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

that

promotion is slow. But M. de Biron told me he had no fault to find with

you.”

 

Luc sat silent. He was gazing intently at the fine figure and noble face

of the old man in his murrey-coloured velvet and delicate lawn cravat,

powdered peruke, and long embroidered satin waistcoat, his firm right

hand with the white cornelian signet ring that rested on the table. His

delicate features and steady eyes, his pose and movements were all

instinct with tradition, nobility of race, and nobility of nature. He

belonged to the pure stock of the provincial aristocracy that had never

waited at any court or been favoured by any king, but who had been

“grand seigneur” at the time of the Crusades.

 

The younger brother was like him and like Luc: sweetness and dignity

mingled in his features. He was dressed richly, but far from

extravagantly, and in a fashion some years old.

 

His handsome brown hair hung in natural curls round his face, unconfined

by any ribbon. His expression was at once more simple and less ardent

than that of the young captain, at whom he gazed with affection,

respect, and admiration.

 

Luc looked from one to the other of these two fair faces, both so serene

and loving in expression, and the paleness of his countenance increased,

a lustre as of tears came into his eyes. He put his 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 marketplace 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 noblels 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 longer a soldier…he had taken off his uniform for the last time. He

stood the same as when he had last left this chamber, save that it was

then all before him, now all behind. He gazed at his own face, white

above the white shirt, still noble and pleasing, still young, but frail

and wasted and sad.

 

Instinctively he turned, as he had done in his childish troubles, to the

corner where St. George had stood. The loss struck him afresh as he, for

a second time, beheld an empty bracket, and was symbolic also, for he

had travelled far from the help of Christianity since he used to pray to

St. George; yet the vacant place smote him. He turned at the opening of

the door; a woman came towards him speechlessly, her lips moving and her

eyes full of a kind of trembling light.

 

He sprang to meet her and clasped her strongly; she thrust into his arms

what seemed a lump of wood.

 

“Safe, dear, safe. Did you think I had destroyed it?” she managed to say.

 

He kissed her cheek and then her hands. She began crying with pleasure.

“St. George, Luc,” she murmured. “I have kept him very carefully.”

 

The young soldier looked at the idol of his childhood; his emotions

reached the unbearable agony caused by dim recollections the hand of

tenderness beckons from the past. He laid St. George on the bed.

 

“Oh, my mother!” he cried, in a sinking voice. He fell on his knees,

hid his face, and wept.

 

CHAPTER VIII # CLÉMENCE DE SÉGUY

 

August had scorched the chestnut leaves and September withered them into

golden scrolls, and still Luc de Clapiers remained idle, but with a

burning heart, in the quiet home at Aix.

 

On a certain afternoon, when he was alone in his chamber writing, the

need for action, the thirst for fame blazed up through his sweet, vain

resignation beyond his power to restrain. The glory that he had set