“I must leave the army, father. I must send in my resignation to-night. Bohemia broke my health. France—France has no further need of me.”
“Luc!”
The old man stepped back and stood rigid, as if the words were so many arrows to pinion him.
The young soldier took hold of the back of the dark mahogany chair in which he had been sitting.
“Monseigneur,” he said with great sweetness, “I am a disappointment to you that must be hard to bear.... I have been nine years in the army and am no more than captain. I must now leave this honourable employment with ruined health and a ruined fortune.”
The Marquis stood without movement. Luc proceeded to tell him, gently and with courage, of the great expenses of the war, of his illness at Eger, of the necessity he had been under of parting with most of his property in Paris to meet his debts, of the doctor’s advice that the bitter hardship of the retreat from Prague had sown the seeds of perpetual weakness and suffering in his breast.
“But I shall live many years,” he finished, “and there are other ways of glory.”
With these simple words was the tale told of his life’s hopes, his dearest dreams utterly vanquished by brutal circumstance. Even his father did not know what ambitions he had warmed in his heart only a few months ago; even his father did not know from what horrors of despair he had won his lofty sweetness of acceptance.
“You must not grieve, Monseigneur—soldiers expect such fates, and I——” Then quite suddenly his voice failed him, and he turned away his head, almost violently, and gazed at the placid gardens and the gorgeous beech tree.
The Marquis’s chin sank on his bosom; he also had had his secret dreams that he was now called upon to relinquish. This was his favourite son standing before him and saying he was a useless invalid. “A useless invalid”—the words surged up in the old noble’s throat till he felt as if he had spoken them.