Book III Chapter 12 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
FULFILMENT
On a mellow, hazy afternoon of late September, a post-chaise rattled down Bruton Street, bringing Monsieur Quentin de Morlaix home from his travels.
From the climax which his high adventure may be said to have reached that night at Coëtlegon, it had sped almost uneventfully to its close. For this his thanks were due once again to the tutelary offices of the Comte de Puisaye. Taking advantage of the established chain of communications, now as necessary as ever it had been, owing to renewed Republican activity in the West since Quiberon, and moving cautiously by night from one house of confidence to another, the Count had brought him safely to St. Brieuc, and there had shipped him aboard a contrabandist lugger for Jersey.
Puisaye himself had remained in France. "I am not in the humour to bear reproaches patiently," he had said. "And nothing else can await me at present in England."
The surmise was correct enough, although it was not with the English that the reproaches originated. It was the compatriots whose jealousy he had provoked, and who could not have failed him more actively had they deliberately set out to betray the Royalist cause, who laboured now to ruin him in reputation.
In reporting the disaster of Quiberon to the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt was able to assure his audience that at least no drop of English blood had been spilled, to which Mr. Sheridan for the Opposition retorted: "Yes. But honour bled at all its pores," a politician's silly, insulting falsehood which placed a weapon in the hands of those French gentlemen who were clamouring that England had betrayed them, and that Puisaye had been the agent of this betrayal.
Had he foreseen this, Puisaye might have crossed to England with Quentin, so as to be at hand to answer calumny. As it was he accounted it his duty to continue in France.
"Another chance may come to raise the country. I remain, to seize it if it does. I shall cross the Loire and join Charette. If I live, you shall see me again, Quentin."
"You know where to find me," Quentin had answered. "If I can ever serve you, do not fail to call upon me."
"Serve me! Should I take where I have so signally failed to give?"
"None lives who has given me more. From you I have had knowledge of myself, and twice you have saved the life which in the first place you gave me."
"If that is a gift to rejoice in, may you continue so to find it."
They had embraced on the shingle by the waiting cockboat, and as the seamen bent to their oars the stalwart figure with hand upheld, gradually fading into the night, was memory's last abiding image of that indomitable man.
It alternated in Quentin's mental vision with the slim straight wraith of Germaine, as he had last seen her at Coëtlegon in the moment of departure upon that fool's errand at Rédon; and this was a vision to arouse a yearning that was blent with sorrow and bereavement.
Puisaye who had given him so much and sought to give him so much more, reckless even of honour, had lost her to him by the truth he had imparted. Yet Quentin would not have been without the pain this brought him, for then he must have lost also the memory of the sweetness, and this memory, he told himself, was something that would irradiate all his future, as the reality had irradiated the months that were overpast. It had all been a dream, he vowed; the dream of a fencing-master, who, being now awake, came back to be a fencing-master once again.
It was late afternoon when unannounced he stepped into the long, panelled room of which he had been so proud and which he had regarded as his kingdom in the days before he was summoned to his phantom heritage.
He was greeted by the ring of steel that once had been as music to him; for a single pupil still lingered at practice with O'Kelly.
Old Ramel, on a bench against the wall, sat strapping a pointe d'arrêt to the tip of a foil.
At sight of him, standing there, so straight and slender in his long coat of bottle-green, O'Kelly had lowered his point, plucked the mask from his fiery head, and, the pupil momentarily forgotten, had stood foolishly at gaze. Much as he had greeted him on a day a year ago, did O'Kelly greet him now.
"Ah, now, is it indeed yourself, Quentin?"
"Myself it is, and thankful to be home."
In an instant they were upon him, each wringing one of his hands, babbling a welcome that was incoherent with delight, whilst Barlow, appearing none knew whence, came sidling up with a broad grin on his priestly face.
"Faith, it's a homecoming," said Quentin, his heart warmed by this affectionate reception.
"And have you come to stay, now?" O'Kelly asked him.
"I have. My roaming ends where it began."
"Glory be! We're not the only ones that'll be delighted."
There was one present, however, who manifested little delight. The pupil, abandoned and neglected, stared at them in haughty displeasure. O'Kelly, meeting at last that disapproving eye, was moved to laughter.
"Ah, now, my lord, it's in luck ye are. For here's the master, himself, the Great Quentin de Morlaix. And if there's a man in the world that can make a swordsman of you, sure it's himself."
After his lordship had taken a slightly ruffled departure, and the three of them sat in the embrasured lounge, about the table on which Barlow had set the decanters as of old, O'Kelly gave him news of the academy. It prospered ever and was well attended, chiefly now by Englishmen, who did not forget to pay their fees like the impecunious French. Of these there were scarcely any left. All who could wield a sword had crossed to France in the early summer. Few of them, as Quentin knew, would ever return. As a result of that exodus, the academy had lost its character as a fashionable meeting-ground of émigré society.
"But there's a lady of the old days who's been here twice in the past week to ask if we had news of you. Mademoiselle de Chesnières." O'Kelly was sly. "Maybe ye'll remember her."
Here was history repeating itself again.
"Maybe I do," said Quentin, aware of quickened pulses; aware, too, that O'Kelly's eyes were intent upon him.
"I thought ye would," said the Irishman, and that was all.
On the following morning, Quentin took up his share of the work of instruction as naturally as if there had been no interruption of it. In this he sought an ease of the heartache that oppressed him.
That the news of his return spread quickly through the clubs and coffee-houses was made manifest within the week by the appearance in the academy of old friends who had been in the habit of coming to practise with him, and by the daily enrolment of new pupils.
