Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  “Gaston! — My God! Gaston!”

  I stared stupidly at him with eyes that blinked painfully in the spring sunshine, — who was he, this tidy, respectable, elderly personage who, pale as death, regarded me with the terror-stricken air of one who sees some sudden spectral prodigy?

  “Gaston!” he cried again.

  Ah! — Of course! I knew him now! My father! Actually my father! — who would have thought it! I felt in a dim sort of way that I had no further claim to relationship with this worthy piece of honesty, — and I laughed drowsily as I made a feeble clutch at my battered hat and pulled it off to salute him.

  “Pardieu!” I murmured. “This is an unexpected meeting, mon père f I rejoice to see you looking so well!”

  White to the lips, he still stood, staring at me, one hand grasping his gold-headed cane, — the other nervously clenching and unclenching itself. Had I had any sense of filial compassion or decency left, which I had not, I should have understood that the old man was suffering acutely from such a severe shock as needed all his physical courage and endurance to battle against, and I should have been as sorry for him as I ought; but in the condition I was, I only felt a kind of grim amusement to think what a horrible disappointment I must be to him! His son! I! I laughed again in a stupid sort of fashion, and surveying my ill-used hat I remarked airily —

  “My presence in Paris must be a surprise to you, sir? I suppose you thought I was in Italy?”

  He paid no attention to my words. He seemed quite stunned. Suddenly, rousing his faculties, as it were by a supreme effort, he made a stride towards me.

  “Gaston!” he exclaimed sharply, “what does this mean? Why are you here? What has happened to you? Why have you never written to me? — what is the reason of this disgraceful plight in which I find you? Mon Dieu! — what have I done to deserve this shame!”

  His voice shook, — and his wrath seemed close upon the verge of tears.

  “What have you done, mon pèref — why nothing!” I responded tranquilly. “Nothing, I assure you! And why talk of shame? No shame attaches to you in the very least! Pray do not distress yourself! You ask me a great many questions, — and as I am not particularly well this morning—”

  His face softened and changed in an instant, and he advanced another step or two hurriedly.

  “Ah! — you are ill! — you have been suffering and have never told me of it,” he said, with a sort of eager relief and solicitude. “Is it indeed so, my poor Gaston? — why then forgive my hastiness! — here, — lean on my arm and let me take you home!”

  A great lump rose in my throat, — what a good simple old fellow he was, — this far-away half-forgotten individual to whom I dimly understood I owed my being! He was ready to offer me his arm, — he, the cleanly respectable honourable banker whose methodical regularity of habits and almost fastidious punctilio were known to all his friends and acquaintance, — he would, — if I had made illness my sole excuse, — he would have actually escorted my draggled, dirty, slouching figure through the streets with more than the tenderness of the Good Samaritan! I! — a murderer? — I smiled, — his simplicity was too sincere to merit any further deception from me.

  “You mistake!” I said, speaking harshly and with difficulty. “I am not ill, — not with the sort of illness that you or any one else could cure. I’ve been up all night, — dancing all night, — drunk all night, — going to the devil all night! — ah! that surprises you, does it? Enfin! — I do not see why you should be surprised! — On va avec son siècle!”

  He retreated from me, and a frown of deepening indignation and scorn darkened his fine features.

  “If this is a jest,” he said sternly, “it is a poor one and in very bad taste! Perhaps you will condescend to explain—”

  “Oh, certainly!” and I passed my hand in and out my rough uncombed hair— “Voyons! where shall I begin? Let me consider your questions. Imprimis, — what does this mean? Well, it means that the majority of men are beasts and the minority respectable; — needless to add that I belong to the majority. It is the strongest side, you know! — it always wins! Next, — why am I here? I really can’t tell you — I forget what I did last night, and as a natural consequence, my wits have gone wool-gathering this morning. As for being still in Paris itself instead of running away to other less interesting parts of Europe, I really, on consideration, saw no reason why I should leave it — so in Paris I stayed. One can lose one’s self in Paris quite as easily as in a wilderness. I have kept out of your way, and I have not intruded my objectionable presence upon any one of our mutual friends. I did not write to you, because — well! — because I imagined it was better for you to try and forget me. To finish — you ask what has happened to me, — and what the reason is of this my present condition. I have taken to a new profession — that is all!”

