Rafael Sabatini - The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

“So that you believe it now,” said Andre quickly. “Why?”

“I have not said that I believe it now. But . . . but . . . neither can I disbelieve. Since we came to Meudon M. de La Tour d’Azyr has been here, and himself he has sworn to me that it was so.”

“Oh, if M. de La Tour d’Azyr has sworn . . . ” Andre–Louis was laughing on a bitter note of sarcasm.

“Have you ever known him lie?” she cut in sharply. That checked him. “M. de La Tour d’Azyr is, after all, a man of honour, and men of honour never deal in falsehood. Have you ever known him do so, that you should sneer as you have done?”

“No,” he confessed. Common justice demanded that he should admit that virtue at least in his enemy. “I have not known him lie, it is true. His kind is too arrogant, too self-confident to have recourse to untruth. But I have known him do things as vile . . . ”

“Nothing is as vile,” she interrupted, speaking from the code by which she had been reared. “It is for liars only — who are first cousin to thieves — that there is no hope. It is in falsehood only that there is real loss of honour.”

“You are defending that satyr, I think,” he said frostily.

“I desire to be just.”

“Justice may seem to you a different matter when at last you shall have resolved yourself to become Marquise de La Tour d’Azyr.” He spoke bitterly.

“I don’t think that I shall ever take that resolve.”

“But you are still not sure — in spite of everything.”

“Can one ever be sure of anything in this world?”

“Yes. One can be sure of being foolish.”

Either she did not hear or did not heed him.

“You do not of your own knowledge know that it was not as M. de La Tour d’Azyr asserts — that he went to the Feydau that night?”

“I don’t,” he admitted. “It is of course possible. But does it matter?”

“It might matter. Tell me; what became of La Binet after all?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” She turned to consider him. “And you can say it with that indifference! I thought . . . I thought you loved her, Andre.”

“So did I, for a little while. I was mistaken. It required a La Tour d’Azyr to disclose the truth to me. They have their uses, these gentlemen. They help stupid fellows like myself to perceive important truths. I was fortunate that revelation in my case preceded marriage. I can now look back upon the episode with equanimity and thankfulness for my near escape from the consequences of what was no more than an aberration of the senses. It is a thing commonly confused with love. The experience, as you see, was very instructive.”

She looked at him in frank surprise.

“Do you know, Andre, I sometimes think that you have no heart.”

“Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence. And what of yourself, Aline? What of your own attitude from the outset where M. de La Tour d’Azyr is concerned? Does that show heart? If I were to tell you what it really shows, we should end by quarrelling again, and God knows I can’t afford to quarrel with you now. I . . . I shall take another way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, nothing at the moment, for you are not in any danger of marrying that animal.”

“And if I were?”

“Ah! In that case affection for you would discover to me some means of preventing it — unless . . . ” He paused.

“Unless?” she demanded, challengingly, drawn to the full of her short height, her eyes imperious.

“Unless you could also tell me that you loved him,” said he simply, whereat she was as suddenly and most oddly softened. And then he added, shaking his head: “But that of course is impossible.”

“Why?” she asked him, quite gently now.

“Because you are what you are, Aline — utterly good and pure and adorable. Angels do not mate with devils. His wife you might become, but never his mate, Aline — never.”

They had reached the wrought-iron gates at the end of the avenue. Through these they beheld the waiting yellow chaise which had brought Andre–Louis. From near at hand came the creak of other wheels, the beat of other hooves, and now another vehicle came in sight, and drew to a stand-still beside the yellow chaise — a handsome equipage with polished mahogany panels on which the gold and azure of armorial bearings flashed brilliantly in the sunlight. A footman swung to earth to throw wide the gates; but in that moment the lady who occupied the carriage, perceiving Aline, waved to her and issued a command.

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The postilion drew rein, and the footman opened the door, letting down the steps and proffering his arm to his mistress to assist her to alight, since that was the wish she had expressed. Then he opened one wing of the iron gates, and held it for her. She was a woman of something more than forty, who once must have been very lovely, who was very lovely still with the refining quality that age brings to some women. Her dress and carriage alike advertised great rank.

“I take my leave here, since you have a visitor,” said Andre–Louis.

“But it is an old acquaintance of your own, Andre. You remember Mme. la Comtesse de Plougastel?”

He looked at the approaching lady, whom Aline was now hastening forward to meet, and because she was named to him he recognized her. He must, he thought, had he but looked, have recognized her without prompting anywhere at any time, and this although it was some sixteen years since last he had seen her. The sight of her now brought it all back to him — a treasured memory that had never permitted itself to be entirely overlaid by subsequent events.

When he was a boy of ten, on the eve of being sent to school at Rennes, she had come on a visit to his godfather, who was her cousin. It happened that at the time he was taken by Rabouillet to the Manor of Gavrillac, and there he had been presented to Mme. de Plougastel. The great lady, in all the glory then of her youthful beauty, with her gentle, cultured voice — so cultured that she had seemed to speak a language almost unknown to the little Breton lad — and her majestic air of the great world, had scared him a little at first. Very gently had she allayed those fears of his, and by some mysterious enchantment she had completely enslaved his regard. He recalled now the terror in which he had gone to the embrace to which he was bidden, and the subsequent reluctance with which he had left those soft round arms. He remembered, too, how sweetly she had smelled and the very perfume she had used, a perfume as of lilac — for memory is singularly tenacious in these matters.

For three days whilst she had been at Gavrillac, he had gone daily to the manor, and so had spent hours in her company. A childless woman with the maternal instinct strong within her, she had taken this precociously intelligent, wide-eyed lad to her heart.

“Give him to me, Cousin Quintin,” he remembered her saying on the last of those days to his godfather. “Let me take him back with me to Versailles as my adopted child.”

But the Seigneur had gravely shaken his head in silent refusal, and there had been no further question of such a thing. And then, when she said good-bye to him — the thing came flooding back to him now — there had been tears in her eyes.

“Think of me sometimes, Andre–Louis,” had been her last words.

He remembered how flattered he had been to have won within so short a time the affection of this great lady. The thing had given him a sense of importance that had endured for months thereafter, finally to fade into oblivion.

But all was vividly remembered now upon beholding her again, after sixteen years, profoundly changed and matured, the girl — for she had been no more in those old days — sunk in this worldly woman with the air of calm dignity and complete self-possession. Yet, he insisted, he must have known her anywhere again.