Book I Chapter 4 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
THE HERITAGE
A letter worded with portentous obscurity took Monsieur de Morlaix on a blustering morning of May to the dingy office of Messrs. Sharpe, Kellaway & Sharpe in Lincoln's Inn.
He was received by Mr. Edgar Sharpe with a deference such as that worthy man of law had never shown him on any former visit. A clerk was required to dust a chair before Monsieur de Morlaix could be permitted to sit. Mr. Sharpe, himself, remained standing as if in an august presence.
The attorney, a large, rubicund man in a grizzle wig, and of a benignity of expression that would have adorned a bishop or a butler, hummed and purred over him as a preliminary.
"It is . . . Let me see, dear sir. It will be fully a year since I last enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing you."
"Myself in your place I shouldn't call it a satisfaction, much less an enjoyment."
Misunderstanding him, Mr. Sharpe put away his smile. "But how true, sir! How very true! You do well to reprobate my terms. Most ill-chosen. For the occasion--I should say, the sad occasion--was the lamentable decease of Madame your Mother, and the settlement of her little estate, in which matter it is a satisfaction to remember that I had the . . . ah . . . honour of being of some service to you."
So much pronounced by way of funeral oration, Mr. Sharpe permitted the smile to return. "I'll take the liberty of saying, sir, that you look well; extremely well. It suggests--and I trust it rightly suggests--that you have not found life too . . . ah . . . onerous in the intervening year."
"My academy prospers." A smile lengthened the ironic mouth. "In a quarrelsome world there is always work for men of my profession, as of yours."
For a moment Mr. Sharpe seemed in danger of indignation at an association of professions between which he could perceive no similarity. But he recovered betimes.
"Most gratifying," he purred. "Especially in days when so many of your fellow-exiles are suffering want."
"Faith, sir, as for my exile, I bear it with comfortable unconsciousness. The real exile for me would lie in leaving England."
"Yet that, sir, is something to which you must have been brought up to be prepared."
"Having nothing, I was brought up to be prepared for anything."
Mr. Sharpe sucked in his breath on a whinnying laugh at what he conceived a flash of humour. "Well, well, sir. I have news for you." His rubicund countenance became solemn once more. "News of the greatest consequence. Your brother is dead."
"Lord, sir! Did I have a brother?"
"Is it possible that you are not aware of it?"
"And not yet persuaded of it, Mr. Sharpe."
"Dear me! Dear me!"
"There is some error in your information. I know myself to be my mother's only child."
"Ah! But you had a father, sir."
"I believe it's usual," said Quentin.
"And your mother was his second wife. He was the Marquis of Chavaray. Bertrand de Morlaix de Chesnières, Marquis of Chavaray."
The young man's grey eyes opened wide. Both names had lately been impressed upon him. Words spoken by the Duc de Lionne came floating back into his memory. Then the lawyer claimed his further attention. He was consulting a sheet which he had taken from his writing-table.
"His elder son, your brother, Étienne de Morlaix de Chesnières, the last Marquis, died two months ago in a nursing-home in Paris. The nursing-home of a Doctor Bazire, in the Rue du Bac."
Morlaix reflected mechanically that this would be the madhouse to which Lionne had alluded.
"He died without issue," the attorney concluded, "therefore I salute you, my lord, as the present Marquis of Chavaray and heir to half a province. And I think that I may say without fear of contradiction that few dukedoms in France are as wealthy as this marquisate of yours. I have a schedule here of your exact possessions."
There was a long silence, at the end of which Morlaix shrugged and laughed. "Sir, sir! There is, of course, some grievous error. These Chesnières bear the name of Morlaix. Hence the confusion. It is . . ."
"There is no confusion. No error." Mr. Sharpe was primly emphatic. "It amazes me that you should suppose it; that you should not know, at least, that your name, too, is Chesnières."
"But it cannot be, or I should know it. What purpose . . ."
Again he was interrupted. "By your leave, sir. By your leave. It is on your baptismal certificate, of which I have here a certified copy, as well as the other documents necessary to establish your identity beyond possibility of doubt. The troubles of the times and the difficulties of communication in view of the war with France are responsible for their delay in reaching me. They come to me, with instructions to communicate with you at once if you should still be alive, from a lawyer of Angers named Lesdiguières."
"Lesdiguières!" Morlaix sat up. "That was my mother's maiden name."
"I am aware of it, of course. And the writer is her brother, your lordship's uncle, who is prepared to take all necessary steps to establish you in your heritage."
Morlaix passed a hand across his brow. "This . . . I find it all very difficult to believe. If it is correct, my mother would have been Marquise de Chavaray. And that she never was."
"Pardon. She was, indeed, but did not choose so to call herself. It . . . ah . . . frankly now, it astonishes me to find your lordship so . . . ah . . . uninformed upon your own self. But I think I can throw some light on the matter, although I confess that there is much that I may be unable to explain.
