Chapter 30 The Gamester by Rafael Sabatini
THE PASSPORT
He sat once more, at dusk, in that spacious, lofty, handsome room of his, panelled in dark Cordovan leather, between pilasters with gilded capitals, enriched by its choice pictures and sumptuous furnishings, whilst a mob, athirst for his blood, now that he was stripped of all his greatness, howled bestially under his windows, held at bay only by the Regent's musketeers. For word had gone forth that he was dismissed with ignominy--flung to the lions, in the Regent's own words--and the leonine rabble, regarding him as a legitimate prey, was avid to avenge upon him the ruin and misery of France.
With him, pale and uneasy, were William Law, his secretary Lacroix, a confidential clerk from the bank named Normand, who had taken McWhirter's place, and the directors of the two principal amalgamated companies. They were receiving his final instructions, which he delivered pacing the long chamber, his shoulders bowed, his hands behind his back.
When the last word on the subject of finance was spoken, Lacroix, Norman and the others took a distressed, affectionate leave of him, and the brothers were left alone together.
"And so, Will, we reach the end. An ignoble end. By way of the Capital we come to the Tarpeian Rock. It may be that I should have given heed to the geese when they cackled their warnings. It may be that I sought to grasp more than a man may hold: that I should have remained content, as you begged me, with the Bank, and not sought the manipulation of a country's commerce. It is even possible that d'Argenson said no more than is true when he borrowed the more honest opinion of d'Aguesseau that the business of government is to govern and not to trade. Yet if the matter had been fairly tested perhaps the result might have been different. I do not know. But I must think so for my credit's sake."
William, watching him, listening in distress, was too generous to say that the end was no more than he had foreseen. "Conjecture will be idle now, John," was all he said. "For the rest, you may leave it to me to clear things up for the best."
His brother paused in his pacing to lay an affectionate hand upon his shoulder. "God knows, Will, I am sorry to leave you the burden of this last task."
"You have no choice, and you need take no thought for me. What, after all, is my task when compared with yours? Our concern now is how to get you away. You hear those infernal wolves. How they've changed their howl since a year ago, when they packed the street to shout 'Long live Monsieur Lass!' Given the chance they'll eat you alive."
"Faith, it might be best."
"And Catherine?"
Mr Law turned away with a gesture of helplessness. "Best for her, too, poor soul. Prosperous, the master of fortune, I was of little account to her. Perhaps of no more account than I deserved to be. Broken, I shall be of none."
"You make too sure, John."
He shrugged. "We judge the future from the past."
"So we do. But how much may you not have contributed to that past? I have urged you more than once to ask yourself."
"And I have been asking myself just that. Making an examination of conscience, as they say in the faith which I embraced for worldly advantage. But I haven't found the answer. And now there are more urgent matters to engage us. We haven't much time. Let us come to the essentials."
He had spoken impatiently. When he resumed again he was more deliberate.
"Once it is known that I have gone, this siege will cease and Catherine's way will be clear. For the rest...she has her jewels. Their value is considerable. There is this palace." Wistfully he looked round at the room's opulent appointments which he had assembled with such appreciative care, to render it a mirror of his own fastidious mind. "Then there is the property of Guermande. It is all that I am asking the Regent to allow me to retain, so that I may make some provision for her. When sold the proceeds should not be negligible. There are the children, too. God knows I am no more of a success as a father than as a husband or a financier."
"And you, John? What provision have you made for yourself?"
Mr Law shrugged. "I take with me eight hundred louis in gold. More than enough for immediate needs."
"And after that?" William spoke in dismay.
"Perhaps Madame Fortune will provide, unless she has now jilted me for good and all. Anyway, it is all that I take away of the two millions that I brought to France. I still have my wits, though, from what has happened, you may doubt it."
William's glance was sorrowful. "Are you to go back to your gamester's trade?"
"When did I relinquish it?"
"But to live by the turn of a card, the fall of the dice!"
"Always provided that I get away with my life. If I don't I shall be spared the trouble. And there is one thing I forgot. I am without a passport. Obtain me one tomorrow from His Highness, and send it after me to Guermande. I'll stay there till it comes."
He slipped away late that night, after the mob, grown tired of its bloodthirsty clamour, had gone home to bed.
Despite William's earnest pleading, he took no leave of Catherine, fearing emotional remonstrances, judging it best for both of them in all the circumstances. She did not even know that he had gone until the following morning, when William handed her the letter her husband had left for her, in which he sued her pardon for his past shortcomings and for all the distress with which, by the malignity of fortune, he was now visiting her.
She wept as she read, and wild and stormy were her upbraidings of William for not having warned her of his brother's intentions.
By then Mr Law was well on his way to Brie and the Château de Guermande, which he scarcely regarded any longer as his own. With Grandval and his wife, the couple who were its caretakers, for only servants, he waited there three days impatiently for the passport that should enable him to leave France and go once more upon his travels. He remembered how Catherine in the past had so frequently taunted him with the complaint that she was married to the Wandering Jew. This time, at least, he would spare her the grievance that he dragged her with him from land to land.
