Armand stared, blinking and paling, at this apparition, unable to speak. Louis rose involuntarily, with a kind of convulsive haste, seizing the back of his gilt chair, his black robes falling about him, a dim spasm passing over his cold and stately face.
Then Armand, with a cry, burst into tears. He held out his arms to Arsène, the hands making frenzied and urgent movements, such as a mother makes to her child who is in danger, his features working and twisting.
“You hound of lubricity!” he cried, choking over his tears. “Where have you been hiding yourself, in what wicked boudoir? Come to me at once, and kiss me! Mon Dieu, how I have missed your foul face! I loathe you, I spurn you, I disown you! Kiss me at once!”
There was more than passionate love, more than passionate relief and joy, in his trembling voice. Arsène, laughing loudly, came to his father, suffered the convulsive embraces, the quivering kisses, which were too vehement even for Armand’s fatuous adoration. In the midst of all this vehemence, Armand’s painted lips touched Arsène’s ear, and there was a smothered whisper: “Beware! Les Blanches! Louis!” Then the cries, the wild kisses, the embraces, were renewed.
Arsène’s expression showed nothing of what he had heard. He finally freed himself from his father’s clutches, stood up, and held his father’s jerking hand tightly, his own warm and strong with affection and reassurance. He turned to Louis.
“Bon jour, Monsieur le Curé,” he said, lightly, in a humorous but affectionate voice, which had in it, for Louis, a familiar touch of mockery and satire. “You are looking well, as usual.”
The brothers regarded each other in a swift silence, Arsène smiling, Louis cold and remote, his large blue eyes fixed and gleaming. Then Louis said, in a controlled and dignified tone:
“It is well you have returned, Arsène. My father has been ill with anxiety. Do you not think you owe us an explanation for this long absence, and an accounting of this escapade?”
Armand exclaimed, with some incoherence: “Mais oui! Most certainly! But he is ashamed, the dog! Certes, he is ashamed, or he would not have sent that miserable old abbé to you, Louis, with a mealy explanation of some ‘accident’! Ah,” he said, shaking a lean dark finger at Arsène with a terrified archness: “That was a fine, hypocritical touch! An abbé, you libertine! Where did you find the innocent? In your lady’s boudoir? Or had he come to shrive you when her husband discovered you in her arms?”
Arsène laughed again, loudly. But Louis merely gazed at him. Arsène touched his cheek, and winked.
“Regard this scar. Is it not becoming? But you must let me have my secrets, my father. It would be ungallant to tell, would it not? When there is a lady involved, one is silent. Is that not so?”
Armand became aware, for the first time, of the crimson and jagged line on his son’s cheek, and he regarded it with dread, for he saw that it was no mean injury. He also saw that Arsène was much thinner, much paler, and that he appeared exhausted, even emaciated. His craven heart, his adoring heart, plunged, sickened, rose on a wing of terror and grief.
“Was there a lady?” asked Louis, coldly.
Arsène shrugged. “Why do you ask that, Louis? Have you not, yourself, given me a wanton reputation? It is strange how perspicacious you are, for a chaste priest. Or do priests usually expect and suspect the obscene? It is very odd, for such celibates.”
For the first time a flush appeared on Louis’ pale cheek, and it was like the icy flush of sunset on snow. Arsène, above all men, always had the power to disconcert and enrage him. He looked at his brother with a long stare, lifeless yet somehow virulent.
“Do you not think it time to take a more sober view of life, Arsène? Have you considered Mademoiselle de Tremblant, who took to her bed upon your prolonged disappearance? I have attended her frequently, consoling her.”
Arsène grinned evilly. “Without a stir of those frigid pulses, Louis? How could you gaze on such beauty, such white sloping shoulders, such a neck, without a movement of your ice-bound heart?”
Louis said nothing. He continued to gaze steadfastly at his brother, but he became mortally pale, as if a violating hand had touched him.
“You are ill!” cried Armand. “You must go to your bed instantly. Reach for the bell-rope, you stinking blackguard, and call Pierre to assist you to your chamber.”
Arsène negligently lifted the perfume bottle from the table at his father’s elbow. He removed the stopper, and sniffed deeply, consideringly. He cocked his head, stared into space. He frowned, pursed his lips, smiled, shook his head a little. Even in the midst of his fright, anxiety and agitation, Armand was struck, and waited for an explanation of these antics.
“Marvelous,” said Arsène. His hand trembled with weakness as he replaced the bottle. “I think this is the best you have concocted. But is there not a trifle too much musk? I believe it detracts from a really exquisite subtlety.”
Armand wet his lips. He bridled. He followed Arsène’s cue with a hysterical eagerness, not untouched by pride and annoyance. His glittering black eyes roved, jerked, could not keep still.
