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.
“André! For God’s sake, André!” 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.
“André! André!”
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, André! 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.
XVII
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 newfound 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 André-Louis, full of wonder and commiseration, whilst André-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.
“Thérèse,” 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.
André-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, Thérèse?”
“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, Thérèse? 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, Thérèse?” 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 André-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 to that score. And yet … Oh, but what can it avail to talk! Here, monsieur, take this safe-conduct which is made out for Mme. de Plougastel’s footman, and with it make your escape as best you can. In return I will beg of you the favour never to allow me to see you or hear of you again.”
“André!” His mother swung upon him with that cry. And yet again that question. “Have you no heart? What has he ever done to you that you should nurse so bitter a hatred of him?”
“You shall hear, madame. Once, two years ago in this very room I told you of a man who had
