which in Aline she had found so disconcertingly indelicate. She even borrowed several of Aline’s phrases.

The result was that on the Monday afternoon when at last M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s returning berline drove up to the chateau, he was met by M. le Comte de Sautron who desired a word with him even before he changed.

“Gervais, you’re a fool,” was the excellent opening made by M. le Comte.

“Charles, you give me no news,” answered M. le Marquis. “Of what particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?”

He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on that nobly handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of age.

“Of your last. This Binet girl.”

“That! Pooh! An incident; hardly a folly.”

“A folly — at such a time,” Sautron insisted. The Marquis looked a question. The Count answered it. “Aline,” said he, pregnantly. “She knows. How she knows I can’t tell you, but she knows, and she is deeply offended.”

The smile perished on the Marquis’ face. He gathered himself up.

“Offended?” said he, and his voice was anxious.

“But yes. You know what she is. You know the ideals she has formed. It wounds her that at such a time — whilst you are here for the purpose of wooing her — you should at the same time be pursuing this affair with that chit of a Binet girl.”

“How do you know?” asked La Tour d’Azyr.

“She has confided in her aunt. And the poor child seems to have some reason. She says she will not tolerate that you should come to kiss her hand with lips that are still contaminated from . . . Oh, you understand. You appreciate the impression of such a thing upon a pure, sensitive girl such as Aline. She said — I had better tell you — that the next time you kiss her hand, she will call for water and wash it in your presence.”

The Marquis’ face flamed scarlet. He rose. Knowing his violent, intolerant spirit, M. de Sautron was prepared for an outburst. But no outburst came. The Marquis turned away from him, and paced slowly to the window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back. Halted there he spoke, without turning, his voice was at once scornful and wistful.

“You are right, Charles, I am a fool — a wicked fool! I have just enough sense left to perceive it. It is the way I have lived, I suppose. I have never known the need to deny myself anything I wanted.” Then suddenly he swung round, and the outburst came. “But, my God, I want Aline as I have never wanted anything yet! I think I should kill myself in rage if through my folly I should have lost her.” He struck his brow with his hand. “I am a beast!” he said. “I should have known that if that sweet saint got word of these petty devilries of mine she would despise me; and I tell you, Charles, I’d go through fire to regain her respect.”

“I hope it is to be regained on easier terms,” said Charles; and then to ease the situation which began to irk him by its solemnity, he made a feeble joke. “It is merely asked of you that you refrain from going through certain fires that are not accounted by mademoiselle of too purifying a nature.”

“As to that Binet girl, it is finished — finished,” said the Marquis.

“I congratulate you. When did you make that decision?”

“This moment. I would to God I had made it twenty-four hours ago. As it is —” he shrugged —“why, twenty-four hours of her have been enough for me as they would have been for any man — a mercenary, self-seeking little baggage with the soul of a trull. Bah!” He shuddered in disgust of himself and her.

“Ah! That makes it easier for you,” said M. de Sautron, cynically.

“Don’t say it, Charles. It is not so. Had you been less of a fool, you would have warned me sooner.”

“I may prove to have warned you soon enough if you’ll profit by the warning.”

“There is no penance I will not do. I will prostrate myself at her feet. I will abase myself before her. I will make confession in the proper spirit of contrition, and Heaven helping me, I’ll keep to my purpose of amendment for her sweet sake.” He was tragically in earnest.

To M. de Sautron, who had never seen him other than self-contained, supercilious, and mocking, this was an amazing revelation. He shrank from it almost; it gave him the feeling of prying, of peeping through a keyhole. He slapped his friend’s shoulder.

“My dear Gervais, here is a magnificently romantic mood. Enough said. Keep to it, and I promise you that all will presently be well. I will be your ambassador, and you shall have no cause to complain.”

“But may I not go to her myself?”

“If you are wise you will at once efface yourself. Write to her if you will — make your act of contrition by letter. I will explain why you have gone without seeing her. I will tell her that you did so upon my advice, and I will do it tactfully. I am a good diplomat, Gervais. Trust me.”

M. le Marquis raised his head, and showed a face that pain was searing. He held out his hand. “Very well, Charles. Serve me in this, and count me your friend in all things.”

Table of Contents

Leaving his host to act as his plenipotentiary with Mademoiselle de Kercadiou, and to explain to her that it was his profound contrition that compelled him to depart without taking formal leave of her, the Marquis rolled away from Sautron in a cloud of gloom. Twenty-four hours with La Binet had been more than enough for a man of his fastidious and discerning taste. He looked back upon the episode with nausea — the inevitable psychological reaction — marvelling at himself that until yesterday he should have found her so desirable, and cursing himself that for the sake of that ephemeral and worthless gratification he should seriously have imperilled his chances of winning Mademoiselle de Kercadiou to wife. There is, after all, nothing very extraordinary in his frame of mind, so that I need not elaborate it further. It resulted from the conflict between the beast and the angel that go to make up the composition of every man.