THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF JOSEPH CONRAD. Джозеф Конрад
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run no risk of offending her mortally."
But the old man paid no attention to this lover's nonsense. It's doubtful whether he even heard.
"What is it?" he asked. "What's the nature of..."
"Call it a youthful folly, Monsieur le Chevalier. An inconceivable, incredible result of..."
He stopped short. "He will never believe the story," he thought. "He will only think I am taking him for a fool and get offended." General D'Hubert spoke up again. "Yes, originating in youthful folly it has become..."
The Chevalier interrupted. "Well then it must be arranged."
"Arranged."
"Yes. No matter what it may cost your amour propre. You should have remembered you were engaged. You forgot that, too, I suppose. And then you go and forget your quarrel. It's the most revolting exhibition of levity I ever heard of."
"Good heavens, Chevalier! You don't imagine I have been picking up that quarrel last time I was in Paris or anything of the sort. Do you?"
"Eh? What matters the precise date of your insane conduct!" exclaimed the Chevalier testily. "The principal thing is to arrange it..."
Noticing General D'Hubert getting restive and trying to place a word, the old émigré raised his arm and added with dignity:
"I've been a soldier, too. I would never dare to suggest a doubtful step to the man whose name my niece is to bear. I tell you that entre gallants hommes an affair can be always arranged."
"But, saperlotte, Monsieur le Chevalier, it's fifteen or sixteen years ago. I was a lieutenant of Hussars then."
The old Chevalier seemed confounded by the vehemently despairing tone of this information.
"You were a lieutenant of Hussars sixteen years ago?" he mumbled in a dazed manner.
"Why, yes! You did not suppose I was made a general in my cradle like a royal prince."
In the deepening purple twilight of the fields, spread with vine leaves, backed by a low band of sombre crimson in the west, the voice of the old ex-officer in the army of the princes sounded collected, punctiliously civil.
"Do I dream? Is this a pleasantry? Or do you mean me to understand that you have been hatching an affair of honour for sixteen years?"
"It has clung to me for that length of time. That is my precise meaning. The quarrel itself is not to be explained easily. We have been on the ground several times during that time of course."
"What manners! What horrible perversion of manliness! Nothing can account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution which has tainted a whole generation," mused the returned émigré in a low tone. "Who is your adversary?" he asked a little louder.
"What? My adversary! His name is Feraud." Shadowy in his tricorne and old-fashioned clothes like a bowed thin ghost of the ancien régime the Chevalier voiced a ghostly memory.
"I can remember the feud about little Sophie Derval between Monsieur de Brissac, captain in the Bodyguards and d'Anjorrant. Not the pockmarked one. The other. The Beau d'Anjorrant as they called him. They met three times in eighteen months in a most gallant manner. It was the fault of that little Sophie, too, who would keep on playing..."
"This is nothing of the kind," interrupted General D'Hubert. He laughed a little sardonically. "Not at all so simple," he added. "Nor yet half so reasonable," he finished inaudibly between his teeth and ground them with rage.
After this sound nothing troubled the silence for a long time till the Chevalier asked without animation:
"What is he—this Feraud?"
"Lieutenant of Hussars, too—I mean he's a general. A Gascon. Son of a blacksmith, I believe."
"There! I thought so. That Bonaparte had a special predilection for the canaille. I don't mean this for you, D'Hubert. You are one of us, though you have served this usurper who..."
"Let's leave him out of this," broke in General D'Hubert.
The Chevalier shrugged his peaked shoulders.
"A Feraud of sorts. Offspring of a blacksmith and some village troll.... See what comes of mixing yourself up with that sort of people."
"You have made shoes yourself, Chevalier."
"Yes. But I am not the son of a shoemaker. Neither are you, Monsieur D'Hubert. You and I have something that your Bonaparte's, princes, dukes, and marshals have not because there's no power on earth that could give it to them," retorted the émigré, with the rising animation of a man who has got hold of a hopeful argument. "Those people don't exist—all these Ferauds. Feraud! What is Feraud? A va-nu-pieds disguised into a general by a Corsican adventurer masquerading as an emperor. There is no earthly reason for a D'Hubert to s'encanailler by a duel with a person of that sort. You can make your excuses to him perfectly well. And if the manant takes it into his head to decline them you may simply refuse to meet him." "You say I may do that?" "Yes. With the clearest conscience." "Monsieur le Chevalier! To what do you think you have returned from your emigration?"
This was said in such a startling tone that the old exile raised sharply his bowed head, glimmering silvery white under the points of the little tricorne. For a long time he made no sound.
"God knows!" he said at last, pointing with a slow and grave gesture at a tall roadside cross mounted on a block of stone and stretching its arms of forged stone all black against the darkening red band in the sky. "God knows! If it were not for this emblem, which I remember seeing in this spot as a child, I would wonder to what we, who have remained faithful to our God and our king, have returned. The very voices of the people have changed."
"Yes, it is a changed France," said General D'Hubert. He had regained his calm. His tone was slightly ironic. "Therefore, I cannot take your advice. Besides, how is one to refuse to be bitten by a dog that means to bite? It's impracticable. Take my word for it. He isn't a man to be stopped by apologies or refusals. But there are other ways. I could, for instance, send a mounted messenger with a word to the brigadier of the gendarmerie in Senlac. These fellows are liable to arrest on my simple order. It would make some talk in the army, both the organised and the disbanded. Especially the disbanded. All canaille. All my comrades once—the companions in arms of Armand D'Hubert. But what need a D'Hubert care what people who don't exist may think? Or better still, I might get my brother-in-law to send for the mayor of the village and give him a hint. No more would be needed to get the three 'brigands' set upon with flails and pitchforks and hunted into some nice deep wet ditch. And nobody the wiser! It has been done only ten miles from here to three poor devils of the disbanded Red Lancers of the Guard going to their homes. What says your conscience, Chevalier? Can a D'Hubert do that thing to three men who do not exist?"
A few stars had come out on the blue obscurity, clear as crystal, of the sky. The dry, thin voice of the Chevalier spoke harshly.
"Why are you telling me all this?"
The general seized a withered, frail old hand with a strong grip.
"Because I owe you my fullest confidence. Who could tell Adèle but you? You understand why I dare not trust my brother-in-law nor yet my own sister. Chevalier! I have been so near doing these things that I tremble yet. You don't know how terrible this duel appears to me. And there's no escape from it."
He murmured after a pause, "It's a fatality," dropped the Chevalier's passive hand, and said in his ordinary conversational voice:
"I shall have to go without seconds. If it is my lot to remain on the ground, you at least will know all that can be made known of this affair."
The shadowy ghost of the ancien régime seemed to have become more bowed during the conversation.
"How am I to keep an indifferent face this evening before those two women?" he groaned. "General! I find it very difficult to forgive you."
General