The Quest of Glory. Bowen Marjorie
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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