The Quest of Glory - Marjorie Bowen (most interesting books to read txt) 📗
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her gown in the faint beams, then her shape came between him and the
glow and her hand rested on his. He kissed her fingers, then said, “You
would have despised me if I had married you,”—his voice strengthened—”
but now you will think of me kindly.”
She drew away from him, and seemed to be absorbed and lost in the
unbearable darkness.
“I want to see you,” said Luc between his teeth.
He took the flint and tinder from his pocket and struck it with a steady
hand. As the flame flared up he strained his dim eyes across it to gaze
at her. He saw her in an atmosphere of fire—the air all about her was
red. Her face was more beautiful than he cared to realize; her eyes
looked straight at him across the flame, and they were strained, wide,
and dark with terror.
The still burning tinder fell from his fingers; he put his foot on it. A
voice he would not have recognized as hers came out of the obscurity.
“You—you are not—much changed.”
Luc laughed.
“Heaven bless you,” he said sweetly.
She seemed to move desperately; he heard her push a chair aside.
“Oh—God—_God!_” she cried on a note of fainting anguish.
He felt her skirts brush past him, the door opened, a shaft of light
penetrated the darkness for a second, then the door closed.
She was gone.
Luc fumbled his way to the sofa where she must have been seated; the
cushions were still warm where her face had rested, her tears fallen. He
spread his hands over them and shivered from head to foot.
He had never wanted her so much, in all the days of their summer
courtship, as he wanted her now.
Yet he was glad she was gone, glad it was over.
She was as lost now as that other Clémence who also had closed a door on
him and left him alone.
His grasp tightened on the silk cushions. Out of the depths of his pain
and regret flashed the alluring vision of the phantom he had chased all
his life.
“Glory!” he said under his breath, “still to be achieved—not with”—he
rose, staggering like one intoxicated—“the body”—he clutched the
chimneypiece—“but—with—the soul!”
The elder Marquis de Vauvenargues put down the Gazette in which he had
been reading of the opening of the spring campaign and the progress of
the Chevalier de St. George through Scotland, and looked across the
dining-room at his eldest son.
Luc stood before the window half concealed by the long folds of the dark
crimson curtains. It was late afternoon in March, and the garden was
grey, misty, and fragrant; beyond the trees, just blurred with green,
glowed the pale, clear blue of the fading sky, mournful, remote, and
calm.
“Mademoiselle de Séguy is leaving for Paris to-morrow,” said the
Marquis.
“Ah!” answered Luc, without moving his head.
M. de Vauvenargues paused a moment, then added in a low tone—
“It need not have been, Luc, it need not have been.”
The young man did not reply, and his father sighed.
“You were always obstinate, Luc,” he added with a sad tenderness, “from
the day you insisted on entering the army—which was Joseph’s place—as
the second son.”
Luc moved now; he turned his back to the window, facing now the long,
dark room, the table on which the fine cloth, cakes, and wine still
gleamed, facing the figure of his father in full peruke and black
velvet, brilliants and much Michelin lace.
“I am going to prove myself still further obstinate, Monseigneur,” he
said. He stifled a cough and braced his stooping figure. “I have
wished—for some weeks—since I returned from the convent—to speak to
you. I think this is my chance.”
The old man folded the paper across mechanically, and the great ruffles
round his wrists shook with the quivering of his fair hands.
“What can you have to say, Luc?” he asked quickly.
His son came slowly to the table with the hesitating and uncertain step
that was the accompaniment of his imperfect sight.
“I want to tell you, Monseigneur, what I mean to do.”
He seated himself on the old, high-backed walnut chair with the fringed
leather seat which had been his since the time he had sat there, a
stately child in skirts, murmuring grace or eating sugared macaroons.
“What you mean to do?” repeated the Marquis.
Luc raised his face. In the cold light of the early year and the shadows
of the dark room this face looked like a mask of colourless clay
modelled in lines of perpetual pain. The white curls of his wig fell
either side on to his green coat, and his hands were again white, one
holding the back of the black chair, one resting on the lace cloth.
He looked at his father steadily, and the blood receded from the
Marquis’s strong features.
“What do you mean to do?” he asked. “Eh, Luc?”
“Monseigneur,”—though the voice was hoarse and broken by constant
coughing, there were in it the old sweet notes—“I fear to give you
pain. Yet I cannot think that you will not understand.”
“I am ready,” said his father, “to do anything you wish—you know
that—anything.”
Again Luc braced himself with an obvious effort; his bent shoulders
straightened and he held up his head. “I want—I mean to—go to Paris.”
“To—Paris! You want to leave Aix!”
“Monseigneur, I must.”
“Luc,”—the Marquis also was endeavouring to remain calm,—“why do you
wish to leave your home? What do you intend to do in Paris?”
