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Title: The will to live (Les Roquevillard)
A novel
Author: Henry Bordeaux
Translator: Pitts Duffield
Release date: October 21, 2023 [eBook #71923]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Duffield & Company, 1915
Credits: Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILL TO LIVE (LES ROQUEVILLARD) ***
THE WILL TO LIVE
(Les Roquevillard)
A Novel
By
HENRY BORDEAUX
Author of “The Parting of the Ways,” “The Woollen
Dress,” “The Fear of Living,” “The House,” etc.
_Translated by Pitts Duffield_
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915 By DUFFIELD & COMPANY
CONTENTS
PART I
I. THE VINTAGE
II. THE CONFLICT
III. THE CALVARY OF LEMENC
IV. THE VENGEANCE OF MR. FRASNE
V. A FAMILY IN DANGER
PART II
I. THE MAKER OF RUINS
II. THE ANNIVERSARY
III. THE RUINS
IV. THE RETURN
PART III
I. THE COMPANION IN ARMS
II. THE FAMILY COUNCIL
III. MR. FRASNE’S CLEVER TRANSACTION
IV. THE COUNSEL OF THE SOIL
V. MARGARET’S BETROTHAL
VI. THE DEFENDER
VII. JEANNE SASSENAY
VIII. THE VOICE OF THE DEAD
IX. THE WILL TO LIVE
TO MONSIEUR FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
_My dear Master_:
As an answer to those who regard tradition as a dead and heavy weight,
not worth cultivating, you once defined the matter thus:
“Tradition is not something which is dead: it is, on the contrary,
that which lives, that which survives in the present from the past;
something that goes beyond the actual moment; and for those who come
after us, the tradition of any one of us, whatever he is, is only that
which lives beyond himself.”
If we know what we came from we can the better understand our destiny;
we can be happy and do good only by developing ourselves along the line
of our natural sensibilities, by consenting to take our proper place in
the chain of generations by which the future and the past are linked.
Far from constricting our powers of accomplishment, the family and our
native soil give direction to them. I remember to have felt sorry, in
reading Le Play, for that family of Mélougas, who defended their old
home so desperately because they confused its history with the land’s.
In Savoy I have come across so many similar adventures. But the soil,
and the dead who sow the seed of our sensibilities, are carried with us
in our hearts if we have extracted the essential quality of tradition,
that is to say, a sense of honour, and that will to live which
the sentiment of duration incarnate in the family communicates to us.
I have tried in “Les Roquevillard” to illustrate these facts and
observations. In welcoming this story in “La Revue des deux Mondes” you
conferred on it, my dear master, the support of your approval; and I
desire to express here the pride and gratitude you gave me in so doing.
H. B.
PART I
THE WILL TO LIVE
I
THE VINTAGE
FROM the summit of the hill the voice of Mr. Francis Roquevillard
came down to the grape-gatherers, who, ranged along the vines on the
hillside, were lightening the stalks of their dark fruit.
“The night’s coming. All together now! One more good pull.”
It was a benevolent voice, but it had an accent of command. It made
every finger nimbler at the sound of it; even the shoulders of those
labourers that had begun to loaf bent again to work. Good-humouredly
the master added:
“In the morning they are as swift as swallows, and in the afternoon
they idle and chatter like a lot of jays.”
The remark called forth general laughter.
“Yes, Squire.”
They never addressed the master of La Vigie in any other way than
that, adding oftener than not his title of lawyer. La Vigie was a fine
estate, comprising woods, fields and vineyards in a single holding,
at the other end of the canton of Coquin, two or three miles from
Chambéry. You reached it by following a country road, and crossing an
old bridge built on arches over the deep waters of the river Hyère. The
grounds commanded a view of the Lyons road which used to join Savoy and
France, leading across the freestone hills of the Echelles. Its name,
the Look Out, was taken from a tower that once crowned the round hill,
but of which now no trace remained. The estate had belonged for several
centuries to the family of Roquevillard, who had added to it little by
little, as the country house and the outbuildings erected bit by bit
testified, a group of somewhat questionable harmony, but expressive
nevertheless, like some old face on which the vicissitudes of a long
life are traced. Here was written the past history of a strong race,
faithful to its native land. The Roquevillards had been, father and
son, for generations, people of the law. They had produced judges and
leaders of the bar, as well as presidents of the ancient senate of the
province, and had given to the new court of appeals a councillor who
had refused all advancement to die at home. Nevertheless, the country
persisted in regarding them all indifferently as just lawyers, and
no doubt found in this title some sense of mutual protection. Nearly
forty years of practice, an exact acquaintance with the law, a warm and
vigorous eloquence, gave the present proprietor a particular title to
this popularity.
The regular alignment of the vineyard made it easy to oversee
the gathering of the harvest. Already the tints of the leaves began
to hint of October, and on the hills a more vivid earth opposed a
paler sky. The various levels were distinguished more clearly than
before by their new colours: La Mondeuse green and gold, the Grand
Noir and the Douce Noire green and purple. Among the bare branches,
the sombre patches of the grapes caught the eye. With knives open
and dripping hands, the vintagers, prompt for the work of sacrifice,
renewed their efforts, handling the grapes as if they were sacrificial
victims, severing them with one sharp stroke and casting them into
the baskets. The women one and all had raised their skirts, gathering
and fixing them behind in order to be more free in their movements on
the heavy soil, and wearing a motley handkerchief or scarf knotted
round their heads to keep off the rays of the hot sun. From time to
time some one of them, straightening up, would rise from the sea
of branches like a salmon coming up to the surface a moment, and
then plunge down again. Some among them were old women, knotted and
wrinkled, slow and stiff in their joints, capable, nevertheless, of
great endurance and with eyes always on the watch; they were not
regular employees any longer and were struggling all the more to
keep their last jobs. There were young women of twenty, more adroit
and lively, exposing their faces and their bare forearms fearlessly,
safe in the coat of tan that protects the flesh from a too caressing
sky. There were young girls, too, immature as yet, and less
persistent, changing their places, disturbing the ranks or sitting back
quite simply, with the gaiety of school-girls on vacation, as supple
and flexible as the vines they handled. There were even little children
under care of mothers who could not leave them at home, gathering
grapes on their own account, scampering about and besmearing lips and
cheeks with juice like precocious bacchantes.
On the path, about half-way up the hill, which divided the estate and
facilitated its cultivation, the waggon, harnessed to two red oxen,
with horns trained back in the form of a lyre, waited patiently for the
moment of moving toward the wine-press. The men loaded it gravely. You
did not hear laughter from them like the women, but only the exchanging
of brief directions now and then. The younger of them wore white
caps and flannel belts that gave their bodies full play, an Alpine
huntsmen’s fashion much imitated among the young people of Savoy. Two
of them would pass a staff of strong wood through the handles of the
overflowing bushel basket, raise it to their shoulders, and, giving
their burden a slight rocking motion, place it in its turn upon the
truck. One old man with a grey beard, who stood in the vehicle and
directed them, finished the crushing of the grapes in the baskets that
were already filled. Every now and then he would raise himself to his
full height, his hands red and dripping with the blood of the vines.
Opposite La Vigie the shadows of evening were creeping
up the slopes of Vimines and Saint Sulpice, coming nearer
to the range of Lepine which received the setting sun, and on down
the twisting valley of Saint Thibaud de Coux and the Echelles. But
the light flooded the vineyard with purple and gold. It showed forth
the lines of the women, turned their plain kerchiefs into aureoles,
caressed the oxen’s horns, enveloped the grey beard and the ruddy
face of the head cultivator in the waggon, illuminated the energetic
features of Mr. Roquevillard beneath his hat brim, and still further
up flashed on the proud steeple of Montagnole, to rest at last
audaciously, like a crown, on the legendary rock of Mount Granier.
The workers, forming a group round some branches that had been set
aside and saved, were busy gathering a few last grapes. One more basket
was hoisted up, while the voice of old Jeremiah in the waggon announced
in triumph:
“There we are, Squire.”
“How many cart-loads have we?” inquired the master.
“A dozen.”
“It’s a good year.”
As the oxen began to move off, followed by all the band of workers, he
added:
“Now it’s my turn. This way, everybody.”
With their baskets on their arms and knives or bill-hooks in their
hands, the workers climbed to the top of the hill and gathered round
Mr. Roquevillard. He planted his iron-shod cane in the ground, and,
taking out of his pocket a little bag, began to count money from it,
mostly coppers, with some pieces of silver, whereupon even the most
talkative of the women stopped. It was a solemn business, this get ting
paid. Behind the gathering the windowpanes and slate-roofs reflected
the flame of the sun like mirrors.
Friendly and familiar, Mr. Roquevillard called each worker by name,
addressing some of them even with affection, for the oldest of them he
had always known by sight, and the younger he had been acquainted with
from childhood. To the wages of their day’s work he added a pleasant
word in every case, and each acknowledged it in turn with a “Thank you,
Squire.”
One or two of them who had seemed a little lazy during the day got a
bit of blame, pronounced in a pleasant tone, but showing, nevertheless,
that the master kept his two eyes open. Even the children, who had paid
themselves with fruit as they played, got a few coppers from Squire
Roquevillard, who loved them.
“Those that have received their pay pass to the left,” he said, in the
midst of the proceedings. “I don’t want to begin again indefinitely.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea, though,” rejoined a fine-looking young
woman of eighteen or twenty years.
She wore no kerchief on her head, as if to face the
daylight the more openly with her youth. Her hair, a little
disarranged, fell forward. Her mouth was large and her
expression rather common, but she had a look of health, bright eyes,
and in especial a golden tint, as of full white grapes that are
reddened by warmth till they seem full of the elixir of the sun. Mr.
Roquevillard stared at her.
“How fast you’ve grown, Catherine!” he said. “When are they going to
marry you off?”
