Rafael Sabatini - The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

“Now — for the first and the last time. I am going. It is not likely that we shall ever meet again — that I shall ever see any of you again — you who should have been the nearest and dearest to me. We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose. In life we pay for the evil that in life we do. That is the lesson that I have learnt to-night. By an act of betrayal I begot unknown to me a son who, whilst as ignorant as myself of our relationship, has come to be the evil genius of my life, to cross and thwart me, and finally to help to pull me down in ruin. It is just — poetically just. My full and resigned acceptance of that fact is the only atonement I can offer you.”

He stooped and took one of madame’s hands that lay limply in her lap.

“Good-bye, Therese!” His voice broke. He had reached the end of his iron self-control.

She rose and clung to him a moment, unashamed before them. The ashes of that dead romance had been deeply stirred this night, and deep down some lingering embers had been found that glowed brightly now before their final extinction. Yet she made no attempt to detain him. She understood that their son had pointed out the only wise, the only possible course, and was thankful that M. de La Tour d’Azyr accepted it.

“God keep you, Gervais,” she murmured. “You will take the safe-conduct, and . . . and you will let me know when you are safe?”

He held her face between his hands an instant; then very gently kissed her and put her from him. Standing erect, and outwardly calm again, he looked across at Andre–Louis who was proffering him a sheet of paper.

“It is the safe-conduct. Take it, monsieur. It is my first and last gift to you, and certainly the last gift I should ever have thought of making you — the gift of life. In a sense it makes us quits. The irony, sir, is not mine, but Fate’s. Take it, monsieur, and go in peace.”

M. de La Tour d’Azyr took it. His eyes looked hungrily into the lean face confronting him, so sternly set. He thrust the paper into his bosom, and then abruptly, convulsively, held out his hand. His son’s eyes asked a question.

“Let there be peace between us, in God’s name,” said the Marquis thickly.

Pity stirred at last in Andre–Louis. Some of the sternness left his face. He sighed. “Good-bye, monsieur,” he said.

“You are hard,” his father told him, speaking wistfully. “But perhaps you are in the right so to be. In other circumstances I should have been proud to have owned you as my son. As it is . . . ” He broke off abruptly, and as abruptly added, “Good-bye.”

He loosed his son’s hand and stepped back. They bowed formally to each other. And then M. de La Tour d’Azyr bowed to Mlle. de Kercadiou in utter silence, a bow that contained something of utter renunciation, of finality.

That done he turned and walked stiffly out of the room, and so out of all their lives. Months later they were to hear of him in the service of the Emperor of Austria.

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Andre–Louis took the air next morning on the terrace at Meudon. The hour was very early, and the newly risen sun was transmuting into diamonds the dewdrops that still lingered on the lawn. Down in the valley, five miles away, the morning mists were rising over Paris. Yet early as it was that house on the hill was astir already, in a bustle of preparation for the departure that was imminent.

Andre–Louis had won safely out of Paris last night with his mother and Aline, and to-day they were to set out all of them for Coblenz.

To Andre–Louis, sauntering there with hands clasped behind him and head hunched between his shoulders — for life had never been richer in material for reflection — came presently Aline through one of the glass doors from the library.

“You’re early astir,” she greeted him.

“Faith, yes. I haven’t been to bed. No,” he assured her, in answer to her exclamation. “I spent the night, or what was left of it, sitting at the window thinking.”

“My poor Andre!”

“You describe me perfectly. I am very poor — for I know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized. Then . . . ” He threw out his arms, and let them fall again. His face she observed was very drawn and haggard.

She paced with him along the old granite balustrade over which the geraniums flung their mantle of green and scarlet.

“Have you decided what you are going to do?” she asked him.

“I have decided that I have no choice. I, too, must emigrate. I am lucky to be able to do so, lucky to have found no one amid yesterday’s chaos in Paris to whom I could report myself as I foolishly desired, else I might no longer be armed with these.” He drew from his pocket the powerful passport of the Commission of Twelve, enjoining upon all Frenchmen to lend him such assistance as he might require, and warning those who might think of hindering him that they did so at their own peril. He spread it before her. “With this I conduct you all safely to the frontier. Over the frontier M. de Kercadiou and Mme. de Plougastel will have to conduct me; and then we shall be quits.”

“Quits?” quoth she. “But you will be unable to return!”

“You conceive, of course, my eagerness to do so. My child, in a day or two there will be enquiries. It will be asked what has become of me. Things will transpire. Then the hunt will start. But by then we shall be well upon our way, well ahead of any possible pursuit. You don’t imagine that I could ever give the government any satisfactory explanation of my absence — assuming that any government remains to which to explain it?”

“You mean . . . that you will sacrifice your future, this career upon which you have embarked?” It took her breath away.

“In the pass to which things have come there is no career for me down there — at least no honest one. And I hope you do not think that I could be dishonest. It is the day of the Dantons, and the Marats, the day of the rabble. The reins of government will be tossed to the populace, or else the populace, drunk with the conceit with which the Dantons and the Marats have filled it, will seize the reins by force. Chaos must follow, and a despotism of brutes and apes, a government of the whole by its lowest parts. It cannot endure, because unless a nation is ruled by its best elements it must wither and decay.”

“I thought you were a republican,” said she.

“Why, so I am. I am talking like one. I desire a society which selects its rulers from the best elements of every class and denies the right of any class or corporation to usurp the government to itself — whether it be the nobles, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. For government by any one class is fatal to the welfare of the whole. Two years ago our ideal seemed to have been realized. The monopoly of power had been taken from the class that had held it too long and too unjustly by the hollow right of heredity. It had been distributed as evenly as might be throughout the State, and if men had only paused there, all would have been well. But our impetus carried us too far, the privileged orders goaded us on by their very opposition, and the result is the horror of which yesterday you saw no more than the beginnings. No, no,” he ended. “Careers there may be for venal place-seekers, for opportunists; but none for a man who desires to respect himself. It is time to go. I make no sacrifice in going.”

“But where will you go? What will you do?”

“Oh, something. Consider that in four years I have been lawyer, politician, swordsman, and buffoon — especially the latter. There is always a place in the world for Scaramouche. Besides, do you know that unlike Scaramouche I have been oddly provident? I am the owner of a little farm in Saxony. I think that agriculture might suit me. It is a meditative occupation; and when all is said, I am not a man of action. I haven’t the qualities for the part.”