Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (best color ebook reader txt) 📕

her, and therefore had appeared no more than natural in one who must account himself the cause of her distress. Similarly Mme. de Plougastel had never realized nor did she realize now⁠—for Aline did not trouble fully to enlighten her⁠—that the hostility between the two men was other than political, the quarrel other than that which already had taken André-Louis to the Bois on every day of the preceding week. But, at least, she realized that even if André-Louis’ rancour should have no other source, yet that inconclusive duel was cause enough for Aline’s fears.

And so she had proposed this obvious deception; and Aline had consented to be a passive party to it. They had made the mistake of not fully forewarning and persuading M. de La Tour d’Azyr. They had trusted entirely to his anxiety to escape from Paris to keep him rigidly within the part imposed upon him. They had reckoned without the queer sense of honour that moved such men as M. le Marquis, nurtured upon a code of shams.

André-Louis, turning to scan that muffled figure, advanced from the dark depths of the salon. As the light beat on his white, lean face the pseudo-footman started. The next moment he too stepped forward into the light, and swept his broad-brimmed hat from his brow. As he did so André-Louis observed that his hand was fine and white and that a jewel flashed from one of the fingers. Then he caught his breath, and stiffened in every line as he recognized the face revealed to him.

“Monsieur,” that stern, proud man was saying, “I cannot take advantage of your ignorance. If these ladies can persuade you to save me, at least it is due to you that you shall know whom you are saving.”

He stood there by the table very erect and dignified, ready to perish as he had lived⁠—if perish he must⁠—without fear and without deception.

André-Louis came slowly forward until he reached the table on the other side, and then at last the muscles of his set face relaxed, and he laughed.

“You laugh?” said M. de La Tour d’Azyr, frowning, offended.

“It is so damnably amusing,” said André-Louis.

“You’ve an odd sense of humour, M. Moreau.”

“Oh, admitted. The unexpected always moves me so. I have found you many things in the course of our acquaintance. Tonight you are the one thing I never expected to find you: an honest man.”

M. de La Tour d’Azyr quivered. But he attempted no reply.

“Because of that, monsieur, I am disposed to be clement. It is probably a foolishness. But you have surprised me into it. I give you three minutes, monsieur, in which to leave this house, and to take your own measures for your safety. What afterwards happens to you shall be no concern of mine.”

“Ah, no, André! Listen⁠ ⁠…” Madame began in anguish.

“Pardon, madame. It is the utmost that I will do, and already I am violating what I conceive to be my duty. If M. de La Tour d’Azyr remains he not only ruins himself, but he imperils you. For unless he departs at once, he goes with me to the headquarters of the section, and the section will have his head on a pike inside the hour. He is a notorious counterrevolutionary, a knight of the dagger, one of those whom an exasperated populace is determined to exterminate. Now, monsieur, you know what awaits you. Resolve yourself and at once, for these ladies’ sake.”

“But you don’t know, André-Louis!” Mme. de Plougastel’s condition was one of anguish indescribable. She came to him and clutched his arm. “For the love of Heaven, André-Louis, be merciful with him! You must!”

“But that is what I am being, madame⁠—merciful; more merciful than he deserves. And he knows it. Fate has meddled most oddly in our concerns to bring us together tonight. Almost it is as if Fate were forcing retribution at last upon him. Yet, for your sakes, I take no advantage of it, provided that he does at once as I have desired him.”

And now from beyond the table the Marquis spoke icily, and as he spoke his right hand stirred under the ample folds of his greatcoat.

“I am glad, M. Moreau, that you take that tone with me. You relieve me of the last scruple. You spoke of Fate just now, and I must agree with you that Fate has meddled oddly, though perhaps not to the end that you discern. For years now you have chosen to stand in my path and thwart me at every turn, holding over me a perpetual menace. Persistently you have sought my life in various ways, first indirectly and at last directly. Your intervention in my affairs has ruined my highest hopes⁠—more effectively, perhaps, than you suppose. Throughout you have been my evil genius. And you are even one of the agents of this climax of despair that has been reached by me tonight.”

“Wait! Listen!” Madame was panting. She flung away from André-Louis, as if moved by some premonition of what was coming. “Gervais! This is horrible!”

“Horrible, perhaps, but inevitable. Himself he has invited it. I am a man in despair, the fugitive of a lost cause. That man holds the keys of escape. And, besides, between him and me there is a reckoning to be paid.”

His hand came from beneath the coat at last, and it came armed with a pistol.

Mme. de Plougastel screamed, and flung herself upon him. On her knees now, she clung to his arm with all her strength and might.

Vainly he sought to shake himself free of that desperate clutch.

“Thérèse!” he cried. “Are you mad? Will you destroy me and yourself? This creature has the safe-conducts that mean our salvation. Himself, he is nothing.”

From the background Aline, a breathless, horror-stricken spectator of that scene, spoke sharply, her quick mind pointing out the line of checkmate.

“Burn the safe-conducts, André-Louis. Burn them at once⁠—in the candles there.”

But André-Louis had taken advantage of that moment of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s impotence to draw a pistol in his