She reddened with pleasure at this public notice that was taken of her.
“Wait and see!”
“Well, well! You’re not bad looking, Catherine.”
And with the money that he handed her he joined a bit of counsel,
putting it quite seriously:
“Be good, little girl. Virtue’s worth more than beauty.”
She promised it unhesitatingly:
“Yes, Squire.”
As the end of the line was reached the master inspected his troop and
demanded:
“Is every one satisfied?”
Twenty happy voices replied, thanking him.
But one of the children pointed with his finger to an old woman who
stood apart, embarrassed and discomfited.
“Mother Fauchois.”
The child’s words passed unheeded, and no one interfered, as if the old
woman deserved no salutations.
“Well, now, good evening, all of you,” responded the
ringing voice of Mr. Roquevillard. “You’ll reach Saint
Cassin and Vimines all right before dark.”
“Good-bye, Squire.”
Standing quiet at his post of observation he saw the shadows of the
workers, dark against the sunset, grow smaller and then disappear.
Their voices rose to him from below. They separated into two groups,
those from Vimines and Saint Cassin, respectively. These latter, whose
path lay to the left, began to sing: a rustic chorus with a long-drawn
close. Already the sun just touched the mountains. At the master’s side
old Fauchois never stirred, claiming nothing.
“Pierrette,” said Mr. Roquevillard abruptly.
She thrust her head forward, showing features not so much old as
sorrowful and broken.
“Yes, Master Francis,” she murmured.
“Here are one hundred sous. Go home and have some good soup.”
“It’s three days’ work,” said the poor creature, staring at the crown
piece that lay white in her shrivelled hand, “and I’ve only earned one.”
“Take your pay, always. And your daughter. How’s she?”
“She’s gone to Lyons.”
“Does she work there?”
The old woman let her two arms fall at her sides, and said nothing.
“She must work,” said Mr. Roquevillard.
“Since her sentence she can’t find a place. Who wants a thief?”
The lawyer pleaded the circumstances of her case in extenuation. “She
stole from thoughtlessness, coquetry, vanity. She’s not really bad. At
her age she’ll turn over a new leaf. What does she live on?”
“And what do you suppose she lives off? Men, of course.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because once, at first, I sent her a little money order to help her.
She sent it back to me, with another, a big one, which I burned up.”
“You burned it?”
“Yes, Master Francis. It was the wages of shame.”
And her anger straightened up her peasant form once more, making it
seem menacing in the full light, her hands clenched like an accusing
destiny.
“I don’t see how I ever had her. There have never been anything but
good people in our family. I’m ashamed now.”
“It isn’t your fault, Pierrette.”
She shook her head, with an air of conviction: “It’s always the fault
of the family. You know that. You said so yourself.”
“I? When?”
“Yes, once before me, at Julienne, before the conviction. It worried me
even then. And I brought her to see you one day.”
“I remember. And what did I say to her?”
“That when one had the good fortune to belong to an
honest family, one ought to respect oneself all the more for
it. Because in families everything is common property, land and debts,
good conduct and bad.”
“Still, no one can throw a stone at you.”
“People do, though, just the same. And they’re right. Lucky enough I
lost my husband before it all happened.”
“He would have protected you.”
“He would have killed her.”
“And you, you love her just the same?”
“She’s my child.”
“Well, well, Pierrette. Don’t be discouraged. So long as one isn’t
dead, there’s nothing to be lost. Go on home. I’m going to the presses
now, to make sure the vats are all right.”
“Thank you, Master Francis.”
She had worked for the household at the Look Out from time to time,
helping with the washing as well as at vintages, or even occasionally
in the kitchen, so that she exercised the servants’ privilege of using
his first name.
When she had gone Mr. Roquevillard made no haste to move. He lingered,
taking in with a loving eye all the fine land that stretched about
him: the disburdened vines, whose purple and gold would live for him
again in his joyful wines, the fields twice tilled, the orchards,
the little nameless stream beyond them that separated the cantons of
Coquin and Saint Cassin, the woods of oak and beeches, red and white,
their colours shaded off by autumn into a pale bouquet. In these lands and
the varied cultivation of them he read in this quiet hour a history
not of the seasons, but of his own family. Such and such an ancestor
had bought this field here, another had planted that vineyard; and
he himself, had he not passed the boundaries of the canton when he
acquired those woods that were so crowded now they called for cutting?
Turning toward the farm buildings, he could see the first primitive
cabin, changed now into a stable, which the first Roquevillards, honest
peasants, had built. He contrasted it with the present large and
substantial dwelling blazing with Virginia creeper. It was the same
race, abiding in the same place, fortified by a past of honest labour
and economy. He paid homage to it, recalling the words of old Fauchois:
“It’s always the fault of the family.”
His own race, moreover, had given the country men capable of serving
the republic, as useful there as they had been in the administering
of their own affairs. Thus the generations helped each other to a
common prosperity. Had not the earliest of them all prepared his
work for him? This land that he was treading on they had coveted
and earned before him. This wide view had thrilled and exalted them
as it thrilled him. With some difficulty he detached his gaze from
his own domain and prefigured things as they must have seen it,
the combination of lines and tints that made up the landscape, and
on which their sense of it, like his own, must have depended. For
though cultivatism may modify the immediate appearance of the land,
men’s hands change nothing of its splendour and extent: they add
only certain human marks, a roof with smoke above it, telling of the
sweetness of a hearth, a path or hedge, memorials of the social life, a
bell tower that speaks of prayer.
Alone on the hillside he joined to the beauty of the evening the
pleasure of communion with his race. He felt that the obscure past had
given an importance to this corner of the earth. Opposite to him, the
chain of Lepine, its monotony broken by the summit of the Signal, was
edged with red. His gaze descended to the plain, followed a moment the
graceful, flowing range of the Echelles, to which the last spurs of
the mountains seemed to act as escorts on either side, then rose again
to the indentations of the Corbelet, Joigny and Granier, and returned
again to the hills nearer by, to the storeyed valleys and their more
harmonious curves. In this bit of broken nature, hard and soft by
turns, he retraced the characters of his parentage--the audacity of his
grandfather, who bore arms during the Revolution, the nonchalance of
his father, lapsing into mere philosophy and contemplation, and letting
his sacred patrimony become compromised almost unawares.
“Not one of them,” he was thinking, “but could thus behold the
spectacle of the setting sun from this place. One day, when I am no
more, one of my children will take up these comparisons again--my
children, who will continue our work, people of means and worth.”
From the past that buttressed him he made out the future in security.
Absorbed in these reflections, he did not see the woman’s form that had
left the house and was now coming toward him. It was a woman already
aged, with a dark shawl thrown over her shoulders, and using a cane as
she walked, with an air of great lassitude and exhaustion. Her face,
as you saw it in the evening light, must once have been beautiful. The
years had chastened it without taking from it a certain expression of
purity, which surprised one at first and then attracted. It was the
visible imprint of an upright soul, purged of all evil, even a little
mystical.
“Are they not coming yet?” asked Mrs. Roquevillard of her husband.
“Yes, Valentine; there they are.”
Both understood that they were speaking of their children. He pointed
but for her at the foot of the declivity, on the upward path, a
numerous group. At the head of it came two babies, whom their
grandmother recognised at once:
“Peter and Adrienne. They are taking the short cut. I don’t see little
Julian.”
“He has probably good hold of his Aunt Margaret’s hand. He never leaves
her.”
“Of course. I can see him between Margaret and her fiancé. He’s keeping
them apart, the naughty boy. And his mother, where is she?”
“She’s coming behind them, quietly as usual, with her brother Hubert.”
“Our oldest son. Can you make out his decoration?”
Mr. Roquevillard smiled, and glanced at his companion. “How could you,
from this distance?”
She laughed with him at this, graciously.
“There is a large red ribbon on the mountain.”
“And you read in the sky: ‘Hubert Roquevillard, twenty-eight years old,
lieutenant of marines, decorated for bravery in war, recommended for
promotion, campaign in China, defence of Pei-Tung.’”
“Indeed, I do,” she agreed: “I can read it all quite distinctly.”
She scrutinised the path again. “And Maurice. I don’t see Maurice.”
“He’s further back, I think, with some one else.”
Mrs. Roquevillard, satisfied, placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder.
“That must be our son-in-law, Charles Marcellaz. The roll is complete.
I count them always, just as I did when they were little--Germaine,
Hubert, Maurice, Margaret.”
“And Felicie was always absent,” he said.
A shadow darkened his features: he could never accustom himself to
the absence of his second daughter, now a Little Sister of the Poor
across the seas in Hanoi. Mrs. Roquevillard leant more heavily on her
husband’s arm.
“No, Francis, she’s not so far from us. Her thoughts are with us. I
know and feel it. Hubert, who saw her on his way back from China, found her
happy. And then, one day, we shall all be united.”
He was afraid of his feelings, and began counting the approaching group
again.
“That’s not Charles coming with Maurice,” he said. “It’s a woman. They
have left the short cut. They’re spreading out.”
“It’s Mrs. Frasne, perhaps. Do you see her husband?”
“Yes, it’s she; but I don’t see the notary.”
“He’ll come up later with Charles. Their studies keep them till six
o’clock.”
“The Frasnes dine here this evening, don’t they?” he asked.
She seemed to make excuses for it as for a fault.
“Yes. They often ask Maurice there, and he begged me to invite them.”
They were silent a moment, both with the same concern.
“I don’t like that woman,” she said at last.
“And why?”
Mrs. Roquevillard fixed her clear eyes on the sun set.
“I don’t know. We’ve no idea where she came from, and tremble to think
how far she’ll go. She’s not good looking, but just the sight of
her makes the mothers worry for their sons, and the wives for their
husbands.”
“What a pity,” he said. “Who’s been talking to you about her?”