The young man answered swiftly—
“Give myself a chance—a last chance.”
“But you have refused your appointment.”
“Forgive me—I do not mean in that way—that is over. You know. Now it
is—my soul, unaided. I must satisfy myself before I die. Who knows what
is after? And if I leave my life at this I shall have been a sluggard.
I shall not have expressed what was in me to express.”
He pressed his handkerchief to his lips and gave a little sigh, as if
what he had said and the force with which he had spoken exhausted him.
The Marquis stared at him with troubled eyes.
“Explain yourself, Luc. If you wish to go you shall—but—” he paused,
at a loss.
“I must go,” answered Luc. “I have not very long—not much time. Here I
merely let you watch me die.”
“Luc—Luc.”
“I must speak—forgive me again—you may think I go against my duty.”
The Marquis was crumpling the edge of the cloth in nervous fingers.
“What is the object of this resolution?” he demanded. “Tell me clearly.
I have a right to know.”
Luc answered steadily and sweetly—
“It is hard to pain you, Monseigneur, and before I speak I would implore
you to consider that I have not come to this resolution without
struggles—so intense, so bitter that I thought I could not live and
endure them.”
“You frighten me,” said the Marquis. “You always had a wild heart—what
has it prompted you to now?” Luc bent his head.
“I know a man in Paris who is shaping the thought of France. I told him
once what I meant to do, what goal I set myself, and he gave me advice
that I rejected. Now other ways are closed to me I shall take this. I
think, after all, that he was right. I am going to Paris to join this
man and his friends—the people who are making the future of France, of
the world. They will help me to so live my last years, to so express the
thoughts that come to me that I may die not utterly useless—perhaps
even achieving that inward glory that is the paradise of the soul.” His
voice rose full and clear with emotion and enthusiasm, and his marred
eyes flashed with something of the old fire the Luc of yester-year had
so often darted on the world.
The old Marquis sat very still. He looked grey, and hard, and massive;
his fine right hand clutched and unclutched on the table.
“Who is this man?” he asked.
Luc paused for a moment, then said, without fear or bravado—
“Voltaire.”
It was the first time that name had been mentioned in this house without
loathing or contempt; it was the first time M. de Vauvenargues had heard
it on the lips of his son. His face worked with passion: a heavy flush
stained his cheeks, and his eyes were almost hidden by his overhanging,
frowning brows.
“You mean to leave Aix to become a follower of M. de-Voltaire?” he said
in a low, trembling voice.
“Yes.”
“How—what do you mean to do?”
“I mean to collect my writings, to publish them—to write again.”
“How do you mean to live?”
“As they lived when they began.”
“And you will write?”
“Yes—I must.”
The Marquis rose, and his face was distorted.
“Have you forgotten that you are my son—my eldest son?”
“No.” Luc rose also, and stood fronting his father, the table between
them.
“And yet you propose to disgrace your blazon!”
“Better disgrace my blazon than my genius!” answered Luc. “I have been
fettered all my life—now I have no more time to waste. I am going to
answer at my tribunal, remember, Monseigneur, not at yours—and my
judge is not pleased with the things that please Him who judges you.”
“You speak blasphemy!” thundered the Marquis. “This twice-damned atheist
has poisoned you! There is but one God—beware of Him!”
Luc did not move nor speak. There was no defiance nor anger in his
attitude, but a great stillness and sweetness in his air, terrible to
his father, who checked his passion as swiftly as he had given it rein
and said in a controlled, low, and baffled voice—
“We must speak of these things quietly, Luc. You cannot mean what you
say—no, it is not possible. Your whole life cannot have been a lie.”
“My life,” answered Luc quietly, “has borne witness to the truth as it
was revealed to me.”
“Yet, if you do mean what you say, you have deceived me until this
moment.”
The young man brought his hands to his bosom.
“I never dared tell you what I really believed, Monseigneur,” he said.
“Besides, there was no need. I had resolved on the accepted path of
honour; I was going the way you had gone, your father before you; I
meant to pay all respect to your God; I meant to take a wife of your
rank, your faith, your choice–now Fate has ordered differently.” He
paused, then added in a deeply moved voice, “I have nothing left save
the truth that is in myself.”
The old man turned and pointed haughtily to the shield carved above the
marble chimneypiece, the fasces of blue and silver, the golden chief.
“You have that,” he answered with inexpressible pride. “You have your
name, me, your house.”
“It is not enough,” said Luc in the same tone. “I want, Monseigneur, my
own soul.”
“Leave that in God’s hands,” flashed the Marquis.
“It is in my own,” answered Luc. “Monseigneur, we have come to this
issue, and between us—now—it must be decided. I remember when I was a
boy you found me writing and reading. You burnt my books and papers; you
forbade
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