"It is no less than twenty-five years since Madame la Marquise--that is, Madame your Mother--was brought to me by her distant kinsman and my very good client, the late Joshua Patterson of Esher in the County of Surrey. The Marquis Bertrand de Chavaray had then been dead six months, and for some reason never disclosed to me, his widow had decided not only to leave France, but to renounce the advantages of fortune, to which as Dowager Marchioness of Chavaray she was entitled. Her maternal grandmother had been English, and in seeking what I may presume to term shelter here with her English kinsfolk, she brought with her no property or means of livelihood beyond her jewels. These, however, were considerable, and they were sold for some six thousand pounds, and on the meagre interest of that sum, this lady, who was as prudent as--if you will permit me to say so--she was beautiful and wise, maintained herself and your lordship, and provided for your education. But I am wandering already into matters what will be known to you.
"My present instructions from Monsieur de Lesdiguières, or Citizen Lesdiguières, as I suppose he will now be termed in the crazy jargon that prevails in France, are, as I have said, to seek you out, and to provide you with all additional documents necessary to you in claiming your heritage."
"My heritage?" Morlaix was smiling a little scornfully. "What is this heritage, assuming that the fantastic tale is true? A barren title. London is full of them to-day. They are émigré marquises who hire themselves out to dress salads, teach dancing and do needlework. Shall I add to them a marquis who is a fencing-master? I think I shall be less ridiculous as Monsieur de Morlaix."
Lawyer-like, in answering him, Mr. Sharpe ignored all that was irrelevant.
"I have said that the Marquisate of Chavaray is richer than any dukedom in France. You may examine for yourself the schedule of its vast acres, its towns and hamlets, its pasture and arable, its moorland and forests, its farms, vineyards, châteaux and mills. It is all here." He tapped a bulk of papers.
"You mean, of course, if the monarchy is restored?"
"No so. Not so."
Mr. Sharpe had recourse to the lengthy communication from the Citizen Lesdiguières. This disclosed a situation very different from Morlaix's reasonable assumption.
The late marquis, it transpired, being a half-crippled invalid, had lived retired and quiet, aloof from politics, in a province which regarded the excesses of the Revolution with anything but favour. Of a kindly, gentle nature, he had been indulgently regarded by his tenantry. It would also seem that he was of Republican tendencies, and already before the Revolution he had renounced all those harsher feudal rights so largely responsible for that terrible upheaval. In the day of wrath he reaped as he had sown. Whilst the rest of the family of Chesnières had emigrated, he had remained quietly at Chavaray, and had been left undisturbed until after the King's death in '93. Then, when the greedy sanguinocrats took measures to deal with those nobles who by remaining on their estates had avoided sequestration, he was arrested on a trumped-up charge of being in correspondence with his émigré cousins. It did not matter that there was no proof. But it did matter that he disposed of gold and of a faithful steward who knew how to employ it. In the corrupt state of France there was nothing money could not buy. For a sum of ten thousand livres in gold to the public accuser, the steward, one Lafont, obtained that Étienne de Chesnières should be certified insane. It was an easy matter, considering his physical condition; but it would not in any case have been difficult; for there were many instances in which, when money was available, this had been done.
Étienne de Chesnières was transferred from the Prison of the Carmes to the private asylum of Dr. Bazire, where he found others, much the same as he was, who were prolonging their days by the same means. They had to pay handsomely for the privilege. The doctor was exorbitant in his charges, and he would not keep a patient for a day longer than his dues were paid. Lafont continued to provide those demanded for his master, out of the revenues of lands that could not legally be sequestrated until the Marquis had been brought to trial and convicted.
And in the end, untried and unconvicted, he had died in that house in the Rue du Bac, and his estates continued free. They were also available to his heir, provided that Quentin were this heir. For, whilst in general all Frenchmen now out of France were considered to be émigrés and outlawed, yet by one of the Convention's statutes, quoted in full by Lesdiguières, exception was made in favour of such as were professionally engaged abroad before 1789. Under this statute, Quentin de Morlaix was given six months from the death of his newly-discovered brother in which to repatriate himself. Only, should he neglect to do so, would he, after the lapse of that time, be adjudged an émigré and subjected to the penalties of that situation.
Monsieur de Morlaix received this information with a smile.
"Whilst if I return to claim the property I shall merely have stepped into the shoes of the late Marquis. I shall be arrested on suspicion of correspondence with my émigré kinsmen, convicted and sent to the guillotine, unless I, too, get myself certified insane and lodged with Dr. Bazire. Faith, it's an enviable heritage, Mr. Sharpe. I am to be congratulated."
"But, my dear sir, a great fortune is concerned. We have the word of the Citizen Lesdiguières that the risk in your case is negligible."
"It exists nevertheless." He got up. "You conceive, sir, that all this leaves me a little bewildered. I need to consider; to adjust my mind. You shall hear from me. But I think I shall decide to carry my head safely under a hat rather than see it in Sanson's basket under a coronet."