  “A new profession!” echoed my father blankly. “What profession?”

  I looked at him steadfastly, dimly pitying him, yet feeling no inclination to spare him the final blow.

  “Oh, a common one among men in Paris!” I responded with forced lightness— “well known, well appreciated, — well paid too albeit in strange coin. And perhaps the best part of it is, that once you adopt it you can never leave it, — it does not allow for any ca price or change of humour. Y ou enter it, — and there you are! — an idée fixe in its brain!”

  The old man drew himself up a little more stiffly erect and eyed me with an indignant yet sorrowful wonder.

  “I do not understand you,” he said curtly. “To me you seem foolish, — drunk, — disgraced! I cannot believe you are my son!”

  “I am not!” I replied calmly. “Do not recognize me as such any longer! In the way I have chosen to live one cuts all the ties of mere relationship. I should be no use to you, — nor would you — pardon me for saying so! — be any use to me! What should I do with a home or home associations? — I, — an absintheur!”

  As the word left my lips, he seemed to stagger and sway forward a little, — I thought he would have fallen, and involuntarily I made a hasty movement to assist him; — but he waved me back with a feeble yet eloquent gesture, — his eyes flashed, — his whole form seemed to dilate with the passion of his wrath and pain.

  “Back! Do not touch me!” he said in low fierce accents. “How dare you face me with such an hideous avowal! An absintheur? You! What! You, my son, a confessed slave to that abominable vice that not only makes of its votaries cowards but madmen? My God! Would you had died as a child, — would I had laid you in the grave, a little innocent lad as I remember you, than have lived to see you come to this! An absintheur! In that one word is comprised all the worst possibilities of crime! Why — why in Heaven’s name have you fallen so low?”

  “Low?” I repeated. “You think it low? Well, — that is droll! Is it more low for example than a woman’s infidelity? — a man’s treachery? Have I not suffered, and shall I not be comforted? Some people solace themselves by doing their duty, and sacrificing their lives for a cause — for an idea; — and sorry recompense they win for it in the end! Now, I prefer to please myself in my own fashion — the fashion of absinthe. I am perfectly happy, — why trouble about me?”

  His eyes met mine, — the brave honest eyes that had never known how to play at treachery, — and the look of unspeakable reproach in them went to my very heart. But I gave no outward sign of feeling.

  “Is this all you have to say?” he asked at last. “All!” I echoed carelessly. “Is it not enough?” He waited as if to gather force for his next utterance, — and when he spoke again, his voice was sharp and resonant, almost metallic in its measured distinctness.

  “Enough, certainly!” he said. “And more than enough! Enough to convince me without further argument, that I have no longer a son. My son, — the son I loved and knew as both child and man, is dead, — and I do not recognize the fiend that has arisen to confront me in his disfigured likeness! You — you were once Gaston Beauvais, — a gentleman in name and po
sition, — you, who now avow yourself an absintheur, and take pride in the disgraceful confession! My God! — I think I could have pardoned you anything but this, — any crime would have seemed light in comparison with this wilful debauchery of both intelligence and conscience, without which no man has manhood worthy of the name!”

  I peered lazily at him from between my half-closed eyelids. He had really a very distinguished air! — he was altogether such a noble-looking old man!

  “Good!” I murmured affably. “Very good! Very well said! Platitudes of course, — yet admirably expressed!”

  His face flushed, — he grasped his stick convulsively.

  “By Heaven!” he muttered, “I am tempted to strike you!”

  “Do not!” I answered, smiling a little— “you would soil that handsome cane of yours, and possibly hurt your hand. I really am not worth the risk of these two contingencies!”

  He gazed at me in blank amazement.

  “Are you mad?” he cried.