“Nobody. All I know I have guessed at. Those who pray much are not
always the worst informed. She has strange eyes, dark but with fire in
them. She frightens me.”
“Ah! I see. Well, people in the village do talk about her and our son.”
“Maurice should be warned,” said his mother. “He should be warned at
once.”
“But, my dear, how shall we go about it? We are not certain of
anything. Gossip and talk, what do they signify?”
“It isn’t the gossip. I feel trouble coming. I am sure of it. He is in
some danger.”
“Sometimes combating a love affair only brings it to a head,” Mr.
Roquevillard replied. “You know that. You consented to having the
Frasnes asked here. Besides, young people don’t tolerate any meddling
in their lives, Maurice least of all. He’s very proud. He’s not
twenty-four yet, and a doctor of law. He has complete confidence in
himself. He has absurd theories on the right to be happy, the necessity
of one’s own personal development. Paris sends them back to us more
refined, but rebellious. It takes experience to make them really wise.”
“You’ve been worrying about it, too, then?” said his wife. “And you’ve
said nothing about it all to me.”
“What was the use in making you worry? You are already so tired.”
“Yes, when I ought to be strong, too. A mother needs strength.
But you have enough for us both.”
He went on:
“We were wrong in having him go into Frasnes’s offices. I wanted him
to get into the way of a business practice, especially assignments
and liquidations, before he made his début at the bar. Frasne is the
successor of Mr. Clairval, who was my friend, and our own solicitor. I
respected the tradition of the family, and that’s just where I made my
mistake. However, everything will be different very soon now.”
“Soon?”
“Yes. I shall be taking Maurice into my office: he can finish his first
stage there. Or else he can study proceedings with Marcellaz. When we
move back to town I’ll look round and see.”
“Good,” she said, pressing his hand. “There will be less occasion
for him to meet her. But that isn’t enough in itself. You find him
reasonable. I think him rather a bit romantic. I should prefer to turn
his fancy somewhere else.”
“But how?”
“Well, an early engagement, for instance. Early engagements make
young people think and develop character. In France I think we hasten
marriage too much, when you consider that marriage disposes of life and
family and a future all in one.”
“It’s true.”
“Margaret has thought of little Jeanne Sassenay for Maurice.”
“But she’s only a child yet.”
“A pretty one, though, and brought up by a lovely mother.”
Her last words were cut short by shrill young voices squalling out:
“Good-evening, grandmother! Good-evening, grandfather!”
It was the advance guard, Peter and Adrienne, out of breath with
running, just over the edge of the hill, and tumbling out on the level
ground. They struggled to make more speed in spite of the “Not so fast,
not so fast,” from Mrs. Roquevillard, and their grandfather caught them
on the wing.
“You know, grand-dad,” said Adrienne, who was very talkative, and spoke
familiarly to everybody, being no respecter of persons, “Julian stayed
behind with Aunt Margaret, and mamma ordered him to come with us.”
Half-way down the hill the young people who were coming up cried out in
their turn:
“Good-evening!”
Only Maurice and Mrs. Frasne were too far away to join in these
family greetings. By tacit consent, they both walked more and
more slowly as they approached the summit, and following all the
windings of the path they had managed to get a further considerable
space between themselves and the others, although Margaret had
turned several times and called to them. The mountain was hidden
from them by the close angle of the hillside, so that they saw the
figures of Mr. and Mrs. Roquevillard in silhouette against the clear
sky. Mrs. Frasne turned an enigmatic smile upon her companion, whom
their tête-à-tête was making languid.
“Your father must have been handsomer than you,” she said, and added,
quite low, as if to herself: “He’ll find out what he wants to, your
father.”
The young man maintained a perverse silence.
“How old is your father?” she asked again, smiling at her success in
having annoyed him.
“Sixty, I think.”
“Sixty years. Well, he detests me. If he could, he would suppress me
with great pleasure.”
“You’re mistaken: he always welcomes you here.”
“Oh, those things can be felt. He detests me, and yet he interests me.
I’ve always liked characters, myself.”
Just before the top of the hill the path turned and disclosed a new
view framed between the embankment on the right and the border of
shrubs on the left, their leaves half coloured and mingling the green
of spring with autumnal gold. Le Nivolet came abruptly into view, with
its regular architectural lines and gradients, re-echoing the glory of
the vanished sun.
The slender thickets that clung to its rocky sides took on a tint of
violet like the dregs of wine, while the chain of Margeria behind it
showed quite rosy and charming, in its tones of flesh-colour.
“See, what a change in the scene,” murmured Maurice,
not noticing that his companion paid heed much sooner to
the fact of their being alone than to the marvels of the evening light.
She halted in their walk, and he turned back toward her.
“What’s the matter? Are you tired?”
“Oh, no. I’m only giving you time to admire the landscape.”
“Would you be jealous?”
“Yes, you love your country, and I----”
“And you?”
“I shan’t say the rest----”
“But I’ll say it. I’ll tell you how I love you.”
He took her in his arms. She was a thin, dark woman, with large eyes;
her flesh firm and her caresses melting. As she turned her head a
little he could see, beneath the half-closed and palpitant pupils,
that look of black and gold in which all the voluptuous anguish of the
season and the hour were reflected.
“How little she seems against my breast,” he thought, as he clasped her
to him; “a little thing, yet more to me than all the world.” Aloud he
murmured:
“I love you, Edith.”
“Really?” she said, with her same purposed smile.
“When will you be mine?”
“When I can be only yours.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Why?
“You are bound.”
“We could go away together.”
“What should we live on?”
“On my dot.”
“I couldn’t do that. And, besides, you haven’t the control of it.”
“I can take it back.”
“No--no!”
“You could work.”
He was silent. She paid him back in irony, almost in irritation.
“Oh, you prefer to mind your father. Well, be like him, then, a big man
in a little village, with a lot of children.”
She caught an expression of such sadness on his face at this that she
blotted it out against her heart.
“Oh, I love you,” she cried, “and I torment you. But don’t you see, I’m
suffocated here in Chambéry. I want to get away from it, to love you
freely, to live. I’ve a horror of falsehood. And you, you don’t love
me.”
“Edith,” he cried, “how can you say that?”
“No, you don’t,” she repeated. “If you really loved me you would have
made me your own a long time ago.”
Heavy hearted with these reproaches, they began their walk again,
slowly. The view, taken out of its frame now, grew larger, and
in the distance, beyond the last spires of Le Nivolet, disclosed
Lake Bourget, its violet-blue merging with graduated tints into
the purple mists that rose from its further end. But the two
lovers saw nothing of all this. This mortal sweetness of the year, this
high inquietude of nature, this enthusiasm of the autumn evening, like
one long cry of desire--what need had they for anything of this outside
their own hearts?
Near the house they found Mrs. Roquevillard, who came herself to meet
Mrs. Frasne, though she was not supposed to be outdoors after sundown.
... Later in the evening Mr. Roquevillard, returning from the
wine-presses before he was expected, espied his son and the young woman
in a shadowy corner. During the vintage there is much coming and going
in a house, and it is easy to creep outside without being noticed.
“He saw us,” said Maurice.
“All the better,” she replied.
And as Mr. Roquevillard passed behind the stable that had been
the ancient home of his ancestors, to reach the dwelling that his
grandfather had built and he himself enlarged, he tried in vain to
shake off the anxiety that weighed upon him.
“I was young once, too,” he reminded himself.
But even youth had not turned him from his duty toward the
future of his race. Would this younger son of his, who must
continue his father’s work, know in time what it meant in energy
and self-denial to be the head of a family? He was not usually
very impressionable, Mr. Roquevillard, and yet to-night he felt
around him, as if it were a flock of evil birds, a hopelessness
like that of old abandoned Mother Fauchois, a sense of melancholy
and fragility as of the dying year. Only just now, in the midst
of his domain, he had reviewed the rise of the Roquevillards to
power and wealth. It was his own pride. A talk with an old woman,
the surprising of a kiss, and behold him, with a presentiment
that was certainly absurd and unreasonable, remembering how the
seasons pass and family fortunes totter and decay.
II
THE CONFLICT
THE Roquevillards moved in from the country after the departure of
their son Hubert, who was in garrison at Brest, and took up their
winter quarters in Chambéry. They occupied the second story of an old
mansion that lay across the end of Boigne Street, alongside the castle.
October was drawing to a close, and the sittings of the various courts
brought the lawyer back to work.
One day, after luncheon, at which his wife had not been present, owing
to her indisposition, Mr. Roquevillard called to his daughter Margaret,
while Maurice was absorbed in the newspapers.
“Come with me, Margaret. You can give me some advice,” he said.
“What about, father?”
He glanced toward Maurice, who, however, did not hear them.
“On a new arrangement for my study,” he said.
This study and work-room, conforming to the angle of the street, which
widened out at this point, was a spacious room, with a very high
ceiling, lighted by four windows. Two of these windows, in a way,
framed a picture of Savoy an history. They gave a view of the castle
of the former dukes, a great block of stone buildings, blackened with
time, dating from the fourteenth century, of a flat and heavy style of
architecture scarcely relieved by some carving in high relief. This
old and ruinous habitation was flanked on the right by the head of the
Sainte-Chapelle, a delicate Gothic flower, which seemed to uphold,
like some solid shaft, the bases of the fortress. At the right it was
dominated by the tower of the archives, covered with ivy and Virginia
creeper, itself crowned by a turret freshly painted white and looking
quite vainglorious, like an aigrette or plume. These edifices of
different ages and characters, their construction delayed or hastened
according to the financial resources and ambitions of the princely
builders, though less orderly, are more eloquent than the unified
structures of a single master. A long sequence of history, with its
hours of happiness and sorrow, dwells in them. The two towers rose
out of a confused mass of trees planted in two superimposed terraces,
across which they seemed to intermingle. Beneath the plane trees of the
lower level stood the recently erected monuments to Joseph and Xavier
de Maistre. Thus, within a little space, dwelt the memories of many
centuries. The place was as deserted as a tomb: only the past spoke
there.