“You coarse reprobate! How can you appreciate delicacy? There is not too much musk! There is barely enough.” He seized the bottle, sniffed it critically, adoringly, his eyes fixed restlessly on Arsène. “This is my best. I have sent a vial of it to His Majesty, and one to Monsieur le Cardinal. They are appreciative. They have no taste for the barnyard, such as you have, you miserable scoundrel. I call it Fleur d’Amour.”
“Banal,” said Arsène, shaking his head. “Unimaginative. Why not call it ‘Her Majesty’? That will be a delicate hint, and might induce Her Most Illustrious Majesty, the queen mother, to take a bath more than once in six months.”
Armand laughed with convulsive shrillness, but Louis’ fair brows knotted together with disgust.
“You consider that pleasantry respectful?” he asked.
“I insist there is too much musk,” said Arsène, to his father.
Louis moved slightly. He turned towards the door. “I shall wait in the Rose Room for you, Arsène. I must have a few words with you.”
Armand was again seized with terror. He clutched Arsène’s hand, and glared with distended hatred at Louis.
“You have no heart, Louis! Can you not easily discern that Arsène is weak, ill, and must rest? I insist he go to his chambers at once! There will be plenty of time for inconsequential chatter.”
“Nevertheless,” said Louis, standing in the distant doorway, “I will, and must, speak to Arsène.”
“Go to hell!” screamed Armand, losing control of himself.
Arsène, smiling, laid his hand on his father’s shoulder, and pressed it deeply. “I wish to speak to Louis, also,” he said, in a peculiar voice.
Armand, panting, looked up at his son with dilated and burning eyes, full of fearful warning. Arsène shook his head slightly, still smiling. Armand was only a little relieved. He was trembling visibly.
The door closed behind Louis. There was a silence in the room. Then, moving as lightly as a cat, Arsène went to the door, opened it. The sunny corridor outside was empty. Arsène felt some embarrassment. He had known that Louis, the immaculate, the loftily proud, would never, even in the interests of all that he held holy, have eavesdropped.
Laughing to himself, Arsène came back to his father, who sat upright in his chair, rigid, the spots of rouge standing out on his withered dark cheeks. Fright had him again. He shook his head at his son, and lifted his glittering and attenuated hand.
“No,” he whispered. “I wish to know nothing. You must tell me nothing.”
Arsène sat down negligently in the chair which Louis had vacated. He pulled it into the sunlight.
“I have suffered,” said Armand. And now, there was a moving dignity about his elegant frivolity. “But what I have suffered is nothing, now that you have returned safely.” He clasped his hands together, as if enduring a spasm of pain. “No man, no woman, no torment of my own, have caused me such distress as you have caused me, Arsène. Perhaps it is because I have loved no one but you.”
Tears rose to his eyes, and there was nothing maudlin in them, but only the most moving sincerity. Arsène was unbearably touched. He took his father’s shaking hand and kissed it gently.
“I beg your forgiveness, my father,” he said, and there was no lightness, no gaiety, in his voice. “I must always beg your forgiveness. I am not worthy of your love. But what I do I must do.”
The tears fell from Armand’s eyes, streaked the rouge. But he only looked at Arsène with despair. Finally, he said, with difficulty, and even with an imploring note:
“There was a woman, Arsène?”
Arsène hesitated. Then he lifted his head and gazed dreamily through the casement. The golden sun was heavy with warmth and dust. From the busy street came the movement of many feet, the sound of many voices, the rumble of many carriages on the rough stones.
“Yes,” said Arsène softly, “there was a woman.”
Armand sighed. He leaned back in his chair, his hand still held in his son’s. He closed his wrinkled eyes, exhausted. The kohl was blackly visible in their wrinkles, and on the lashes.
“And Mademoiselle de Tremblant?” he asked, faintly.
“Clarisse has nothing to do with this,” said Arsène. “She is my betrothed. We shall be married in June, as planned. This—this woman has no part in my life. She is very young, very sweet, very beautiful. She is my friend. And chaste as crystal. No, she has nothing to do with this. She is not for me. I would not dare to touch her.”
His mobile face saddened; the scar on his cheek puckered angrily.
“Nevertheless,” he continued, almost inaudibly, “I know, for the first time in my life, what love is, what love can be. I feel no regret, no desire. I doubt if I shall see her again.”
“Ah, l’amour!” said Armand, without opening his eyes, and sighing sentimentally. But there was a mechanical quality in his voice as if he were indifferent. “You cannot make her your mistress? Who can resist you, you lewd reprobate?” Now he opened his eyes and smiled roguishly.
But Arsène, grave and quiet, stood up, and looked down at his father.
“You whispered something to me? What is the meaning?”
