Читать книгу The Quest of Glory - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 9

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The winter of the year 1742 had been the coldest, in every part of Europe, that had been known since 1709, and the following spring was also remarkable—for heat and sunshine and rainless days and nights.

By early April the chestnuts outside the residence of the Clapiers family in Aix were in perfect bloom and the white, golden-hearted flowers sprang from the wide bronze-green leaves and expanded to the summer-like sun; beneath the trees was a deep rich-coloured shade that lay up the double steps of the house and across the high door with its fine moulding of handsome wood. The shutters were closed against the heat; the whole street was empty of everything save the perfume of the lilac, roses, and syringa growing in the gardens of the mansions.

This languid peace of afternoon was broken by the arrival of a gentleman on horseback followed by a servant; he drew rein under the chestnut trees, dismounted, gave his horse to the man, and rather slowly ascended the pleasant shaded steps. Without knocking he opened the door and stepped at once into the dark, cool hall. A clock struck three, and he waited till the chimes had ceased, then opened a door on his left and entered a large low room full of shadow that looked out on to a great garden and a young beech covered with red-gold leaves in which the sun blazed splendidly.

Luc de Clapiers stood gazing at the home he had not seen for nine years. Nothing was altered. On just such a day as this he had left it; but he remembered that the beech tree had been smaller then and not so prodigal of glorious foliage.

There were the same dark walls, the same heavy mahogany furniture, the same picture of “The Sacrifice of Isaac” opposite the window, the same carved sideboard bearing silver and glass, the candlesticks and snuffers, the brass lamp and the taper-holders. Above the mantelpiece were, deep carved, the de Clapiers arms, still brightly coloured, fasces of argent and silver and the chief or—and on the mantelpiece the same dark marble clock.

Luc crossed to the window that was not far above the ground and looked down the garden; in the distance were two gentlemen—one young and one old—followed by three bright dogs.

Luc put his hand to his eyes, then unlatched the window, that opened casement fashion. The sound, slight as it was, carried in the absolute stillness; the two gentlemen who were approaching the house glanced up.

They beheld, framed in the darkness of the room, the slim figure of a young soldier in a blue and silver uniform, wearing a light grey travelling cloak.

“Luc!” cried the younger, and the other gave a great start.

Luc stepped from the window and crossed to his father. He went simply on his knees before him and kissed his hands, while the old Marquis murmured, “You never wrote to me! You never wrote to me!”

“No,” added the younger brother reproachfully, “you never wrote to us, Luc.”

Luc admitted that he had not, beyond the first letter that told of his return from Bohemia.

“I did not know if I should be able to come to Aix,” he said, “forgive me, Monseigneur.”

“You have got leave now, my child?” cried the old Marquis, grasping his shoulder.

“Yes, my father, I have some leisure now,” he answered rather sadly.

“Come into the house,” said his brother, who was much moved. “I can hardly believe it is you—you have changed a great deal in nine years.”

They entered the house—the Marquise was abroad; the servants were roused. Luc heard the orders for the preparation of his chamber and the stabling of his horse with a thrill of pure pleasure; it seemed that he had been very long away from home.

His father made him sit by his right at the long black table that was now covered with wine glasses and dishes of fruit, and kept his eyes fixed on him with an earnest look of affection.

“You are very pale and thin,” he said.

The brother touched the young soldier’s hand lovingly. “Have you been ill, Luc?” he asked.

Luc blushed; he was conscious of his frail appearance, of his occasional cough, of his languid movements.

“Yes, I was ill at Eger,” he admitted reluctantly, “after the retreat from Prague.”

The other two men were silent. By that retreat M. de Belleisle’s name had become accursed through France: in ten days he had lost nearly twenty-two thousand men. The scandal and horror of it had brought M. de Fleury to patch a hasty peace with Austria.

“And do you recall,” added Luc sadly, “Hippolyte de Seytres, Marquis de Caumont, whom I wrote of to you very often? He was my ‘sous lieutenant.’ I heard last week that he had died in Prague just before the garrison capitulated in January.”

“I am sorry for de Caumont!” exclaimed the old Marquis, thinking of the father.

“He was only eighteen,” said Luc, “and a sweet nature. M. d’Espagnac, also, who came from Provence, died in my arms. I became delirious with death.”

“It was very terrible?” questioned his father gravely.

“Ah, it was of all campaigns the most disastrous, the most unfortunate. Let me not recall those black nights and days—those marches with hunger and cold beside us, the disorder, the misery—the poor remnant of a glorious army that at last reached the frontier of France—leaving our blood and bones thick on the fields of Germany.” His eyes and voice flashed and a clear colour dyed his cheek. “Belleisle is punished,” he added. “His pride is cast down, his war ended in failure. But is he humiliated enough for all the lives he so wantonly flung away?”