There is no such thing as getting accustomed to a beautiful
view: one day of sunshine suffices to make it new again.
When Mr. Roquevillard and his daughter came into
this room, if the sun attacked the mournful façade without success,
nevertheless it tinted with rose the fine gothic lace-work of the
chapel, and above the lighter branches that had begun to lose their
leaves, it endowed the vine on the tower of the archives with fresh
splendour, and showed even the vainglorious little turret at its best.
“You’ve everything very comfortable for your work here,” said Margaret.
“I’m glad, for you work so hard.”
“I should have liked your mother to take this room for her
drawing-room,” said her father, “but she would not have it. But don’t
you notice anything special, little girl?”
She looked all round the familiar walls, at the book-cases encumbered
with works on law and jurisprudence, at the portraits of former judges,
her ancestors, more rigid than their justice in the painstaking
canvases of the mediocre artists, a view of the Lake of Bourget by
Hugard, the best of the Savoyan landscapists, and finally the framed
map of La Vigie in the place of honour.
“No, nothing,” she declared, after her inspection.
“That’s because you’re looking too high.”
She noticed then that the heavy oak table, large, enough to
hold as many briefs as one could possibly desire, had made
way for one that was smaller and more elegant, placed so
that it had the best of both light and view.
“Oh,” she cried, “why do you put yourself back like this?”
“Why, to make room for your brother.”
“For Maurice? Is he leaving Mr. Frasne’s office?”
“Yes. He’s to have a place near the window here. See how autumn is
shaking off the plane-tree leaves. I prefer the spring. There’s a Judas
tree beneath the turret that’s a bright red then, and plum trees in
blossom.”
Margaret hardly heard him, and looked quite downcast.
“It’s lovely for Maurice, yes,” she said; “but how about you?”
“Little girl, don’t you know a young man must have things pleasant
round him? See if you can finish arranging that table for me. Put some
flowers on it, for instance.”
“There’s hardly anything left, father. I’ve nothing but chrysanthemums.”
“Let’s, have some chrysanthemums then. One or two, not more, in a long
vase. These young doctors of law come back from Paris with a taste for
pretty things, and I’ve not the least bit myself. But you have taste
and grace for all of us, and you’ll know how to help us keep him.”
He smiled, with a little constrained smile that begged approval.
He moved nearer to the girl and put his hand on her fine dark
chestnut hair, unheeding whether he disarranged it.
“You will be leaving us soon, Margaret. Are you glad you’re going to be
married?”
Instead of replying to him, she leant against her father and began to
weep with a heavy heart. She looked like Mr. Roquevillard, though with
a different expression of countenance. With a figure rather tall and
vigorous, a slightly arched nose, a straight chin, she gave one, like
him, an impression of security and loyalty, an impression to which
large brown eyes, the eyes of her mother, added a profound sweetness,
whereas her father’s eyes, deep-set and small, threw a flame so sharp
that one could hardly bear their gaze.
He was distressed by her sudden burst of tears.
“Why do you cry? Isn’t this marriage all right for you? Raymond Bercy
is a good boy, and comes of a good family. He’s finished his medical
course, and now is definitely settled here in the city. Have you
anything against him? You must not marry him if you don’t love him.”
She stifled her sobs long enough to murmur:
“Oh, I’ve nothing to reproach him with, except----”
“There, there, now, little girl, go on.”
She turned admiring eyes upon her father.
“Except that he isn’t a man like you.”
“You’re absurd, Margaret.” But she began to explain herself further as
she grew more calm.
“I don’t know why I’m crying. I ought to be happy.
Have I not always been happy here? My childhood comes
back to me, with all its joys and sunlight. And I feel quite sorrowful
at the thought of going away.”
He comforted her seriously.
“Don’t look backward, Margaret. Let your mother and me do I that. You
must think of your woman’s life to come. Prepare yourself for your
future, and be strong.”
She tried to smile.
“My future is my family.”
“The family you are going to found for yourself, yes.”
“You have often told me, father, in all our winter walks together, to
cherish the traditions of our family.”
“But traditions, young logician, are not cherished in a wardrobe, after
the manner of our neighbour in the country. Look at old Viscount de la
Mortellerie. He shuts himself up with his heraldry and genealogies,
and is surprised when his farmers make so bold as to steal his wine.
Tradition is not fostered even in an old mansion, or on an old estate,
important as it is to guard our patrimony. Tradition is part and parcel
of our daily life, our sentiments; gives support to it, makes it
lasting and rich in values.”
Again she looked at him with her big, enthusiastic eyes, and sighed:
“I am too much attached to this home of ours.”
“No, no,” protested her father firmly; “you must not say
that. There is always something of the unknown in marriage; I
know how the prospect of such a change in your life must make you stop
and think. But since neither your heart nor your reason finds serious
objections, you must be brave and gay in leaving us. You have been
happy with us, that’s my reward. But you can be happy, you must be,
even away from us. Go find the flowers for me, and send Maurice.”
“Yes, father.”
She came back in a few moments, carrying quite a sheaf of flowers in
her arms. With deft hands she transformed the table intended for her
brother, and made it look attractive.
“I had some roses after all, the very last. There! In that vase that
changes colour in the sun like an opal. They’re very pretty.”
Mr. Roquevillard repeated good-naturedly:
“Very pretty, indeed.”
But it was his daughter that he praised. She laughed and ran off,
saying:
“Now I’ll go and warn Maurice.”
The young man came in promptly after his sister had gone for him.
“You have something to say to me?” he asked as he entered, his hat and
cane in his hand, as if he had only a little while to stay.
He was tall, like his father, but thinner and more
polished. More elegant in manner, too, and in appearance,
he, nevertheless, did not, like his father, bear the same
signs of grandeur in his face and attitude, a natural majesty
which Mr. Roquevillard at this particular moment tried to tone down,
assuming instead an air of affectionate comradeship.
“See how Margaret has arranged your table,” he began.
“My table?”
“Yes, this one, with the roses. You see the castle from it and there’s
a good light. Wouldn’t you like to complete your reading with me,
Maurice?”
A ray of sunlight touched the flowers, and outside the tower of the
archives and the turret were bathed in light. The day made itself
an accomplice with Mr. Roquevillard, courting his son with touching
awkwardness. But only long afterward do sons appreciate their fathers’
patience with them, and then only through the apprenticeship of their
own paternity.
“Then I’m not to return to Mr. Frasne’s office?” asked Maurice.
“No, it’s not necessary. You know enough now of the laws of
succession. You can get an idea of business better here, and can
attend court oftener. If you like, you can spend some months with your
brother-in-law, Charles, who will initiate you into the fine points of
procedure. He’s one of our busiest attorneys. Eventually you will make
your début at the bar. If you want it, I’ve a very pretty case to offer
you. It’s a very interesting point of law. It turns on the validity of
a bill of sale.”
Never had he pleaded with such care and condescension. But the young man
let him talk. He reflected.
“I thought it was understood,” he said, “that I should spend six months
in Frasne’s office.”
“Well, then, the six months have almost rolled by. You began there in
June, and here we are at the end of October.”
“But I took my vacation at the beginning of August, and it’s only
a little while since I began again. And I’ve been examining some
important liquidations these last days.”
“We shall find plenty of liquidations for you in the law courts,”
replied Mr. Roquevillard bluntly. “They come up oftenest of anything at
trials. I have a number of unusual pieces of business for the reopening
this time. You shall help me. Go get your papers from Frasne’s office
and install yourself here.”
“Mr. Frasne is away. It would be more courteous to wait till he gets
back.”
He piled up objections, but his father paid no heed to any of them.
“He’s expected back to-morrow. Besides, I warned him about this before
he went.”
At this news, Maurice, who had been waiting for the excuse, grew
refractory.
“You warned him without saying anything to me about it? I shall never
be anything but a little boy here, then. I am disposed of as if I were
an object. But I don’t see why my independence must be sacrificed.
I am free, and I expect at least to be consulted, even if I can’t have my
own way.”
In the face of this revolt, which he had expected, and of which he
guessed the secret cause, Mr. Roquevillard preserved his calm, despite
the disrespectful tone the conversation was taking on. He knew that
thoroughbreds were the most difficult steeds to manage, as the most
tempered characters required the most skilful handling.
“Little boy or big boy, you are my son,” he said simply, “and I shall
help you in the arrangements for your future.”
But the young man pitched squarely upon the difficulty which both of
them until then had kept in the background.
“What’s the use in dissimulation? I know perfectly well why you are
taking me away from Frasne’s office.”
His father’s presence of mind nearly warded off the blow:
“Will things be so bad for you, then, in my study, and can you so
lightly disdain my guidance? Will your independence be in danger
because you benefit by my professional experience, my forty years at
the bar? I don’t understand you.”
Seeing his son begin to give way, he thought to complete his victory by
a little tenderness.
“Your mother is sick. Your sister is going to leave
us. If you stay, I shall be less lonely.”
For a moment he hoped that he had warded off the storm. Maurice
hesitated a little while, for at the bottom of his heart he really
admired his father; then, persuading himself that he was scoring a
victory over hypocrisy, he threw himself headlong again into the
offensive.
“Yes, people have taken occasion to warn you against me and Mrs.
Frasne. What have they been saying to you? I want to know, and I have
the right to know. Bah! This provincial life is so impossible. One is
watched and spied on, guarded, bound down. The noblest sentiments are
travestied by all the envious hypocrisy and pious venom the village can
muster up. But you, father, I won’t admit that you would listen to such
low slanders, slanders that don’t hesitate to attack the most virtuous
of women.”
