Scaramouche: Historical Novel. Rafael Sabatini

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      Chapter 5

       The Lord of Gavrillac

       Table of Contents

      For the second time that day Andre–Louis set out for the chateau, walking briskly, and heeding not at all the curious eyes that followed him through the village, and the whisperings that marked his passage through the people, all agog by now with that day’s event in which he had been an actor.

      He was ushered by Benoit, the elderly body-servant, rather grandiloquently called the seneschal, into the ground-floor room known traditionally as the library. It still contained several shelves of neglected volumes, from which it derived its title, but implements of the chase — fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags, sheath-knives — obtruded far more prominently than those of study. The furniture was massive, of oak richly carved, and belonging to another age. Great massive oak beams crossed the rather lofty whitewashed ceiling.

      Here the squat Seigneur de Gavrillac was restlessly pacing when Andre–Louis was introduced. He was already informed, as he announced at once, of what had taken place at the Breton arme. M. de Chabrillane had just left him, and he confessed himself deeply grieved and deeply perplexed.

      “The pity of it!” he said. “The pity of it!” He bowed his enormous head. “So estimable a young man, and so full of promise. Ah, this La Tour d’Azyr is a hard man, and he feels very strongly in these matters. He may be right. I don’t know. I have never killed a man for holding different views from mine. In fact, I have never killed a man at all. It isn’t in my nature. I shouldn’t sleep of nights if I did. But men are differently made.”

      “The question, monsieur my godfather,” said Andre–Louis, “is what is to be done.” He was quite calm and self-possessed, but very white.

      M. de Kercadiou stared at him blankly out of his pale eyes.

      “Why, what the devil is there to do? From what I am told, Vilmorin went so far as to strike M. le Marquis.”

      “Under the very grossest provocation.”

      “Which he himself provoked by his revolutionary language. The poor lad’s head was full of this encyclopaedist trash. It comes of too much reading. I have never set much store by books, Andre; and I have never known anything but trouble to come out of learning. It unsettles a man. It complicates his views of life, destroys the simplicity which makes for peace of mind and happiness. Let this miserable affair be a warning to you, Andre. You are, yourself, too prone to these new-fashioned speculations upon a different constitution of the social order. You see what comes of it. A fine, estimable young man, the only prop of his widowed mother too, forgets himself, his position, his duty to that mother — everything; and goes and gets himself killed like this. It is infernally sad. On my soul it is sad.” He produced a handkerchief, and blew his nose with vehemence.

      Andre–Louis felt a tightening of his heart, a lessening of the hopes, never too sanguine, which he had founded upon his godfather.

      “Your criticisms,” he said, “are all for the conduct of the dead, and none for that of the murderer. It does not seem possible that you should be in sympathy with such a crime.”

      “Crime?” shrilled M. de Kercadiou. “My God, boy, you are speaking of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.”

      “I am, and of the abominable murder he has committed . . . ”

      “Stop!” M. de Kercadiou was very emphatic. “I cannot permit that you apply such terms to him. I cannot permit it. M. le Marquis is my friend, and is likely very soon to stand in a still closer relationship.”

      “Notwithstanding this?” asked Andre–Louis.

      M. de Kercadiou was frankly impatient.

      “Why, what has this to do with it? I may deplore it. But I have no right to condemn it. It is a common way of adjusting differences between gentlemen.”

      “You really believe that?”

      “What the devil do you imply, Andre? Should I say a thing that I don’t believe? You begin to make me angry.”

      “‘Thou shalt not kill,’ is the King’s law as well as God’s.”

      “You are determined to quarrel with me, I think. It was a duel . . . ”

      Andre–Louis interrupted him. “It is no more a duel than if it had been fought with pistols of which only M. le Marquis’s was loaded. He invited Philippe to discuss the matter further, with the deliberate intent of forcing a quarrel upon him and killing him. Be patient with me, monsieur my god-father. I am not telling you of what I imagine but what M. le Marquis himself admitted to me.”

      Dominated a little by the young man’s earnestness, M. de Kercadiou’s pale eyes fell away. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over to the window.

      “It would need a court of honour to decide such an issue. And we have no courts of honour,” he said.

      “But we have courts of justice.”

      With returning testiness the seigneur swung round to face him again. “And what court of justice, do you think, would listen to such a plea as you appear to have in mind?”

      “There is the court of the King’s Lieutenant at Rennes.”

      “And do you think the King’s Lieutenant would listen to you?”

      “Not СКАЧАТЬ