THE RETURNING CARRIAGE
M. de Kercadiou wrote a letter.
“Godson,” he began, without any softening
adjective, “I have learnt with pain and indignation
that you have dishonoured yourself again by breaking
the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics.
With still greater pain and indignation do I learn
that your name has become in a few short days a byword,
that you have discarded the weapon of false, insidious
arguments against my class — the class to which
you owe everything — for the sword of the assassin.
It has come to my knowledge that you have an assignation
to-morrow with my good friend M. de La Tour d’Azyr.
A gentleman of his station is under certain obligations
imposed upon him by his birth, which do not permit
him to draw back from an engagement. But you
labour under no such disadvantages. For a man
of your class to refuse an engagement of honour, or
to neglect it when made, entails no sacrifice.
Your peers will probably be of the opinion that you
display a commendable prudence. Therefore I beg
you, indeed, did I think that I still exercise over
you any such authority as the favours you have received
from me should entitle me to exercise, I would command
you, to allow this matter to go no farther, and to
refrain from rendering yourself to your assignation
to-morrow morning. Having no such authority,
as your past conduct now makes clear, having no reason
to hope that a proper sentiment of gratitude to me
will induce to give heed to this my most earnest request,
I am compelled to add that should you survive to-morrow’s
encounter, I can in no circumstances ever again permit
myself to be conscious of your existence. If
any spark survives of the affection that once you
expressed for me, or if you set any value upon the
affection, which, in spite of all that you have done
to forfeit it, is the chief prompter of this letter,
you will not refuse to do as I am asking.”
It was not a tactful letter. M. de Kercadiou
was not a tactful man. Read it as he would, Andre-Louis
— when it was delivered to him on that Sunday
afternoon by the groom dispatched with it into Paris
— could read into it only concern for M. La
Tour d’Azyr, M. de Kercadiou’s good friend,
as he called him, and prospective nephew-in-law.
He kept the groom waiting a full hour while composing
his answer. Brief though it was, it cost him
very considerable effort and several unsuccessful
attempts. In the end this is what he wrote:
Monsieur my godfather — You make refusal singularly
hard for me when you appeal to me upon the ground
of affection. It is a thing of which all my
life I shall hail the opportunity to give you proofs,
and I am therefore desolated beyond anything I could
hope to express that I cannot give you the proof you
ask to-day. There is too much between M. de
La Tour d’Azyr and me. Also you do me and
my class - whatever it may be — less than justice
when you say that obligations of honour are not binding
upon us. So binding do I count them, that, if
I would, I could not now draw back.
