and at once, for these ladies’ sake.”
“But you don’t know, Andre–Louis!” Mme. de Plougastel’s condition was one of anguish indescribable. She came to him and clutched his arm. “For the love of Heaven, Andre–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 to-night. 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 to-night.”
“Wait! Listen!” Madame was panting. She flung away from Andre–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.
“Therese!” 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, Andre–Louis. Burn them at once — in the candles there.”
But Andre–Louis had taken advantage of that moment of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s impotence to draw a pistol in his turn. “I think it will be better to burn his brains instead,” he said. “Stand away from him, madame.”
Far from obeying that imperious command, Mme. de Plougastel rose to her feet to cover the Marquis with her body. But she still clung to his arm, clung to it with unsuspected strength that continued to prevent him from attempting to use the pistol.
“Andre! For God’s sake, Andre!” she panted hoarsely over her shoulder.
“Stand away, madame,” he commanded her again, more sternly, “and let this murderer take his due. He is jeopardizing all our lives, and his own has been forfeit these years. Stand away!” He sprang forward with intent now to fire at his enemy over her shoulder, and Aline moved too late to hinder him.
“Andre! Andre!”
Panting, gasping, haggard of face, on the verge almost of hysteria, the distracted Countess flung at last an effective, a terrible barrier between the hatred of those men, each intent upon taking the other’s life.
“He is your father, Andre! Gervais, he is your son — our son! The letter there . . . on the table . . . O my God!” And she slipped nervelessly to the ground, and crouched there sobbing at the feet of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.
CHAPTER 15
SAFE-CONDUCT
Across the body of that convulsively sobbing woman, the mother of one and the mistress of the other, the eyes of those mortal enemies met, invested with a startled, appalled interest that admitted of no words.
Beyond the table, as if turned to stone by this culminating horror of revelation, stood Aline.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr was the first to stir. Into his bewildered mind came the memory of something that Mme. de Plougastel had said of a letter that was on the table. He came forward, unhindered. The announcement made, Mme. de Plougastel no longer feared the sequel, and so she let him go. He walked unsteadily past this new-found son of his, and took up the sheet that lay beside the candlebranch. A long moment he stood reading it, none heeding him. Aline’s eyes were all on Andre–Louis, full of wonder and commiseration, whilst Andre–Louis was staring down, in stupefied fascination, at his mother.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr read the letter slowly through. Then very quietly he replaced it. His next concern, being the product of an artificial age sternly schooled in the suppression of emotion, was to compose himself. Then he stepped back to Mme. de Plougastel’s side and stooped to raise her.
“Therese,” he said.
Obeying, by instinct, the implied command, she made an effort to rise and to control herself in her turn. The Marquis half conducted, half carried her to the armchair by the table.
Andre–Louis looked on. Still numbed and bewildered, he made no attempt to assist. He saw as in a dream the Marquis bending over Mme. de Plougastel. As in a dream he heard him ask:
“How long have you known this, Therese?”
“I . . . I have always known it . . . always. I confided him to Kercadiou. I saw him once as a child . . . Oh, but what of that?”
“Why was I never told? Why did you deceive me? Why did you tell me that this child had died a few days after birth? Why, Therese? Why?”
“I was afraid. I . . . I thought it better so — that nobody, nobody, not even you, should know. And nobody has known save Quintin until last night, when to induce him to come here and save me he was forced to tell him.”
“But I, Therese?” the Marquis insisted. “It was my right to know.”
“Your right? What could you have done? Acknowledge him? And then? Ha!” It was a queer, desperate note of laughter. “There was Plougastel; there was my family. And there was you . . . you, yourself, who had ceased to care, in whom the fear of discovery had stifled love. Why should I have told you, then? Why? I should not have told you now had there been any other way to . . . to save you both. Once before I suffered just such dreadful apprehensions when you and he fought in the Bois. I was on my way to prevent it when you met me. I would have divulged the truth, as a last resource, to avert that horror. But mercifully God spared me the necessity then.”
It had not occurred to any of them to doubt her statement, incredible though it might seem. Had any done so her present words must have resolved all doubt, explaining as they did much that to each of her listeners had been obscure until this moment.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr, overcome, reeled away to a chair and sat down heavily. Losing command of himself for a moment, he took his haggard face in his hands.
Through the windows open to the garden came from the distance the faint throbbing of a drum to remind them of what was happening around them. But the sound went unheeded. To each it must have seemed that here they were face to face with a horror greater than any that might be tormenting Paris. At last Andre–Louis began to speak, his voice level and unutterably cold.
“M. de La Tour d’Azyr,” he said, “I trust that you’ll agree that this disclosure, which can hardly be more distasteful and horrible to you than it is to me, alters nothing, since it effaces nothing of all that lies between us. Or, if it alters anything, it is merely to add something