He thought of her and the children with some wistfulness in that time of brooding, pondering how different life might have been had she been more patient with him and he with her. He almost surprised himself by the sense of loneliness the absence of wife and children brought him. A failure in all things, he told himself, it was as a husband and a father that he had failed most abjectly. His boy, he reflected, had been the playmate of the little king; his girl, scarcely in her teens, had been sought in marriage by some of the best blood in France. Hereafter, with obscurity for only prospect, they might come to curse him for having raised them to those dizzy heights merely to cast them down again into obscurity.
If in his present loneliness and in his groping for a future the daydream of seeking Margaret in England crossed his troubled mind, it scarcely now presented itself in the guise of a temptation. Pride alone would have forbidden him to go empty-handed to one to whom even when his hands were full he had not dared at the last to offer himself. But there was more than pride to forbid it. There was the memory of those words of hers, that happiness is not to be built upon another's sorrow. And he now believed that happiness with Margaret, even if attainable, would bring Catherine a grief that was not merely, as once he might have supposed, of lacerated vanity.
On the dull evening of his third day of waiting at Guermande he was moodily pacing the terrace when a great travelling carriage drawn by four splendid horses, came swaying through the now leafless park.
He stood still in the chill air, puzzled, to watch its approach.
As it swept to a halt at the foot of the terrace steps, he made out on its panels the arms of the Duke of Bourbon, and his wonder was increased. The postilions drew rein, the single footman swung himself to the ground to open the door and let down the step, and then his amazement reached its climax as he watched Catherine alight, followed by the two children.
For a moment he stood as if petrified. Then, when light and lissom as a young girl she sprang up the steps, he roused himself, and hurried halfway down to meet her. He caught her by the shoulders and whilst she was between laughter and tears he showed her a face that was drawn with pain.
"Catherine! Why are you here?"
"To bring you your passport," she answered lightly, as if it were a jest.
"Was that necessary? Would not a courier have served?" His tone was gently reproachful. "It was to spare us this--to spare both of us--that I left without farewells. Now...Oh, but come in, come in. It is cold and you will be tired. I will call Grandval."
Confused, bewildered, he moved towards the house, the children, two well-grown striplings, clinging to him, one on each side, and Catherine keeping pace with them. The footman followed with valises.
She was telling him that the Duke of Bourbon, like a true friend, of which few remained them, had sent his travelling carriage as a parting gift to John Law. But to this, his mind in travail, he scarcely gave heed.
The elderly Grandval and his buxom wife came hastening to meet them and to take his orders.
At last, in the rather sombre hall of the château, with its ponderous Louis XIII furnishings, the children having been carried off in the care of Grandval's wife, he and Catherine faced each other, and with a hand that shook she proffered him a parchment. "The passport," she said, and her quivering voice broke on the word, her eyes watched him anxiously.
He took it, and put her in a high-backed chair beside the massive oak table. Infected by her malaise, he was at a loss for words. "I think," he said at last, because he must say something, "that you always loved Guermande. It is dull now. But in spring and summer you know how beautiful it can be. I hope that you will be happy here. If not, you can sell it. It is yours. It...it is all that remained me in France, or anywhere. Not much after what has been, what might have been. But..."
"Far more than I need. More than I want," she answered him. "It is not only at this time of year that I should find it dull. Dull and lonely. Very lonely." She rested her head against the back of the chair, and closed her eyes as if in weariness of body and of soul. She was very white, her travelling cloak had fallen open, and under the muslin fichu her bosom rose and fell in deepening agitation.
He considered her with wistful concern. "You are tired," he said. "A glass of wine will revive you. Grandval will be bringing it."
He unfolded the parchment, and to scan it in the fading daylight he turned his back to a high window. An exclamation broke from him. "Why, what is this? You are included here."
She spoke as if suffocating. "Is it not my right?"
"Your right!" He laughed. "But is it a right that you would wish to claim at such a time?"
She sat up, and gathered strength. "The time above all entitled me to claim it. That is why I have, myself, brought you the passport. I do not choose to be left behind."
He stared at her, and saw the tears roll down a face that for all its pallor preserved an odd composure. A strange gift hers, he thought, to weep without grimacing.
"You told Will once," she went on, "that all that I loved in you were the splendours you provided. It was the cruellest of many cruel things you have thought of me, and the most unjust. I am here to prove it." Then in a quickening tone, she asked him, as she had asked him once before: "What splendours were yours when I came to you in Amsterdam so many years ago? You were then a broken proscribed fugitive, John, as you are now. I came to you then because I thought that you must need a woman's breast to weep on. And that is why I come to you now. But for your distress at this ruin of your ambitions, I could thank God that it has overtaken us. For it gives me this opportunity to prove your error." Very softly, she ended: "If you want me, John, we will go on our travels together again. If not..."
He sank to his knees beside her and put his head in her lap. He, too, was weeping.
THE END