Mr. Roquevillard could no longer shun the issue.
“I’ve let you talk, Maurice. Now listen to me. I don’t bother
myself with gossip, and I don’t ask you whether it is true that
you are more often in your chief’s drawing-room than in his office
during his numerous absences on business. All the reasons I gave
you for coming here were true ones. But since you cross-question
me in this way, I won’t dodge the debate. I’ll admit that on Mrs.
Frasne’s account, too, I asked you to finish your studies with me,
the natural thing to do anyway. And I don’t need to lend an ear
to every calumny. I’ve seen enough with my own eyes.”
“And what then?”
“There’s no use telling you. Don’t insist.”
“You’ve threatened me. Now I should like to know.”
“Very well, then. When your mother, at your request, receives your
guests, you should at least respect your own roof. You know what I’m
alluding to.”
But Maurice, made tactless by his anger, for the second time, went too
far in his argumentative eagerness to justify his passion.
“My personal life deserves respect, too. I don’t want people to meddle
with it. I have given you satisfaction on all the points as to which my
father has any right to ask a reckoning.”
“Maurice!”
“I passed my examinations, and brilliantly, too. I came back after six
years in Paris without a single debt. What blame have I ever deserved
from you? You can’t reproach me even with one of those low Latin
Quarter intrigues that are so common among the students.”
“I’ve not reproached you with anything. But, my poor child----”
“I’m not a child.”
“You’ll always be a child to your father; Don’t you understand that
just because work and pride and family traditions have protected your
youth with their sense of order and discipline, this woman, who’s older
than you are, and whose name I’ve not been the first to mention here,
is all the more a danger for you? Do you so much as know who she is?”
“Don’t talk about her!” cried Maurice.
“I will talk about her, though,” said Mr. Roquevillard, in a tone that
had become abrupt and imperious. “Am I the head of the family, or am I
not? By what right do you tell me to keep still? Are you afraid I am
going to use undignified arguments with you? You know that would not be
like me.”
“Mrs. Frasne is a good woman,” repeated the young man.
“Yes, one of those good women who have to play with fire to distract
themselves, who are never satisfied unless they monopolise all the
men in a drawing-room, even the old ones. One of those virtuous
women of to-day, who have read everything except the Gospel, who
understand everything except their duty, who excuse everything except
virtue, who take advantage of every privilege but that of doing
good, which is always open to them. Why are they virtuous? You can’t
tell. Neither faith nor shame deters them, and as for honour, that’s
a religion for men alone. They are all rebels. In their youth they
are content with words. When youth threatens to take wing, believe
me, they want realities. This woman here, the young wife of a man
already well on in years, ought at least to remember that he houses
and feeds her, for he married her without a cent.”
“That’s not true. She had a dot of one hundred thousand francs.”
“Who told you so?”
“She did, herself.”
“I hope so. However, my informant is my old friend Clairval, who
introduced the Frasnes to us when his successor was installed here,
and he does not speak lightly. Between her dread of poverty, or at
least of coming down a long way in the world, and of her husband, whose
grim face is not very reassuring, I’ll admit, if she still prefers her
husband, that’s as much sense as could be expected of her.”
Quite trembling with this contemptuous treatment of his idol, Maurice
took a step forward.
“Enough, father, I beg of you. Don’t accuse her of any baseness. Don’t
challenge her courage. I can assure you that you would be wrong. I
don’t want to hear her defamed any more, and so I’m going.”
“I forbid you to set foot again in Frasne’s offices.”
“Take care that I don’t refuse ever to set foot in yours.”
This last threat was launched by Maurice from the threshold.
“Maurice!” called Mr. Roquevillard in a changed voice, with a tone more
of appeal than of command.
He followed after the boy hastily: only to find that the vestibule was
empty, the young man already half-way down the outer steps.
Alone in the great bare study, the father looked at the little table,
where the sun fell gently on the roses, all the fine preparations of
welcome he had made under the approval of the old portraits, with the
country of the past showing through the windows, and he felt himself
abandoned like the leader of an army in the evening of his defeat.
“Can a son so rebel against his father?” he reflected. “I spoke
gently to him in the beginning. He grew irritable almost at once. How
potent that woman is with him, and how I should like to break her!
He’ll come back. It’s impossible that he should not. I’ll go and find
him, in case----I was too distant with him perhaps. I wounded him
unnecessarily. He loves her, poor child. He believes what she tells
him. With her siren’s voice and her eyes of fire and all her pretty
looks, she has cajoled him, and plays with him. Yes, I was wrong to
defy them. Their scorn of hypocrisy and their revolt against society
make these women more dangerous than those of other days.... He has
run off to her, no doubt. She’ll stir him up against me, against his
father. Against your father, Maurice, who, in his love for you, tried
to keep you in the right track....”
But he was not a man for useless lamentation. Searching some
decision to be made, he went to his wife’s room, for it was there he
customarily repaired for counsel in difficult moments. But he found the
curtains drawn and Mrs. Roquevillard sleeping. Afflicted with a slow
consumption, which had grown more pronounced as she grew older, she
suffered often now from a facial neuralgia that completely exhausted
her. Many a time, for years, he had opened her door like this, counting
on her calm judgment and clear vision, and had had to steal away again
without making any noise, thrown back on his own resources. He always
felt less confidence in himself when she was depressed or laid low.
He was worrying about their son: mothers are more close and have more
influence than fathers. She could perhaps have conjured away this peril
that threatened Maurice.
“I am alone,” he thought sadly, standing by her sick bed.
Quietly as a cat he stole out of the room. In the drawing-room he found
Margaret writing, and from her serene presence drew, as always, some
reassurance.
“Here’s the one to help me,” he said to himself. “There’s no sister
more devoted.”
He went nearer to her, forcing himself to dissemble his anxiety as she
raised her head and smiled.
“What are you doing, little girl? I’ll wager you’re ordering something
for your trousseau from some fine shop.”
“Father, you’re nowhere near it.”
“You’re writing to some of your school friends, then, to tell them of
your engagement.”
“No nearer.”
“Then you’re reminding your fiancé that he dines here this evening.”
“There’s no need of that.”
She held out the pages in which she had been writing, and he recognised
the Roquevillard Book of the Family. According to old-fashioned custom,
the Roquevillards kept one of those common-sense books in which our
ancestors used to note down, side by side with the management of their
estate, certain important facts of private life, such as marriages
and deaths, births and honours, expenses, contracts, etc.--books
which evoke the past with the impressiveness of old wills, and teach
confidence in the future to any one who can draw inspiration from his
forebears’ lives or wants to grow up worthy of them.
“I’m bringing it down to date,” added the girl. “Maurice’s return and
Hubert’s decoration haven’t been entered in it yet.”
Mr. Roquevillard turned over the leaves of this book that bore such
patient witness to the energy of his race, not without pride.
“Who will keep it up after you, Margaret?”
“But I shall go on with it myself, father.”
“No, a woman must belong to her new home.”
She blushed like a school-girl discovered in some fault.
“I’m afraid I shall make a very bad wife,” she said, “for I shall
always remain attached to the old home. Everything that goes on here is
very dear to me, dwells in my very heart.”
He could not keep from murmuring:
“Dear child!”
“And Maurice,” she replied. “Is he pleased with his new place, my roses
and the window? If I were he, I should be enchanted to work near you.”
She had a way of following him in his preoccupations and preparing the
way for confidences.
“It was about Maurice I came to talk with you. We had a discussion
together just now. I was perhaps a little quick.”
“You, father?”
“As a matter of fact, I clashed with him. He left the house in anger,
and anger is a bad counsellor. Go and find him, Margaret. You’ll know
how to bring him back.”
She rose briskly without the slightest hesitation.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps at Frasne’s office. Anyway, the town is not
large. You’ll run across him. God forbid that you shouldn’t.”
“I’ll go there first.”
“You understand,” added Mr. Roquevillard quietly, “I couldn’t go
myself.”
“Oh, no; not you. He isn’t worth it. He’s been too funny for quite a
while. You’d almost say he didn’t like us as much as he used to.”
Father and daughter looked at each other and understood, but did not
pursue the subject further.
She put on her hat and jacket hastily, and vanished in pursuit of
Maurice. In the street she turned her back to the castle, went down
Boigne Street, and by one of those numerous side passages that make
a network of Chambéry, she reached the City Hall Square. It was the old
Place de Lans, where the commercial life of the city flowed in other
days. Some crooked buildings, one of those Italian houses ornamented
with veranda and loggia, which may be decorative in photographs and
postal cards, but which in reality are dirty, worm-eaten and forlorn,
did not succeed in imparting any interest to it. On the wall of a
building that had been restored, a black marble tablet was let in,
bearing this inscription:
IN THIS HOUSE
WERE BORN
JOSEPH DE MAISTRE, APRIL 1ST, 1758
AND
XAVIER DE MAISTRE, NOVEMBER 8TH, 1763
Below, a gilded shield announced a lawyer’s office. Margaret
Roquevillard searched for the historic landmark with her eyes and
mounted the staircase. Her heart beating, for her hurried walk had
taxed her strength, she knocked on the door of the Frasne office,
entered and accosted the first clerk she saw, demanding:
“My brother, Mr. Maurice Roquevillard, please.”
“He’s not here, mademoiselle,” said the young man, rising with great
politeness. “He’s not been here this afternoon.”
But behind a desk, another clerk, whom she did not see, threw out, in
a sour voice that betrayed a long-accumulating grudge:
“Go and ask Mrs. Frasne.”
Margaret blushed up to her ears, but thanked him, and without further
delay went, in fact, and rang the bell of Mrs. Frasne’s apartment. She
was told that madame had gone out. She was relieved for a moment by
this news, but after a few steps, regretted it, for her best chance of
finding her brother had been there. Where should she discover him now?