“They say Cardinal Fleury cannot sleep at night because of it,” remarked the old Marquis, “that he always sees snow and blood about him. But you have returned to us, my son.”

Luc gave him a long, soft, mournful look, then glanced at his brother Joseph.

“Yes, I lived,” he said thoughtfully; “but I have not come home gloriously.”

“There is time ahead of you,” answered his father proudly. “I know that promotion is slow. But M. de Biron told me he had no fault to find with you.”

Luc sat silent. He was gazing intently at the fine figure and noble face of the old man in his murrey-coloured velvet and delicate lawn cravat, powdered peruke, and long embroidered satin waistcoat, his firm right hand with the white cornelian signet ring that rested on the table. His delicate features and steady eyes, his pose and movements were all instinct with tradition, nobility of race, and nobility of nature. He belonged to the pure stock of the provincial aristocracy that had never waited at any court or been favoured by any king, but who had been “grand seigneur” at the time of the Crusades.

The younger brother was like him and like Luc: sweetness and dignity mingled in his features. He was dressed richly, but far from extravagantly, and in a fashion some years old. His handsome brown hair hung in natural curls round his face, unconfined by any ribbon. His expression was at once more simple and less ardent than that of the young captain, at whom he gazed with affection, respect, and admiration.

Luc looked from one to the other of these two fair faces, both so serene and loving in expression, and the paleness of his countenance increased, a lustre as of tears came into his eyes. He put his hand on to his father’s and clasped it so firmly that the signet ring was pressed into his palm.

“No, not now,” he said—“not now.”

“What not now?” smiled the old Marquis.

“That is all I have to say, Monseigneur,” replied Luc, with a sudden air of weariness. “Tell me what has happened in Provence.”

He turned his eyes on Joseph, who blushed and declared humbly that the news of Aix was not worth offering to one who had seen Paris and foreign countries.

“But heretics are spreading ever among us,” put in the older M. de Vauvenargues. “And we very often hear the pernicious name of Voltaire.”

The captain’s hazel eyes dropped; he held his father’s hand even more firmly.

“If there is a man who should be burnt in the market-place it is M. de Voltaire,” continued the old Marquis. “He and his books and his doctrines burnt—together.”

Luc removed his hand and rose; he asked if his mother would not soon return, then raised his hitherto untouched glass of amber white wine and drank it slowly. Joseph had a delicate feeling that his brother would like to be alone with their father.

“I will see if your chamber is set,” he excused himself, and left them quietly.

The Marquis was following him, but Luc set down his glass sharply and said, “Father!”

The old man turned. He thought that this was the explanation of the “not now” of Luc. He closed the door and returned to the table.

Luc stood with his head a little bent on his bosom, the sun, that filtered through the beech leaves without, setting his silver broideries aquiver with light and sparkling in the loosened threads of his brown locks.

“My poor boy,”—his father took him gently by the shoulders—“you are ill.”

Luc raised steady and beautifully smiling eyes. “No, Monseigneur, not ill.” He paused a moment, then added, “But not strong—not strong enough for a soldier.”

The Marquis did not comprehend. Luc laid his hands on his father’s breast and a look of faintness came over his face, but his eyes glowed more ardent and brilliant than ever.

“I must leave the army, father. I must send in my resignation to-night. Bohemia broke my health. France—France has no further need of me.”

“Luc!”

The old man stepped back and stood rigid, as if the words were so many arrows to pinion him.

The young soldier took hold of the back of the dark mahogany chair in which he had been sitting.

“Monseigneur,” he said with great sweetness, “I am a disappointment to you that must be hard to bear.... I have been nine years in the army and am no more than captain. I must now leave this honourable employment with ruined health and a ruined fortune.”

The Marquis stood without movement. Luc proceeded to tell him, gently and with courage, of the great expenses of the war, of his illness at Eger, of the necessity he had been under of parting with most of his property in Paris to meet his debts, of the doctor’s advice that the bitter hardship of the retreat from Prague had sown the seeds of perpetual weakness and suffering in his breast.

“But I shall live many years,” he finished, “and there are other ways of glory.”

With these simple words was the tale told of his life’s hopes, his dearest dreams utterly vanquished by brutal circumstance. Even his father did not know what ambitions he had warmed in his heart only a few months ago; even his father did not know from what horrors of despair he had won his lofty sweetness of acceptance.

“You must not grieve, Monseigneur—soldiers expect such fates, and I——” Then quite suddenly his voice failed him, and he turned away his head, almost violently, and gazed at the placid gardens and the gorgeous beech tree.

