The Quest of Glory - Marjorie Bowen (most interesting books to read txt) 📗

colour, was stained

with ink; his neckcloth was coarse, though newly washed and folded

neatly; his stockings were thick and woollen, his shoes heavy. He wore

no wig, and his hair was long again, and tied with a black ribbon, but

colourless and grey about the front, as if it had been powdered. Joseph

marked the absence of sword, watch, and ring. He did not mark the fine

freshness of the rough attire, nor reflect on the effort this decent

cleanliness meant to the man who lived alone, half blind, and in such

poverty.

 

“My father!” he murmured. “My father!”

 

“Did he send you?” asked Luc.

 

“No.”

 

“Has he ever spoken of me?”

 

“No.”

 

“Nor my mother?”

 

“No.”

 

“You—think they are right?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why are you here?” asked Luc patiently.

 

“Because,” was the fierce answer, “I cannot endure a de Clapiers to die

in a hospital, and be buried at the expense of public charity.”

 

The elder brother lifted his ruined face and smiled. “What do you want

of me?” he asked.

 

“You must come to my hotel—”

 

Luc interrupted.

 

“You cannot coax back when dying the man you have cast out,” he said

gently. “Nor would it soothe your pride if he should expire on your

hearth. You think I am disgraced, accursed. You perhaps even hate me.”

 

“I think I do,” breathed Joseph heavily.

 

Luc rose.

 

“Then leave me. I have so little time left for anything; none at all for

hate. I want to die alone. Go your way, Joseph. When I left Aix

something broke that is past mending.”

 

“I think the Devil possesses you,” cried Joseph. “But you are Luc de

Clapiers, and you shall not live in beggary among the scum of Paris.”

 

“I am Luc de Clapiers,” replied the Marquis—“remember it. I am not

what I look, but what I was born: a gentleman of quality, who upholds

his own honour—as well here as in Aix, as well here as in Bohemia. Be

content; I shall not disgrace you.”

 

Joseph half laughed.

 

“Disgrace! I think you deny God?”

 

“And the Devil—and all you believe, perhaps, Joseph,”—his voice had an

exalted yet tender note,—“but maybe I shall sleep well just the same

in my unconsecrated grave.”

 

The younger man stepped back, clenched his strong right hand, and struck

his breast.

 

“For the honour of our nobility, for the respect you once bore our

mother, in the name of the God you outrage, I conjure you come with me.

Let a priest shrive you—”

 

Luc broke in with a sudden flash of vitality.

 

“Do you think I am going to be false to all I believe—now? Now,”—he

dropped into his chair again; his strength was slipping from him, but he

beat the words out with a great labour of his breath,—“now—when I

have—so nearly won?”

 

“You! You who have failed in everything you have undertaken!”

 

Luc put a thin, trembling hand on the book—a small humble volume—and

the loose sheets of paper lying on the table.

 

“I have administered to the truth within me,” he said, and, still

keeping his hand on the book, he forced himself to raise his head, that

had sunk, through sheer bodily weakness, into his bosom, until he looked

his brother in the face.

 

“You have dishonoured a noble house,” said Joseph hoarsely; “and I shall

never forgive you, dead or living.”

 

“Ah!” answered Luc softly, regretfully. “The pity of such words as

those!” His head drooped a little again.

 

“The pity,” he added wistfully, “of all our fierce passions, our curses,

our hatreds, our wrongs to one another, when there is so little any of

us can do, and so little time to do it in. And we waste our few chances.

Do not hate me—Joseph. I shall always love you.”

 

The younger brother was silent. It might be his heart prompted him to

forgive; that old affection stirred. But the wrong against his religion,

his pride, his order was too strong; the offences he raged against were

unforgivable; the wrath, the disgust, the shame he had nourished in his

heart since Luc’s departure from Aix were rather fanned than mollified

by the sight of the dying man who had aroused these emotions.

 

Luc took advantage of his silence to speak again.

 

“Since you have come, Joseph,” he said, “let us part in friendship. We

are the two last of our family, and—after all—that is something.”

 

“Will you leave this?” demanded the younger man, not kindly, but with a

suppressed violence. “Will you come with me?”

 

“No,” replied Luc. “This is my place now. And it is easier for me to

refuse you, Joseph, because I know that pride, not love, asks this.”

 

“Pride!” echoed Joseph. “You have the damnable pride of the Devil. You

prefer your garret—your accursed book “—he snatched the thin volume

from under Luc’s frail fingers, and cast it on the ground—“your

outcast friends—to your family, your honour, your home.”

 

The Marquis made a faint gesture of sorrow and protest. “This is not

needful,” he murmured. But Joseph’s vigorous voice overbore his feeble

ones.

 

“Very well, then,” he continued; “die in the miserable loft your

dishonourable conduct has brought you o, and leave us to endure your

disgrace—as we have endured it since you left Aix!”

 

Luc got to his feet again, and stood holding on to the edge of the

table.

 

“You will be able to blot me from your annals very completely soon,” he

said. “When I am dead, no one will speak of me, and you can forget.”

 

He lifted his hand and let it fall. The little pile of silver pieces was

knocked over by the gesture, and the money rolled across the floor to

the feet of the younger brother.

 

“Is this Voltaire’s charity?” he cried.

 

Luc lifted his head, and smiled.

 

“No. I sold my sword this morning. So you see I can pay for my own

coffin, Joseph.”

 

He sat down again and hid his face in his two hands, as if he was

greatly fatigued, and wished to compose his thoughts. There was a

dignity about this movement and pose, as if he had withdrawn himself into

final silence. Joseph had no more weapons; his wrath flared impotently.

He stared fiercely at his brother, and set his scarlet heel on the book

he had flung on the floor; then, in white haughtiness and bitter

speechlessness, left the garret.

 

“I am tired,” said Luc to himself; “tired—tired.”

 

He dropped his hands, and rose and looked round for the crushed volume

Joseph had spurned with his foot. As he stooped to pick it up he heard a

soft yet swelling crash of music.

 

“Soldiers,” he murmured, “going to the—war.”

 

The music gathered in strength until it culminated in an almost

intolerable crescendo of passionate exaltation. It seemed to be very

near, almost in the room. Luc found himself on his knees, quivering in

the sound of it. The music began to paint pictures in the garret, and

Luc’s blindness did not prevent his seeing them: gorgeous banners draped

the bare rafters, and a procession with flags, shields, and drums

crossed the humble floor, and broke away the mean walls, and let in the

great clouds and the strong sunbeams, and showed a vast span of pure

light that dazzled into the infinite distance.

 

A company with sublime tread was passing over this bridge, and they

smiled at Luc.

 

He felt the clouds closing round him and the light enveloping him. One

of the martial figures was a woman who looked at him with royal eyes.

 

Luc rose. He felt himself straight and strong. He held out his arms

towards the rolling golden clouds that entered through the broken walls,

towards the procession that crossed the arc of light.

 

“O God of mine, whom I have laboured not to offend, take me back whence

I came!” he cried.

 

As he spoke, he felt himself drawn into the company with the flags and

swords, and with immortal light on his face he set his foot on the end

of the dazzling arc.

 

*

 

M. de Voltaire, that evening, found him lying across the floor, with his

head on his book, his right hand where his sword should have been, and

the silver pieces scattered about him sparkling in the cold spring

moonlight that fell through the high, open garret window.