  “I don’t think so,” I responded quietly. “I don’t feel so! Un the contrary, I feel perfectly sane, tranquil, and comfortable! It seems to me that you are the madman in this case, mon père! — forgive me for the brusquerie of the observation!”

  “I!” he echoed with a stupefied stare.

  “Yes — you! You, who expect of men what is not in them, — you, who would have us all virtuous and respectable in order to win the world’s good opinion. The world’s good opinion! Pshaw! Who, knowing how the world forms its opinion, cares a jot, for that opinion when it is formed? Not I! I have created a world of my own, where I am sole law-giver, — and the code of morality I practise is au fond precisely the same as is followed under different auspices throughout society; — namely; I please myself! — which, after all, is the chief object of each man’s existence.”

  Thus I rambled on half incoherently, indifferent as to whether my father stayed to listen to me or went away in disgust. He had however now regained all his ordinary composure, and he held up his hand with an authoritative gesture.

  “Silence!” he said. “You shame the very air you breathe! Listen to me, — understand well what I say, — and answer plainly if you can. You tell me you have become an absintheur, — do you know what that means?”

  “I believe I do,” I replied indifferently. “It means, in the end, — death.”

  “Oh, if it meant only death!” he exclaimed-passionately. “If it meant only the common fate that in due time comes to us all!” But it means more than this — it means crime of the most revolting character, — it means brutality, cruelty, apathy, sensuality, and mania! Have you realized the doom you create for yourself, or have you never thought thus far?”

  I gave a gesture of weariness.

  “Mon père, you excite yourself quite unnecessarily! I have thought, till I am tired of thinking, — I have conned over all the problems of life till I am sick of the useless study. What is the good of it all? For example, — you are a banker, — I was your partner in business (you see I use the past tense though you have not formally dismissed me); now what a trouble and worry it is to consume one’s days in looking after other peoplè’s money! To consider another profession, — the hackneyed one of fighting for ‘La Patrie.’ What does ‘La Patrie’ care for all the blood shed on her battle-fields? She is such a droll ‘Patrie!’ — one week, she shrieks out ‘Alsace-Lorraine! En revanche! — the next, she talks calmly through her printing-presses of making friends with Germany, and even condescends to flatter the new German Emperor! In such a state of things, who would endure the toil and moil of military service, when one could sit idle all day in a café, drinking absinthe comfortably instead! Ah, bah! Do not look so indignant, — the days of romance are over, sir! — we want to do as we like with our lives, — not to be coerced into wasting them on vain dreams of either virtue or glory!”

  My father heard me in perfect silence. When I had finished speaking —

  “That is your answer?” he demanded.

  “Answer to what? Oh, as to whether I understand the meaning of being an absintheur. Yes! — that is my answer, — I am quite happy! — and even suppose I do become a maniac as you so amiably suggest, I have heard that maniacs are really very enviable sort of people. They imagine themselves to be kings, emperors, popes, and what not, — it is just as agreeable an existence as any other, I should imagine!”

  “Enough!” and my father fixed his eyes upon me with such a coldness of unutterable scorn in them, as for the moment gave me a dim sense of shame, “I want to hear no more special pleadings for the most degrading and loathsome vice of this our city and age. No more, I tell you! — not a word! What I have to say you will do well to remember, and think of as often as your besotted brain can think! First, then, in the life you have elected to lead, you will cease to bear my name.”

  I bowed, smiling serenely.

  “Ça va sans dire! I have already ceased to bear it,” I answered him. “Your honour is safe with me, sir, I assure you, though I care nothing for my own!”

  He went on as though he had not heard me.

  “You will no longer have any connection with the Bank, — nor any share in its concerns. I shall take in your place as my partner your cousin Emil Versoix,”

  I bowed again. Emil Versoix was my fathers sister’s son, a bright young fellow of about my own age; what an opening for him, I thought! — and how proud he would be to get the position I had voluntarily resigned!

