The weight of the name

by Paul Bourget

"Is Monsieur le Marquis well?" Landri inquired; and his heart gave a great throb of relief, as on the day before with Despois and Vigouroux, when the servant replied:—

"Why, yes, Monsieur le Comte, very well. Monsieur le Marquis went to Grandchamp yesterday to hunt, with several friends."

"He hunts!" thought the young man. "Then nothing extraordinary is happening! Evidently I was right. He wishes to talk with me about money matters only." And he said, aloud: "Ask him if he can see me about ten o'clock."

This touch of ceremoniousness was no novelty in the relations between the father and son. Although the conventional courtesy which is traditionary in old-fashioned families creates something like embarrassment at certain times, at other times it reveals itself as singularly beneficent in its operation. It ensures anonymity, if necessary, when one is suffering. No one of the household suspected that there was impending between the marquis and Landri one of those scenes which mark a solemn epoch in two lives.

But did Landri himself suspect to what sort of an interview he was proceeding when, at the appointed hour, he went down from his apartment to the library, where M. de Claviers had sent word that he was awaiting him? That large, high-studded room was on the same level with the garden, which was fresh and bright-colored in summer, but so severely bare and leafless on that dark December morning. The gloomy setting was only too appropriate to the words that were to be exchanged there.

The marquis was standing in front of the vast fireplace, with his back to the fire, whose bright flame twined about a veritable tree-trunk. It was another of the old nobleman's manias, that huge fire of the olden time. Standing before that monumental chimneypiece, he was himself at that moment, despite his modern costume, more of an "ancient portrait" than ever. But it was the portrait of one who was living through hours of frightful martyrdom. The master of the hunt of the forest of Hez, whose tall erect figure Landri had so admired in the group of sportsmen watching the kill, was scarcely fifty years of age, despite the sixty-five years that the genealogical tree of the Claviers-Grandchamps gave him. The head of the family, who was at that moment awaiting the heir to his name in the immense room lined with wainscotings and books, was an old man. His ruddy complexion mottled with white spots, his heavy eyelids, the wrinkles on his brow, told the story of the long sleepless nights of those four weeks. The jovial gleam of his deep blue eyes was replaced by an expression of feverish ardor, wherein one could divine his secret agony—at that moment! For the undiminished pride of the whole physiognomy said plainly enough that the nobleman had not surrendered, and that before any other witness he would have found a way to conceal his wound.

What was the wound? To know, Landri had no need to question him. What he had foreseen had happened. M. de Claviers suspected the truth. To what extent? How had he been warned? The young man instinctively collected all his strength, in order to undergo without faltering an interview in which his own secret might escape him. He was about to realize once more the superiority of Race, and what a powerful and resolute character it bestows upon its authentic representatives.

M. de Claviers was infinitely affectionate and sensitive, but he was above all else a man. In him, character was in very truth nourished upon and permeated by those principles upon which he declaimed with a fervor which was sometimes so discordant, even—especially, perhaps—in his own circle. At supremely critical moments he was certain to manifest the energy born of an unchangeable resolution, which scorns equivocation, and which has the unswerving decision of the surgeon's knife. He, too, was unaware exactly how much his son—in name—knew of a situation of which he had never dreamed before he had had overwhelming and indisputable proof of it. He was justified in thinking that the young man was altogether ignorant. That was enough to justify, in a weaker nature, the temptation to hold his peace, which Landri assuredly would not have escaped. In the marquis's eyes one duty overshadowed everything else,—the duty of saving, in this shipwreck of all his confidence and all his affections, so much as he could save of the honor of the Claviers-Grandchamps. He was the depositary of the name, and he proposed to impose his will on the intruder,—justifiably, indeed,—without concern for aught save that honor. And so when the young man, immediately on entering the room, began to speak, alluding to their last interview, he cut him short with a word.

"I did not send for you," he said; and the failure to address him by the familiar tu seemed strangely harsh in his mouth, for never before, since his childhood, had Landri known him to address him thus, even in his sternest moments;—"I did not send for you to resume a discussion which, henceforth, has no interest or even any pretext. Something has happened during the month since we last met. It is destined to change our relations forever, and in every respect. It has seemed to me that I owed it to myself and to you to make it known to you. Prepare to receive a very painful blow, as I received it, bravely."

"I am prepared, father, to receive anything from you," Landri replied, "for I am sure that you will never do anything except for what you believe to be my good."