He had never, he rather wistfully reflected, either coveted or stolen anything worth speaking of: he might have had some such abominable action to repent of, if only he had not always possessed a plenty of money to purchase whatever he fancied. That over-well filled purse had also kept him from laboring upon the Sabbath, or any day. And it had, by ill luck, never even occurred to him to worship a graven image.
Nor had it ever occurred to him to break his given word. Philippe, he remembered, had referred to that as being rather queer, but it did not seem queer to Florian: this was simply a thing that Puysange did not do. The word of honor of a Puysange, once given, could not in any circumstances be broken: to Florian that was an axiom sufficiently obvious.
He had told many falsehoods, of course. For an instant the reflection brightened him: but he found dejectedly, on looking back, that all these falsehoods appeared to have been told either to some woman who was chaste or to some husband who was suspicious, entirely with the view of curing these failings and making matters more pleasant for everybody. A Puysange did not lie with the flat-footed design of getting something for himself, because such deviations from exactness, somehow, made you uncomfortable; nor through fear, because a Puysange, quite candidly, did not understand what people meant when they talked about fear.
No, one must be logical. Florian found that his sins—to name for once the quaint term with which so many quaint people would, he knew, label the majority of his actions,—seemed untiringly to have labored toward beneficence. Florian was not prepared to assert that this established any general rule: for some persons, it well might be that the practise of these technical irregularities produced actual unhappiness: but Florian was here concerned just with his own case. And it did not, whatever a benevolent saint advised,—and ought, of course, in his exalted position to advise,—it did not afford the material for any rational sort of repentance. And to prevaricate about this deficiency, or to patch up with Heaven through mutual indulgence some not quite candid compromise, was not a proceeding in which Florian cared to have part, or could justify with honorable precedents. Say what you might, even though you spoke from behind the locked gates of paradise, Puysange remained Puysange, and wholly selfish and utilitarian lying made Puysange uncomfortable.
In fine, Florian earnestly wanted to repent, where repentance was so plainly a matter of common-sense, and seemed his one chance for an inexcruciate future: but the more he reflected upon such of his irregularities as he could for the life of him recollect, the less material they afforded him for repentance. No, one must be logical. And logic forced him to see that under the present divine regime there was slender hope for him. So his conscience was in these days in a most perturbed state: he seemed to be deriving no profit whatever from a wasted lifetime of pious devotion: and the more widely he and Aluys had conducted their investigations, the less remunerative did Florian everywhere find the pursuit of beauty and holiness.
20. Smoke Reveals Fire
THUS it was not until the coming in of spring that Florian rode away from the Hôtel de Puysange, riding toward Bellegarde and the business which must be discharged. Florian went by way of Storisende, the home of his dead brother, for Florian’s son still lived there, and Florian now felt by no means certain he would ever see the boy again, now that Holy Hoprig roosted over the Bellegarde to which Florian returned.
Florian came to Storisende unannounced, as was his usage. Madame Marguerite de Puysange and Raoul’s children kept her chamber, with a refusal to see Florian which the steward, to all appearance, had in transmission considerably censored. Florian thought that this poor fellow faced somewhat inadequately the problem of the proper demeanor toward a great peer who had very recently killed your master; and that too much fidgeting marred his endeavor to combine the politeness appropriate to a duke with the abhorrence many persons feel to be demanded by fratricide.
Meanwhile the father wished to know of his son’s whereabouts. Monsieur the Prince de Lisuarte had left the house not long after breakfast, it was reported, and might not return until evening. Florian shrugged, dined alone, and went out upon the south terrace, walking downward, into gardens now very ill tended. Raoul had let the gardens fall from their old, well remembered, sleek estate. …
So much of Florian’s youth had been passed here that with Florian went many memories. He had made love to a host of charming girls in this place, in these gardens which were now tenantless and half ruined: and none of these girls had he been able to love utterly, because of his mad notions about Melior. He comprehended now of how much he had been swindled by this lunacy. His dislike of Melior—of that insufferable bright-colored imbecile,—rose hot and strong.
So many women had been to him only the vis-à-vis in a pleasurable coupling, when he might have got from them the complete and high insanity which other lads got out of loving! He remembered, for example, another April afternoon in this place, the April before his first marriage. … Yes, it had happened just yonder.
Florian turned to the right, passing the little tree from the East, which seemed no bigger now than he remembered it in boyhood; and then trampled through a thick undergrowth which hid what he remembered as a trim lawn. Raoul had really let the gardens fall into a quite abominable state. A person who had taken no better care of Storisende had not deserved to inherit such a fine property: and Florian remembered now with some compunction how easily, when he disposed of their father, he could also have disposed of their father’s foolish will. But Florian too, as he admitted, had always spoiled Raoul.
Florian came to a boulder some four feet in height, before which stood a smaller rock that was flat-topped and made a natural seat. Both were overgrown with patches of gray-green lichen. He looked downward. Against the boulder, partly hidden by old withered leaves, lay two flat stones which were each near a foot in length and about an inch thick, two valueless unextraordinary stones which he remembered.
He lifted these stones. Where they had lain, the ground showed dark and wet, and was perforated with small holes. The raising of the first stone disclosed a bloodless yellow centipede, which flustered and wavered into hiding among the close-matted dead leaves. Under the other stone, a great many ants were hastily carrying their small white eggs into those holes in the ground. Some twenty gray winged ants remained clustering together futilely. There was adhering to the under side of this second stone a clotted web. Florian saw the evicted spider, large and clumsy looking but very quick of movement, trundling away from molestation much as the centipede had fled.
It seemed to him that no life ought to be in this place; not even the life of insects should survive in this ruined haunt of memories. He set the two rocks at right angles to the boulder, just as he and a girl, who no longer existed anywhere, had placed them eighteen years ago. Moss had grown upon the boulder, so that the rocks did not fit against it so snugly as they had done once, but they stood upright now a foot apart. Florian gathered five fallen twigs, broke them, and piled the fragments in this space. From his pocket he took a letter, from the Abbess de Chelles, which he crumpled and thrust under the twigs. He took out flint and steel, and struck a spark, which fell neatly into the crevice between his left thumb and the thumbnail. The pensive gravity of his face was altered as he said “Damn!” and sucked at his thumb. Then he tried again, and soon had there just such a tiny fire as he and that dark-haired girl had once kindled in this place.