“Never speak his name to me again,” he cried; “never! never!”
CHAPTER V
THE DEPARTURE FROM AIX
Luc sat in a corner of the Paris post-chaise which was driving through the dark away from Aix. It was over now. He was free of everything; his own master; on his own road to his own goal.
Though, knowing his father, he must have known this utter breach would follow his confession of his faith and belief, yet no previous preparation could soften the pang of the suddenness with which the thing had happened. For years he had been aware that if he spoke what was in his mind his father would be moved to terrible wrath; yet it was none the less awful that he was riding away from Aix, from his home, for ever.
His mother, too. She had let him go with less kindness than he had often seen her show to poor beseechers of charity at her gate.
Jean, his own body-servant, had shrunk from him—he had packed his portmanteaus himself; the other servants had kept out of his way. He seemed to have left the house under a silent curse.
He roused himself; demanded of himself what he was doing brooding on the past. His justification lay in the future. He looked round the interior of the coach, which was full of mist, and shadow, and the wavering light of an oil lamp that hung above the red upholstered worn back of the seat opposite him.
It was a chilly night, the road rough, and progress slow. Luc’s weak sight slowly made out the other passengers. His mental preoccupation had been such that till now he had not noticed them.
One, who sat opposite him, under the lamp, was an ordinary middle-aged citizen, wrapped in a frieze coat and wearing a grey wig. He was half asleep, and his head shook to and fro on his breast with the rattling of the coach. The remaining passenger was a woman, so muffled from head to foot in a dark mantle that face, figure, hands, and feet were hidden—probably she was asleep.
Luc had never been in a public coach before. The close smell, the worn fittings, the near presence of strangers—it was all new to him, as were the joltings and lurching in the heavy leathers. He reflected that henceforth all his life would be as strange, as different as this from what he had hitherto known; that from now on he would have to consider things from another standpoint—the soldier, the noble existed no longer. He was a man broken in health, with very little longer to live, adventuring to Paris. He schooled himself to endure the monotony of the cold, the dim light, the two silent figures, the slow motion. He closed his eyes and endeavoured to sleep.