Part 9 (1/2)
”Think of what you are doing.”
”I have reflected.”
The Duke was making a violent effort to compose his ordinarily violent temper.
”Do you imagine,” answered he disdainfully, ”that I shall be satisfied with an answer of this kind? I hope that you will submit to my wishes, for I think that, as the head of the family, I have conceived a splendid plan for its future aggrandizement; and do you think that, for the mere whim of a boy, I will be turned aside from my fixed determination?”
”No, father,” answered Norbert, ”it is no boyish whim that makes me oppose your wishes. Tell me, have I not ever been a dutiful son to you?
Have I ever refused to do what I was ordered? No; I have obeyed you implicitly. I am the son of the wealthiest man in Poitiers, and I have lived like a laborer's child. Whatever your mandates were, I have never complained or murmured at them.”
”Well, and now I order you to marry Mademoiselle de Puymandour.”
”Anything but that; I do not love her, and I shall never do so. Do you wish my whole life to be blighted? I entreat you to spare me this sacrifice!”
”My orders are given, and you must comply with them.”
”No,” answered Norbert quietly, ”I will not comply with them.”
A purple flush pa.s.sed across the Duke's face, then it faded away, leaving every feature of a livid whiteness.
”Great heavens!” said he in a voice before which Norbert, at one time, would have quailed. ”Whence comes the audacity that makes you venture to dispute my orders?”
”From the feeling that I am acting rightly.”
”How long is it that it has been right for children to disobey their parents' commands?”
”Ever since parents began to issue unjust commands.”
This speech put the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to the Duke's rage. He made a step across the room, towards his son, raising the stick that he usually carried high in the air. For a moment he stood thus, and then, casting it aside, he exclaimed,--
”No, I cannot strike a Champdoce.”
Perhaps it was Norbert's intrepid att.i.tude that restrained the Duke's frenzy, for he had not moved a muscle, but stood still, with his arms folded, and his head thrown haughtily back.
”No, this is an act of disobedience that I will not put up with,”
exclaimed the old man in a voice of thunder, and, springing upon his son, he grasped him by the collar and dragged him up to a room on the second floor, and thrust him violently through the doorway.
”You have twenty-four hours in which to reflect whether you will be willing to accept the wife that I have chosen for you,” said he.
”I have already decided on that point,” answered Norbert quietly.
The Duke made no reply, but slammed the door, which was of ma.s.sive oak, and secured by a lock of enormous proportions.
Norbert gazed round; the only other exit from the room was by means of a window some forty feet from the ground. The young man, however, imagined that some one would surely come to make up his bed for the night; that would give him two sheets; these he could knot together and thus secure a means of escape. He might not be able to see Diana at once, but he could easily send her a message by Daumon, warning her of what had taken place. Having arranged his plans, he threw himself into an armchair with a more easy mind than he had experienced for many months past. The decisive step had been taken, and the relations between his father and himself clearly defined, and thus he naturally considered great progress had been made, and the task before him seemed as nothing to what he had already performed.
”My father,” thought he, ”must be half mad with pa.s.sion.”
And Norbert was not wrong in his opinion. When the Duke, as usual, took his place at the table, at which the farm laborers ate their meals, not one of them had the courage to make a single observation. Every one knew what a serious altercation had taken place between father and son, and each one was devoured by the pangs of ungratified curiosity.