She went next to Favre Street, to Mrs. Marcellaz, her sister-in-law,
who was just coming back from a walk with her three children. Little
Julian threw himself upon his aunt, and would not let himself be
separated from her, while her sister replied, indifferently:
“No, Maurice is not here. He scarcely ever comes to see me.”
A bump that Adrienne had given herself and was fretting over took up
all her further attention.
After these checks, Margaret began to search first one place, then
another, in the town, without much hope, walking very fast, as if fear
were at her heels. Underneath the Porticoes she passed her fiancé, who
made a movement as if to stop her; she passed beyond him, then turned
and came back to him a moment.
“Good-day, Raymond,” she said, without a moment to lose. “Haven’t you
seen Maurice anywhere?”
“No, Margaret. Are you looking for him?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I help you?”
“No, thanks. I’ll see you this evening.”
Raymond turned and watched her as she walked briskly off.
“She’s not very amiable,” he was thinking. “She’s always so reserved
with me.”
But he followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight.
Margaret, pursuing her futile search, was accosted before the Cathedral
by a young friend, Jeanne Sassenay, who was passing with her maid. She
was a little girl of sixteen or seventeen years, young for her age,
with blonde braids down her back, and a quite pretty mobile little
face. She fell upon Miss Roquevillard, whom she admired very much.
“Miss Margaret, you are in a great hurry,” she cried.
“Good-day, Jeanne.”
“You’re copying your brother, who passed me in the street without
saying a word. I’m old enough to be bowed to just the same.”
And lowering her head a little, she gave a downward glance, as if to
lengthen the bottom of her skirt.
“Evidently,” conceded Margaret. “But where did you meet Maurice?”
“On the Reclus bridge.”
“Just now?”
“Oh, no. It was before my music lesson, an hour or two ago.”
“Where was he going?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea. You tell him for me that he’s not very
nice.”
“I’ll tell him so most assuredly. With my friends especially it was
unpardonable of him.”
“I forgive him just the same,” averred Jeanne Sassenay, bursting into a
laugh, which showed a row of white and hearty little teeth.
Left alone again, Margaret saw the open door of the church, and stepped
inside the holy place a moment. At this hour there were only two or
three forms bent in prayer here and there beneath the vaulted ceiling.
But for herself she had great difficulty in saying any prayers:
sometimes her thoughts would run on what a charming wife this young
girl, so lively and gay and yet serious, too, would make for her
brother Maurice in two or three years: sometimes she would recall her
father’s anxious face as she had left him. Of herself she did not think
at all. At the threshold it struck her all at once that her meditations
had not been for herself or her fiancé.
With new resolution she returned again to the Frasne offices, but with
no more success than before. This time she did not ring Mrs. Frasne’s
bell, but for the sake of peace resigned herself at last to defeat.
As she went up Boigne Street again in the fading daylight, the tower
of the archives and the castle turret opposite her were outlined
against a reddened sky. In the flaming sunset these witnesses of the
past rose up in all their glory, as if to show their splendour one
last time before they crumbled down. It was one of those evenings of
apotheosis that come in autumn, with a glory all the more moving for being
fragile--one of those moments of grandeur that are the prelude to decay.
She was struck with these proud shadows etched on the conflagration
of the sky, but instead of walking the more slowly to take in the
spectacle, she cleared the old familiar porch at one bound.
“Has Mr. Maurice come in yet?” she asked at the very door.
“No, miss, not yet,” explained the maid. “Mr. Roquevillard is waiting
for you.”
Her father had heard her, and was already opening the door of his study
to let her in.
“Well, Margaret?”
“Father, I couldn’t find him.”
They said little, but, nevertheless, both father and daughter felt
all the secret suspense and anguish of some menaced evil--an evil
greater than those which youth is usually guilty of, they felt, for
they had a foreboding fear of the strength of Mrs. Frasne.
III
THE CALVARY OF LEMENC
ON leaving his father’s house Maurice Roquevillard crossed to the other
side of the town and made his way straight up to the Calvary of Lemenc,
the place where Mrs. Frasne had appointed that they should meet.
The choice of this place in itself was a defiance of public opinion.
It was a hill that dominated all Chambéry and was visible from
all sides. In the old days it had been only a bare rock, of such
considerable strategic importance that in the times of the old dukes
there had been a beacon there, answering the signals of Lepine and
Guet, those forward-thrusting summits that stand like redoubtable
sentinels on the frontiers of France. You reach it nowadays by a path
which rises upward from the Reclus district, above the railways,
and follows on one side the high walls of a convent, and on the
other a series of miserable one-story dwellings. At the end of this
defile you come out into the country, and find yourself opposite a
little hill, crowned no longer now with works of war, but with a chapel
that stands out against the dear and distant background of the Revard
hills and Nivolet. From there on the path is quite open. A thin border
of acacias gives it scant protection. Cut into the very rock, it crowds
out the meagre grass. Some unfinished stations of the cross, with empty
niches, occur at intervals on the way up. It is an abandoned promenade,
where even if you are visible from a distance you do not ever meet a
soul.
The little chapel of the cross, Byzantine in style, consists of a dome
and peristyle resting on four columns, their bases raised a few steps
above the ground. An archbishop of Chambéry was buried there in 1889.
His tomb is cut in the rock, and the interior of the monument is quite
empty.
From the first station at the foot of the path Maurice could
distinguish a figure seated on the steps between the columns. It was
she, waiting for him. In vain, beside her, the pale gold branches of
the acacias lightly showed their delicate sprays; in vain the purple
mountains rose before him in their autumn light: he saw only her,
framed at the foot of the cross. Her elbows on her knees, she rested
her face upon her two hands, the fingers open and showing rosy and
transparent in the sunlight. Motionlessly with her eyes of fire she
watched him coming. He hastened to her all out of breath. When he
was near her she rose with a single, unsuspected movement, like a
careless fawn that surprises you with its unexpected play of muscles.
“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” she said, “and my life was over.”
“I was detained, Edith.”
He was so obviously upset that she could not reproach him. She took him
by the hand and led him round to the other side of the chapel, where
she showed him the lush grass, and a protecting shadow.
“Let’s sit down, shall we? It’s not cold. We shall be all right.”
They ensconced themselves side by side there, leaning against the wall
of the shrine, which shut them out from Chambéry and the world. They
could see nothing in front of them but the peaks of Nivolet in the full
sunlight. She twined herself caressingly round him.
“I love you so much,” she murmured plaintively.
Was not their love delicious and dolorous both at once? They called
each other by endearing terms, and yet they were not lovers. She held
herself away a little to get a better look at him.
“You have been unhappy. Was it on my account?”
He reviewed his scene with his father briefly, telling of his discovery
of their infatuation, and of the still greater difficulties it implied
for their future.
“What’s to become of us?” he asked.
“Yes, what is to become of us?” she repeated. “Our secret is no longer
ours, and I, well, I don’t know how to hide it any longer.”
“Our secret is no longer ours,” he repeated bitterly, “and you, you
have never yet been mine.”
She leaned her head on the young man’s breast and yielded purposefully
to him, lulling him like a child, the wheedling tones of her voice
striking on his heart strings like fingers on the keys of a piano.
“How dare you say I am not yours? When have I refused myself to you,
you bad boy? Will you go away from here with me? I am all yours. But
you are so young, and I shall be thirty very soon. Thirty years, and
my love, which is my whole life, began only a few months ago. I looked
at you, and there was sunlight on you, and I crept out of the shadows
to be with you. One day I’ll tell you about my childhood, my youth and
marriage, and I shall tell it so as to see your tears.”
“Edith!”
“Ah, yes! People who find marriage the gate to light and gladness, and
not the door to a prison, have a fine time of it scorning our frailty.
When fate overtakes them, too, do they get any more than we deserve?
But they don’t ever ask themselves that question. Happiness is due them
as a matter of course. They don’t even do anything to protect it, and
if they happen to lose it, they call it just their bad luck, anybody’s
fault but their own.”
“Edith! I love you, and you’re not happy.”
She half raised herself, and took his face in her hands, with an
adoring gesture.
“Give me one year of your life for the whole of mine,
Will you? Come! Let us go away, let us forget--I don’t
want to lie any more--I don’t want to belong to any one else. I can’t
any more, now that I’m yours.”
She stood up with one bound. Behind the chapel, not far from them, the
rock fell perpendicularly to the Aix road. She went up close to the
edge, defying the empty air.
“Edith!” he cried, jumping up hastily.
She came back to him, more calm, and smiling.
“I love dizzy places, but I’ve more sense than that,” she said, coming
back to her place beside him.
But it was only to begin again the worry about the future.
“Our secret is everybody’s secret now. My husband will know it soon.
He suspects it already. He loves me in his way, but it’s a way that
revolts me. I’m sure that he is spying on us. He’ll revenge himself
somehow. He’ll manage it very deliberately, like everything he
undertakes.”
“Listen, Edith. You must divorce him.”
“Divorce him, yes. I’ve thought of that. But suppose he should oppose
me. And he will, too. And then a divorce always takes a year or two,
perhaps more. It would oblige me to go and live with my people, away
from you. To be always waiting, still two long years of seclusion: I
should come out of it all quite old. I should be separated from you.
From you, do you understand? I have thought it all over, you see. It’s
impossible.”
They were silent a moment, and in the stillness that surrounded them
as they leant against each other the deep calls of their two natures
sounded. A rustling along the wall near them made them start.
“Some one is coming,” he whispered.
“Let us stay,” she replied imperiously.
They stayed. Their destiny was taking its course; already it lay in
their own hands. But their witness was only a she-goat nibbling the
sparse grass. A little girl, who followed after her with a switch,
considered them a moment blankly and went on her way again. And
they were sorry that their imprudence had not been followed by some
irreparable consequence.