The Marquis’s chin sank on his bosom; he also had had his secret dreams that he was now called upon to relinquish. This was his favourite son standing before him and saying he was a useless invalid. “A useless invalid”—the words surged up in the old noble’s throat till he felt as if he had spoken them.

“Forgive me,” he muttered; “I was not expecting this—no, not expecting this.” He raised his head and said in a firmer voice, “M. de Caumont would be glad to be speaking to his son on any terms. I must not be ungrateful—no, I must not be ungrateful.”

Luc turned towards his father eyes that seemed to have widened and darkened. “I have thought of that,” he replied. “I once indeed wished to die as Hippolyte and M. d’Espagnac, but I felt——” He paused again; a certain diffidence that had always made him reserved and a true modesty prevented him from uttering his deep conviction of gifts—nay, genius—that must yet find expression and recognition.

No such thought consoled the old Marquis. He saw his son’s career broken at the beginning and his son’s fortune lost. He was not himself a wealthy man; he could do little more than give him a home—and it was an inglorious end.

But the noble rallied.

“Your mother will be glad,” he said, with a pathetic smile. “I think she has not had an easy moment since you went to the war.”

Luc could not answer. He saw that his father was looking not at him, but at the famous uniform of the régiment du roi that he wore, and, like a picture suddenly thrust before his eyes, came the long-forgotten recollection of the day his father had bought him his commission and of their mutual pride in the trappings and symbols of war: there had been a de Clapiers in the army for many hundred years. Thinking of this, and seeing the old man’s wistful glance, Luc felt the bitterness that had smitten him on his sick couch at Eger re-arise in his heart.

“My God!” he cried softly, “it is hard to be a useless man.”

He kissed his father’s hand, and then went up softly to that chamber he had left nine years ago in a tumult of glorious anticipation, of surging ambitions, of pure resolutions. The anticipations had been disappointed, the ambitions had ended, but the resolutions had been kept. Luc de Clapiers had done nothing since he had left his boyhood’s home of which any man could be ashamed.

He thought of his mother as he entered the room, for she had promised to leave it untouched for him, and he saw at once how lovingly she had kept her word. Certainly, the red and gold hangings on the bed and the windows had been removed, but carefully preserved, for the servants had already brought them out and laid them across the cabinet by the window—the beautiful curved bow-window with the latticed panes bearing the little coat of arms in each in leaded, coloured glass.

There were his chairs, his books, his candlesticks, his low, wide bed with the four carved posts, his crucifix, his picture of St. Cecilia with her music from the Italian, even his violin and his old torn papers in a green portfolio. He went round the room, vaguely touching these objects that were free even from a speck of dust.

Only one thing was missing—a wooden figure of St. George that had stood on a bracket in the corner. Luc had been fervently religious in his youth and passionately devoted to this image that he had even wished to take to the army with him. His mother, he remembered, had never liked this figure, which she had declared uncouth and hideous. Now, it seemed, she had taken her revenge, for the bracket was empty.

Luc went to the window, where the chestnut leaves were peering against the pane. The green of them, with the sun behind, was translucent as jade, and the workmanship of the white curling flowers seemed a beauty beyond bearing.

As Luc looked at them he took off his sword, his sash, his scarf, his coat, and laid them across the old wand-bottomed chair in the window-seat.

Then he crossed to the square tortoiseshell-framed mirror that hung by the bed and looked at himself in the murky, greenish glass.

No longer a soldier ... he had taken off his uniform for the last time. He stood the same as when he had last left this chamber, save that it was then all before him, now all behind. He gazed at his own face, white above the white shirt, still noble and pleasing, still young, but frail and wasted and sad.

Instinctively he turned, as he had done in his childish troubles, to the corner where St. George had stood. The loss struck him afresh as he, for a second time, beheld an empty bracket, and was symbolic also, for he had travelled far from the help of Christianity since he used to pray to St. George; yet the vacant place smote him. He turned at the opening of the door; a woman came towards him speechlessly, her lips moving and her eyes full of a kind of trembling light.

He sprang to meet her and clasped her strongly; she thrust into his arms what seemed a lump of wood.

“Safe, dear, safe. Did you think I had destroyed it?” she managed to say.

He kissed her cheek and then her hands. She began crying with pleasure. “St. George, Luc,” she murmured. “I have kept him very carefully.”

The young soldier looked at the idol of his childhood; his emotions reached the unbearable agony caused by dim recollections the hand of tenderness beckons from the past. He laid St. George on the bed.

“Oh, my mother!” he cried, in a sinking voice. He fell on his knees, hid his face, and wept.