The Seigneur—furbished and beruffled to harmonize with his surroundings—had risen, startled by this exuberant invasion on the part of Bénoît, who had been almost as forlorn as himself since their coming to Meudon.
“What is it? Eh?” His pale, shortsighted eyes peered at the visitor. “André!” said he, between surprise and sternness; and the colour deepened in his great pink face.
Bénoît, with his back to his master, deliberately winked and grinned at André-Louis to encourage him not to be put off by any apparent hostility on the part of his godfather. That done, the intelligent old fellow discreetly effaced himself.
“What do you want here?” growled M. de Kercadiou.
“No more than to kiss your hand, as Bénoît has told you, monsieur my godfather,” said André-Louis submissively, bowing his sleek black head.
“You have contrived without kissing it for two years.”
“Do not, monsieur, reproach me with my misfortune.”
The little man stood very stiffly erect, his disproportionately large head thrown back, his pale prominent eyes very stern.
“Did you think to make your outrageous offence any better by vanishing in that heartless manner, by leaving us without knowledge of whether you were alive or dead?”
“At first it was dangerous—dangerous to my life—to disclose my whereabouts. Then for a time I was in need, almost destitute, and my pride forbade me, after what I had done and the view you must take of it, to appeal to you for help. Later …”
“Destitute?” The Seigneur interrupted. For a moment his lip trembled. Then he steadied himself, and the frown deepened as he surveyed this very changed and elegant godson of his, noted the quiet richness of his apparel, the paste buckles and red heels to his shoes, the sword hilted in mother-o’-pearl and silver, and the carefully dressed hair that he had always seen hanging in wisps about his face. “At least you do not look destitute now,” he sneered.
“I am not. I have prospered since. In that, monsieur, I differ from the ordinary prodigal, who returns only when he needs assistance. I return solely because I love you, monsieur—to tell you so. I have come at the very first moment after hearing of your presence here.” He advanced. “Monsieur my godfather!” he said, and held out his hand.
But M. de Kercadiou remained unbending, wrapped in his cold dignity and resentment.
“Whatever tribulations you may have suffered or consider that you may have suffered, they are far less than your disgraceful conduct deserved, and I observe that they have nothing abated your impudence. You think that you have but to come here and say, ‘Monsieur my godfather!’ and everything is to be forgiven and forgotten. That is your error. You have committed too great a wrong; you have offended against everything by which I hold, and against myself personally, by your betrayal of my trust in you. You are one of those unspeakable scoundrels who are responsible for this revolution.”
“Alas, monsieur, I see that you share the common delusion. These unspeakable scoundrels but demanded a constitution, as was promised them from the throne. They were not to know that the promise was insincere, or that its fulfilment would be baulked by the privileged orders. The men who have precipitated this revolution, monsieur, are the nobles and the prelates.”
“You dare—and at such a time as this—stand there and tell me such abominable lies! You dare to say that the nobles have made the revolution, when scores of them, following the example of M. le Duc d’Aiguillon, have flung their privileges, even their title-deeds, into the lap of the people! Or perhaps you deny it?”
“Oh, no. Having wantonly set fire to their house, they now try to put it out by throwing water on it; and where they fail they put the entire blame on the flames.”
“I see that you have come here to talk politics.”
“Far from it. I have come, if possible, to explain myself. To understand is always to forgive. That is a great saying of Montaigne’s. If I could make you understand …”
“You can’t. You’ll never make me understand how you came to render yourself so odiously notorious in Brittany.”
“Ah, not odiously, monsieur!”
“Certainly, odiously—among those that matter. It is said even that you were Omnes Omnibus, though that I cannot, will not believe.”
“Yet it is true.”
M. de Kercadiou choked. “And you confess it? You dare to confess it?”
“What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess—unless he is a coward.”
“Oh, and to be sure you were very brave, running away each time after you had done the mischief, turning comedian to hide yourself, doing more mischief as a comedian, provoking a riot in Nantes, and then running away again, to become God knows what—something dishonest by the affluent look of you. My God, man, I tell you that in these past two years I have hoped that you were dead, and you profoundly disappoint me that you are not!” He beat his hands together, and raised his shrill voice to call “Bénoît!” He strode away towards the fireplace, scarlet in the face, shaking with the passion into which he had worked himself. “Dead, I might have forgiven you, as one who had paid for his evil, and his folly. Living, I never can forgive you. You have gone too far. God alone knows where it will end.
“Bénoît, the door. M. André-Louis Moreau to the door!”
The tone argued an irrevocable determination. Pale and self-contained, but with a queer pain at his heart, André-Louis heard that dismissal, saw Bénoît’s white, scared face and shaking hands half-raised as if he were about to expostulate with his master. And then another voice, a crisp, boyish voice, cut in.
“Uncle!” it cried, a world of indignation and surprise in its pitch, and then: “André!” And this time a note almost of gladness, certainly of welcome, was blended with the surprise that