Time passed, but decided nothing for them. Should they take up their
heavy chains again and go back down the hill; or should they break
them, refusing to take any new precautions? She crept close along his
side, trying to read the answer in his eyes.
“Your eyes, your dear eyes. Why do they turn away from me?” she pleaded.
“I don’t know,” he sighed, half closing them, growing dizzy as he had
been just now when she leant beyond the precipice.
She kissed him on the eyelids, uttering sweet words that cloaked a bold
resolve.
“These autumn days, these golden days, make me feel as if my heart
were breaking. Each evening as it falls is cruel to me, because it has
robbed me of a happiness. I am going away to-night, do you know it?”
At this unexpected finish he started, and disengaged himself from her
arms.
“Don’t say that, Edith.”
“These last days, when I’ve told you that, you’ve thought it all an
idle threat. You’ve deceived yourself, Maurice. I shall go away this
evening.”
At other times when she had tempted him thus he had put aside her plan
as impractical, even going so far once as to offer to leave first and
send for her afterward when he should have obtained something to do
in Paris. Disturbed, frightened, beggared of devices before this new
assault, more keen than any of the others, and more pressing, he found
himself trying still to hold her back.
“Hush! I’m staying here, and I love you.”
For the third time, masterful and overwrought, she repeated:
“I shall leave to-night. The train for Italy passes through at
midnight. At midnight I shall be free.”
He knotted his hands in despair.
“Hush!”
“Free to cry out my love. Free, if you’re not there, to taste this new
joy of crying without constraint. Free to adore you, if you come.”
“For pity’s sake don’t tempt me any more.”
“I’m suffocated in this town of yours. Its old houses smell musty. I am
suffocated with tenderness, do you see? Here we shall always be kept
apart. I want to enjoy my sorrow if you don’t come: if you do come I
want to live and breathe. Will you come? Will you come to-night?”
In the end she overpowered his senses with her kisses, and he promised.
A moment she tasted her triumph in silence, then murmured:
“I have forgotten all my past.”
She led him away from their retreat, in front of the Calvary, round
toward the sun. What use was there in any more concealment? They
could see now in a great glory, under a clear sky, the radiant
diverse forms of the land. There before them, stretching away to
the farthest horizon, filling in all the empty space between the
black masses of the Granier and the Roche du Guet, were the delicate
outlines of the Dauphine Alps--the Sept-Laux, Berlange, and the
Grand Charnier--powdered with the first snows and rosy now with the
dying light of day. Less distant, and further to the right, the
wooded slopes of Corbelet and Lepine, between which the valley of
the Echelles was hollowed out, bore like a gold-red fleece the woods
and forests that the autumn had set ablaze. Before these chains of
mountains was a garland of delicate hills--Charmettes, Montagnole,
Saint-Cassin, Vimines, whose soft curves and graceful undulations made
one’s eyes love to dwell on them. Floods of light slipped down through
their folds, making shafts of dust between their shadows. The sharp
spires of the bell towers, the green and gold poplars, served as salient
points in the scene. In the plain, Chambéry slumbered. And quite
nearby, at the foot of the hill, a vine of dull red and gold threw in
its striking note of joyousness.
“Show me Italy,” she bade him.
He made a negligent gesture toward the right, but instead of following
the movement of his arm, she turned toward him, and was aghast to
find his face so full of anguish. She understood. For herself she
could view like a passing tourist these lofty beauties of nature’s
mood. Her companion did not feel it thus. Was it not his own land’s
supreme attempt to hold him back? Down there he could see La Vigie,
and memories of his childhood, of a childhood all clean and pure, rose
up from the earth like birds and came to him. Nearer, as he could tell
from the vicinity of the castle, was “The House,” that place which each
of us calls, just like that, “the house,” as if there were but one in
the world.
She followed this last conflict that showed in Maurice’s eyes with a
sort of envy, she who had nothing to give up herself. With a sigh she
touched him on the shoulder.
“Listen,” she said, “let me go away alone.”
But he was uncomfortable at being detected in the most hidden and
instinctive impulses of his soul.
“No, no! You don’t love me, then, any more?”
“As if I didn’t!”
She smiled at him, with an infinitely tender smile that he
did not see. The fires in her eyes grew veiled. A woman of
to-day, keen for sincerity and the individual life, grown suddenly
impatient after nine years of silent waiting, she had decided, cost
what it might, to take advantage of her husband’s temporary absence and
escape out of the prison house of her marriage. Her romantic departure
had been carefully prepared in all its practical details, and in its
chosen hour. Maurice’s irritation with his father favoured her plan
and left him almost at her mercy. And yet now, how could she best
testify to her great love for Maurice? By associating him with her in
her inevitable and dangerous destiny, or, better still, by leaving him
here in his native place? Before her love for him she could not bear
her life. He had, without knowing it, fanned the spirit of revolt in
her. How could she separate herself from him? The offer she had just
made him broke her very heart, and yet she insisted on it. Never before
had she been so conscious of the detachment from herself which passion
now and then lets loose on us, as a humid plain is burned dry by the
devouring sun.
“One thing at a time, slowly,” she replied, “you would forget me. Don’t
protest. Listen to me. You are so young. All your life is before you.
Let me go alone.”
But he revolted against this injurious condescension. What was to keep
him back? Had not his reason--the reasoning of twenty-four--shown the
right of every one to seek his own happiness?
“I don’t want life without you,” he protested.
“I will stay,” she said again, “if you prefer it. I shall learn to tell
better lies, you’ll see. When one is in love all wrongs are right for
the sake of love.”
It was a proposal made too late. This time she knew, and watched for a
refusal. It came, and she threw herself against her lover’s breast.
“I love you so I could die for you,” he murmured.
“Is that all?” she said. “I love you more than that.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Oh, yes. I love you so I could commit crime for you.” And without
transition she added negligently:
“This evening I shall take away my dot with me.”
He recalled his father’s doubts on this point.
“Your dot?”
“Yes. It’s provided for in my marriage settlement. Did I not show it to
you?”
“You haven’t the right to take it. The court only allowed it to you.”
“Shall I surrender what’s my own to my husband? And what should we live
on if I did?”
“Edith, I shall have some money to-night. Then I can find some work
to do in Paris. The father of one of my friends is manager of a large
company there, and he’s promised to save a place for me in their
lawyer’s offices. These last days I have recalled his promise to do so,
at all events.”
She did not discourage this bland optimism.
“Yes, you will have to work. We’ll go to Paris
later. But to-night it’s Italy.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it the regular pilgrimage for honeymoons?”
She bent her head modestly, supple and pliant, and appeared all at once
a young girl just betrothed--woman of thirty though she was, with her
face that could change so easily from disenchantment to childish grace,
as eager to taste of life as children are of those green fruits the
very sight of which sets the teeth on edge.
The shadows were already coming up over the plain. Before them the map
of the landscape grew clearer as its golden tones grew purple. She
suffered from these too beautiful October evenings as from desire.
“To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow.”
He took a step forward, and turning his back deliberately on the scene,
he looked at her alone, as she stood leaning there against a column
beneath the peristyle of the chapel. Was she not henceforth to be all
his country to him?
They took a sort of revenge against the town by going openly down the
hill of Lemenc together, as far as the Reclus bridge, taking the risk
of meeting people whom they knew.
“It’s almost five,” she said as she was leaving him. “Only seven hours
more.”
Hope revivified the flame in her eyes. Yet Maurice could
only see in these seven hours, distastefully, the cruel
time that he must pass in deception of his family. She
guessed this, and sympathised with her lover’s lot, meaning to destroy
in advance the influence that she feared.
“Poor child, shall you know how to fib for a whole evening?”
He started at finding himself discovered, and repeated to her, not
without bitterness, her own lately uttered words.
“There’s nothing wrong any more when you love.”
“It’s horrible,” she replied, “you see. You can understand my shame
and weariness. As for me, I lie because I love you. Courage, until
to-night.”
Before going home he went hastily round to see various people, from
whom he hoped to borrow the necessary money. From his great-uncle
Stephen Roquevillard, an original old fellow who passed for a
miser, from his Aunt Teresa, pious and charitable, he secured some
loans, about a thousand francs, besides five hundred from his
sister Mrs. Marcellaz, as well as from his future brother-in-law
Raymond Bercy. He had to concoct some story about debts contracted
during his student days in Paris. It was a ruse that caused him
some humiliation--a sacrifice which he offered to his love, but
without deriving much comfort from it. He did not stop to think,
moreover, that all the strangers to whom he had applied had refused
him, while his family, whether with tenderness or crustiness,
had hastened to help him in his imaginary plight.
At six o’clock he returned to Frasne’s offices, just as the clerks were
closing up.
“I’ve a letter or two to write,” he said. “I’ll lock up.”
He did write, as a matter of fact, to the most influential of his
acquaintances, asking that some lucrative place in Paris might be
gotten for him as promptly as possible. Having taken prizes in all his
courses, he counted on the recommendations of his old law professors to
help him. He was not easily dashed by the difficulties of existence,
and had no doubt of his ability to surmount them easily. Where should
the answers to his letters be sent?
He hesitated, then wrote down: _Milan, post restante_.
By these preparations, which kept his mind occupied, he succeeded in
obscuring his regret at parting. It came over him again, however, sharp
and poignant, when he crossed the threshold of his father’s house for
the last time. He slipped in furtively and was at once noticed, but
shut himself up in his room. Margaret came to look for him there at
dinner time, and found him with his head in his hands beneath the lamp,
so absorbed that he did not hear her knock.
“Maurice,” she asked, “what’s troubling you?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m your little sister, and you’re not willing to tell me your
worries. Who knows if I might not be of some use to you?”
To account for his air of worry, which he could not deny, he fell
back again on his pretended need of money, the story that he had just
been telling in various forms. The girl stopped him at once.