Stark, ghastly with increased fright, Armand whispered: “Louis—before you entered, he asked me if I knew of—of one Les Blanches.” He seized Arsène’s hand again, and his own was cold, rigorous. “He did not accuse you of belonging to such, Arsène! But he did say that your friend, Paul de Vitry, was the organizer—”
Arsène started. He compressed his lips, gazed at his father piercingly.
“Did Louis say how he knew this?”
“No. No! I would not listen. Arsène, I dare listen to nothing, nothing!
Have I not told you that? Have I not implored you to take care, to cease, to—”
Arsène interrupted remorselessly: “You should have listened to him. You should have questioned him. This is most frightfully important.”
“Why?” cried Armand, forgetting caution in the extremity of his fear. “Why should this matter to you? No, no, do not answer me! I cannot bear it! I shall not listen. I shall not ask you again to consider your father, his position, all that I have wanted, and gained, and intrigued for, and desired—”
Arsène’s expression revealed that he heard nothing of this. It was hard and intent.
“Have you heard from Paul? Have you seen him? Has he disappeared? In the name of God, my father, you must answer this for me!”
Armand had never heard such a note in his son’s voice before, stern, implacable, coldly agitated. He wrung his hands together, tried to shrink before those inexorable eyes.
“You will kill me!” he moaned. “Is there no peace on earth for me? Shall I have no pleasure in what I have—”
“Lied for, betrayed for, violated for!” said Arsène, in a low and bitter tone. He bent over his father, pressed his hands on the other’s shoulders, forced him to look into his own eyes.
“You must answer me. Where is Paul? Was he—did he —where is Paul?”
Armand shuddered, whimpered. “How you torture me, Arsène. There is no compassion in you, no affection for me, no consideration. What is this Paul de Vitry to me? I loathe him, I hate him, for what he is doing to—I know nothing, Arsène! I only know that two days after you—disappeared —he came to this house and asked for you, and pretended amazement when I said you had not returned from one of your nocturnal excursions. His arm—it was in a sling under his cloak. He was very pale.”
“Then,” said Arsène, aloud, but to himself, “he got away, safely.” He sighed; the stern paleness of his face lessened. He even smiled a little. And then because he was so weak, he staggered, caught himself by clutching the window draperies.
Armand continued, stammering in his extremity: “He came again, only recently. I told him that you had sent an abbé, a miserable creature, with a message that you were well, and would soon return. I—I cursed him for leading you into dangerous and amorous adventures at night.”
Arsène thought of that fiery and dedicated friend, and smiled involuntarily. He could not resist asking:
“And what did Paul say?”
Armand’s eyes glittered vindictively. He said: “‘It is wrong, most certainly, and foolish. But a young man must have amusement. I humbly crave your forgiveness, Monsieur le Marquis. But what is one to do when one’s blood is hot, and life is short? Surely, you are not guiltless of such escapades, and are young, still, with an appreciation of them.’” Armand smiled, and so capricious were his emotions, so facile, that even in these stern and terrifying moments he could bridle, put his head on one side, and shake his oiled ringlets, simpering reminiscently.
“I told him,” he continued, “that there must be discretion even in adventure, and love. Husbands are notoriously narrow-minded with regard to their wives. I told him that he was no fit companion for you, Arsène, and that I would thank him to terminate the friendship.”
Arsène could see as clearly as if he had been there during that interview the vivid terror on his father’s face, could hear his screaming vehemence and hysteria as he denounced Paul de Vitry, and none too subtly threatened him.
“You are too virtuous to have such a son as I, my father,” he said, gravely.
Armand, the facile and womanish, was outraged. “Young sir, I have had adventure such as you milk-blooded puppies could not conceive of, with your clumsy intrigues and dallyings. But I was discreet; there was some elegance in me. You are only coarse, like the boorish Germans, or the blood-swilling Englishmen. Ah, but I suppose that coarseness comes from your mother. Her grandfather was a German. The boorish taint is there, the animal lack of delicacy, the absence of the manner.”
He was more at ease now, and only the tremor about his painted lips revealed through what an ordeal he had been passing. He spoke loudly, for the benefit of possible secret listeners.
Arsène smiled. “There is much in what you say,” he admitted. He played with a golden tassel that hung from the draperies. His heart was slowing to its normal pace. “I will try to emulate you more, my father.”
He went towards the door. Armand cried out.
“That Louis!” he exclaimed, and the supreme terror was on his face again. “That cold white serpent! Beware, Arsène. Beware your tongue. There is an enemy to freeze a man’s blood. You will take care?”
Arsène raised his hand, and inclined his head. “I will be discreet. Have no fear. It is I, now, who will do the questioning. Louis has no subtlety.”