But these evidences of undiminished popularity, these harbingers of affluence, procured him no exhilaration, failed to cure him of the listlessness that closed down upon him when the day's work was done.
O'Kelly watched him with affectionate anxiety, yet never ventured to intrude upon that gloomy taciturnity.
The Irishman was alone early one morning in the fencing-room, awaiting the first pupil, whilst in the adjoining antechamber Barlow could be heard at work setting things to rights for the day, when the door opened and a slim, straight figure in dove-grey velvet confronted him. He was suddenly, instinctively uplifted. He sprang forward in welcome.
"Ah, come in with you, come in, Mademoiselle. It's the glad news I have for you. He's come back."
She swayed and turned so pale that for a moment he was scared.
"Do you mean that he's here?" Her voice trembled.
"Isn't that what I'm telling you? Glory be! Is it weeping you are?"
She wiped away the tear that had caused the question. "It's for relief, O'Kelly. Thankfulness. I've been in such fear that he would never return. When . . . when did he arrive?"
"It'll be a fortnight to-morrow."
"A fortnight!" Surprise, perplexity, displeasure, crossed her fair face. "A fortnight?"
"To be sure. Will ye go up now, and take him by surprise?"
Barlow appeared in the doorway of the ante-chamber, drawn by the sound of voices.
"Let Barlow take him word that I am here."
"Ah, that's never the way of it. He's up there all alone, at breakfast, with a black dog sitting on his shoulders. Sure, now, the sight of you'll scare the beast away for ever. This way, Mademoiselle."
He led her through the ante-chamber, to a farther door that opened upon a staircase. "Up with you, now. The white door yonder."
Perhaps it was the mention of that black dog on Quentin's shoulders that made her so obedient. She went up, opened the door, and stood on the threshold of that pleasant, white-panelled room, now filled with the sunshine of the October morning.
He was at table, with his back to the door, and supposing it to be Barlow who came, he did not stir.
Thus she was given leisure to consider him and his surroundings.
He wore a dressing-gown of dark blue brocade over his small clothes. His head, with its lustrous, bronze-coloured hair as trimly queued as of old, was bowed in thought, his chin buried in the high, black military stock he wore for fencing. Before him the white napery of the table, the gleam and sparkle of silver and glass in the morning sunshine, and the bowl of late roses in the middle, were so many expressions of his fastidiousness.
Her eyes grew moist and wistful as she pondered him until at last he stirred. "Why the devil do you keep the door open?" He glanced over his shoulder, and then in a swirl he was on his feet.
For a moment he stared, a consternation in his white face. Then, seeming to collect himself, he bowed.
"I am honoured . . . Marquise."
The consternation was now with her. She rustled to him. "Why, Quentin! What is this?"
"You should not have come," he told her, his tone very gentle.
"Should I not? Let me rather ask you why you did not come to me. You have been home a fortnight, I am told."
"I . . . I did not know where to find you."
"Did you seek me?"
"I thought it would be better not to."
She frowned. "Because of Madame de Chesnières?" she asked. But she did not wait for an answer. "Do you know the month and the year in which we live? I am of full age, Quentin, and mistress of myself."
He was affectionately courteous. "My felicitations, Marquise."
"Marquise?"
"Of Chavaray."
Through mounting, pained bewilderment, she made an attempt to smile.
"You anticipate. You have not yet made me that, Quentin."
"Nor ever shall. For it will never be in my power to do it. That is why you are already the Marquise de Chavaray. In your own right."
"I . . . I don't understand." The perplexity in her eyes asked a fuller explanation. He supplied it.
"There has been--shall we say?--an error. I am not, and never have been, heir to Chavaray. I am not Morlaix de Chesnières, and though I must continue to call myself Morlaix, I have not a right even to that name."
To her quick understanding his aloofness ceased to be a puzzle. Her eyes grew compassionate and very tender. She set her hands upon his shoulders. "Who has had the cruelty to make this known to you?"
"That I was an impostor?"
She shook her head. "There is no imposture where there is no intent to deceive. And that you never had, as I long since assured myself."
This was as a blow between the eyes to him. "You knew, then?"
"I heard, long ago, a miserable, scandalous story."
"And you never told me!"
"Why should I? What should I have told you? A piece of hurtful scandal, resting on surmises, which never could be proved, however true it might be. Was I to wound you with that? What mattered to me was that your honour was clean; that you had no suspicions even that your claims were not as just as at law they were and are unchallengeable."
He looked at her in silence and humility, his glance full of wonder and homage.
"You have not told me how this knowledge came to you," she said.
Gently he disengaged her hands. "I keep you standing." He set a chair for her.
"Will you be formal with me?" Nevertheless she sat, and heard from him the tale of those last events at Coëtlegon.
"You understand now," he told her at the end, "that you are mistress of Chavaray."
"Do you mock me? It was last yours by right of purchase, and now it will be national property again, and likely so to continue until it falls into the hands of Republican buyers. We need not dispute possession of that ghostly heritage. Had it continued a reality, a man of your stubborn pride might have made it a barrier between us. So it's a dispensation of Providence that for us it has ceased to exist." She stood up again to confront him. "There was a solemn promise you made to me at Coëtlegon; an oath you swore. You will remember."
"Ah, but that was sworn by a man who believed himself to be Marquis of Chavaray, not by a man without so much as a name to offer, whose only marquisate, as your cousin Constant discovered long ago, is that of Carabas."
She disdained all further argument. She possessed subtler weapons to subdue him to her will, and she had recourse to them. She came to put her arms about his neck, to smile with a winsome, conquering tenderness into his startled eyes.
"Another sweet dispensation of Providence," she said, "is that I was born to be the Marchioness of Carabas."
THE END