  “I shall send you,” continued my father, “whatever sums are belonging to you on account of your past work and share with me in business. That, and no more. When that is spent, live as you can, but do not come to me, — our relationship must be now a thing dissolved and broken for ever. From this day henceforth I disown you, — for I know that the hideous vice you pander to, allows for no future repentance or redemption. I had a son!” — and his voice quivered a little, “a son of whom I was too fondly, foolishly proud, — but he is lost to me, — lost as utterly as the unhappy Pauline, or her no less unhappy lover, Silvion Guidèl.”

  I started, and a tremor ran through me.

  “Lost! — Silvion Guidèl!” I stammered— “How! — lost, did you say?”

  “Aye, lost!” repeated my father in melancholy accents— “If you have not heard, hear now, — for it is you who caused the mischief done to be simply irreparable! Your quondam friend, made priest, was sent to Rome, — and from Rome he has disappeared, — gone, no one knows where. All possible search has been made, — all possible inquiry, — but in vain, — and his parents are mad with grief and desolation. Like the poor child Pauline, he has vanished, leaving no trace, — and though pity and forgiveness would await them both were they to return to their homes, as yet no sign has been obtained of either.”

  “They are probably together!” I said, with a sudden fierce laugh. “In some sequestered nook of the world, loving as lovers should, and mocking the grief of those they wronged!”

  With an impetuous movement my father raised his cane, — and I certainly thought that this time he would have struck me, — but he restrained himself.

  “Oh callous devil!” he cried wrathfully— “Is it possible—”

  “Is what possible?” I demanded, my rage also rising in a tumult. “Nay, is it possible you can speak of ‘pity and forgiveness’ for those two guilty fools? Pity and forgiveness! — the prodigal son with the prodigal daughter welcomed back, and the fatted calf killed to do them honour! Bah! What fine false sentiment! I — I” — and I struck my breast angrily— “I was and am the principal sufferer! — but see you! — because I win consolation in a way that harms no one but myself, — I am disinherited — I am disowned — I am cast out and spurned at, — while she, Pauline the wanton, and he, Guidèl, the seducer, are being searched for tenderly, high and low, to be brought back when found, to peace and pardon! Oh, the strange justice of the world! Enough of all this, — go! — go, you who were my father! — go! why should we exchange more words? You have
chosen your path, — Imine! and you may depend upon it, the much admired and regretted Silvion Guidèl has chosen his! Go! — why do you stand there staring at me?”

  For I had risen, and confronted him boldly, — he seemed nothing more to me now than a man grown foolish in his old age and unable to distinguish wrong from right. No one was near us, — we stood in a sequestered corner of the Champs Elyseés, and from the broader avenues came ringing between-whiles the laughter and chatter of children at play. He, — my father — looked at me with the strained startled gaze of a brave man wounded to the death.

  “Can sorrow change you thus?” he said slowly. “Are you so much of a moral coward that you will allow a mere love-disappointment in youth, to blight and wither to nothingness your whole career? Are you not man enough to live it down?”

  “I am living it down,” I responded harshly. “But, in my own way! I am forgetting the world and its smug hypocrisies and canting mockery of virtue I am ceasing to care whether women are faithful or men honourable, — I know they are neither, and I no longer expect it. I am killing my illusions one by one! When a noble thought, or a fine idea presents itself to me (which is but seldom!) I spring at its throat and strangle it, before it has time to breathe! For I am aware that noble thoughts and fine ideas are the laughing-stock of this century, and that the stupid dreamers who indulge in them are made the dupes of the age! You look startled! — well you may! — to you, mon père, I am dangerous, — for — I loved you! And what I once loved is now become a mere reproach to me, — a blackness on my horizon — an obstruction in my path — so, keep out of my way, if you are wise! I promise to keep out of yours. The money you offer me I will not have, — I will beg, steal, starve, — anything, rather than take one centime from you, even though it be my right to claim the residue of what I earned. You shall see my face no more, — I will die and make no Sign — to you I am dead already — let me be forgotten then as the dead always are forgotten — in spite of the monuments raised to their memory!”