“Wait a moment,” she said.
She disappeared, and came back a little later triumphantly, placing in
front of him a fine blue bill for one thousand francs.
“Is that enough? Father gave me three of them for my trousseau, and
luckily this one’s left.”
“You are mad, Margaret. I don’t want it.”
“Yes, yes, take it. I shall be so glad. A few bits of linen more or
less will scarcely make me feel poor.”
She laughed, and he, his nerves all strung, felt the tears gather at
the edge of his eyes. By a great effort he succeeded in controlling
himself, and rested content with drawing the girl to his heart--a heart
which, after all, did not belong entirely to Mrs. Frasne.
“Love me always,” he murmured, “whatever happens.”
She raised her eyes to his inquiringly, but was too generous to demand
a secret in exchange for what she had done. Only, as she went with him
to the dining-room, she let these words slip out quietly, like a prayer:
“Be nice to father, and I shall love you still more.”
Dinner passed without incident, thanks to the presence of Raymond
Bercy, which made the meeting of father and son less trying. In the
evening Maurice withdrew at an early hour, making the excuse of a
headache. He went to his mother’s room, where she lay in bed still
suffering. In his soul’s anguish he embraced the invalid in the
darkness. She knew him by his kiss, and feebly called him by his name,
patting his face with her hands. He stifled a sob and went out. Love
condemned him to such cruelties.
He packed his valise lightly, so that he might carry it himself to
the station, and put all the money he had in a pocket-book. With the
loans he had raised that night, and Margaret’s, it made altogether a
little more than five thousand francs, a total which seemed to him in
his inexperience an important sum of money. Next he packed up the few
pieces of jewelry that belonged to him and might be turned to account,
and then, his toilette for the execution made, sat down and waited like
a criminal condemned to death for the hour that should deliver him to
his beloved. His reason, his infallible reason, sustained him in his
resolve, represented to him the beauty of living his life freely and in
his own way, rather than taking his place as the last of his class in
the uninterrupted line of the Roquevillards.
... Reassured by Maurice’s attitude, and by a half confidence on the
part of Margaret, Mr. Roquevillard went to bed and asleep without any
immediate concern, deciding first, however, that he would send his son
away from Chambéry. He would write to an old friend that he had done
various good turns for at one time and another, who had knocked about the
world a good deal and squandered his inheritance, but who was now
settled in Tunis as a lawyer, and had prospered there. He had lately
expressed in his letters a desire to retire from practice, or at least
to take in an assistant. At twenty-four such a voyage, such a life,
with all its novelty, might mean forgetfulness, salvation, for Maurice.
In the night he thought he heard a door open and shut, but silence
descending on the house again, he fancied he must have been mistaken,
and tried to get to sleep once more. After a rather long struggle, he
lighted a match, and looked at his watch, which showed half an hour
past midnight. He rose and left his room. At the end of the hall a ray
of light appeared beneath Maurice’s door. He went up to it, listened,
and hearing no sound, he knocked. There was no response, and after some
hesitation he went in.
“He must have forgotten to put out his lamp,” he tried to persuade
himself, anxiety already beginning to torment him.
With one glance he saw that the bed was untouched, that a drawer had
been emptied. He went back to his own room, dressed in haste and ran
like a young man, despite his sixty years, to the railway station. The
time for the express to Italy must have passed, but there was still a
last train in the direction of Geneva. An employee, who recognised him,
gave him his information. Maurice had gone away with _her_. They
had taken their tickets for Turin.
Alone there in the night he gave a groan, like some oak straining
at the first blow of the axe. But, like the oak, too, he was full of
resistance, and stiffened himself against fate.
It was not possible that a whole race, a family, not possible even that
one life, could be compromised by a single youthful fault. He would
find his son again, sooner or later, and bring him home. Or else fate
would take charge of him as of the prodigal son; and as in the parable,
too, he would be weak enough to kill the fatted calf on his return,
instead of loading him with reproaches. The paternal hearth: there one
comes back to dress one’s wounds, certain of not being turned away. A
husband may desert his wife, a woman her husband, ungrateful children
may desert their father and mother: a father and mother can never
abandon their child, even if the whole world should give him up.
The town lay as if dead in the moonlight. Mr. Roquevillard’s steps
resounded in the deserted streets. From Boigne Street, as he went up,
he could see the castle tower clear before him, lengthened by the
perspective of the night. A neighbouring tree traced the shadow of its
leaves on the façade. In a few hours the hushed city would come to life
again, to laugh insultingly at this family drama.
When he opened his door a white shadow came to him. It was Margaret.
“Father, what is it?”
In default of his wife he must share the weight of this trial
with Margaret. He thought enough of her not to attempt concealment.
“They have gone,” he muttered briefly.
“Oh,” she breathed, understanding, and remembering the sad phrase her
brother had used to her that evening.
Again father and daughter clasped each other to their hearts in a
common anguish. Then tenderly he led her to her room and left her.
“Let your mother sleep, little girl,” he said. “She
always finds out our troubles soon enough.”
IV
THE VENGEANCE OF MR. FRASNE
MR. FRASNE, bundled up in his overcoat on account of the early
freshness of the air, and carrying a little bag in his hand, descended
from the express in Chambéry at seven in the morning, after an absence
of two days, and walked briskly home.
By the affected air of the maid who opened the door he knew immediately
that something had happened or was happening in the house. He was
a man going on toward fifty, rather well preserved, correct, cold
and distinguished looking at first sight, but with thick lips, and
especially a pair of pop-eyes, half concealed behind his glasses, that
sooner or later gave one an impression of distrust.
“Everything all right?” he asked, in spite of his troublesome
presentiment. “And madame?”
The servant threw a barely perceptible mocking note into her answer:
“Madame left last night for Italy, with her trunks.”
“For Italy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“At what hour?”
“At midnight.”
“Without any explanation?”
“Madame told me as she was leaving that you had been informed.”
“That’s true,” replied Mr. Frasne, with some presence of mind. “Bring
me my breakfast to my study.”
And without any further show of surprise he entered his private room,
which adjoined his offices. What use was there in putting any further
questions to this girl, who was ill-disposed and plainly not very well
informed? The unexpected news shot at him point blank had not yet hurt
him. His only sensations were those of astonishment. A wound, even a
mortal one, cannot at first be distinguished from a simple shock. It
takes some time before suffering sets in.
His glance was sharpened and his nerves were taut when he caught sight
of a letter lying on the table, sealed and placed almost aggressively
within view. He took it in his hands, but without opening it, trying
to guess its contents. There would doubtless be some explanation of
this departure--carelessness, bravado, or indiscretion, who could
tell? After nine years of marriage he was so little sure of his wife
that all these conjectures seemed equally likely. Should he look for
a companion in his wife’s flight, or would it be just the caprice of
a neurasthenic, who would ere long come back to the fold? The name of
Maurice Roquevillard did not enter his mind. Mrs. Frasne sought for men’s
attentions, and amused herself with them: every one paid harmless
court to her. He could not take seriously the banal friendship that
she had shown for his clerk, even though he had been warned in some
anonymous letters that the town was already preoccupied with it. He
showed the rather general disdain of mature men for young people, with
their propensity to take time for an ally and content them selves with
hope. In proportion as a man loses his youth, it is always his own age
or an age approaching it that he attributes to seducers. Sentiment in
youth’s eyes goes for nothing unless it leads to some developments, and
he knew how many adulterous thoughts are prevented by moral conditions
in the country from going further. And, besides, how could he admit
so unreasonable a hypothesis as her voluntarily renouncing a place so
comfortable and untroubled? He did not understand it at all, but he
found himself in the presence of a fact, and he attached importance
to nothing but facts. He was irritated by this mystery which his
penetration could not clear up, so he tore open the envelope and read:
SIR:
_I have never loved you, and you knew it. What is a
woman’s heart that it should be taken possession of by a legal
document? I have stood my slavery for nine years because
I loved no one else. To-day everything is changed: I set
myself free in loyalty to myself, refusing to be shared. What
is there to prevent me? In the very beginning of our marriage
you objected to having children. A little hand held out to me might
have been enough to enchain me completely, but our house is empty, and
no one has any need of me. You thought me worth one hundred thousand
francs in our marriage contract. You will think it natural that I take
away with me the price paid for me. I have already paid for it myself
with my youth. In leaving you I pardon you. Good-bye._
EDITH DANNEMARIE.
For Mr. Frasne, whether from professional habit or a positive turn
of mind, everything in life, even sentiment, translated itself into
acts and obligations. Our characters rule us even in our suffering: in
this shipwreck in which his life was going down he was for the moment
conscious only of the loss of his wife, not his money, even though he
was not prodigal with money; but to revive his past and exasperate
his sorrow he went instinctively to an old portfolio and got out the
marriage contract to which the letter made allusion. With this bit of
stamped paper he evoked more clearly the great passion that had taken
his later youth in its grasp. He saw again at the church door a young
girl, delicate and supple, whose movements and eyes betrayed the fever
in her veins. It was at Tronche, near Grenoble, his native country. He
came there each summer for his vacation, from Paris, when he was head
clerk. He could not make up his mind, though on the brink of forty, to
leave the capital for good, and buy a practice in Dauphiné. According to
inquiries that he made, Edith Dannemarie lived with her mother in the
neighbourhood, in a little house to which the two women had retired
almost without resources after the death of the head of the family, who
had ruined himself with cards. A young country girl with those eyes
ought to be easy prey. Two years in succession he had attempted to get
hold of her. She was waiting for a prince, for her fancy flew high, and
was losing her patience with the long waiting, solitude keeping her
imagination warm. Accordingly she rebuffed him, but not severely enough
to send him away for good. She had discovered without preparatory
studies the art of promising and refusing, and she practised it on a
man whom conquests in an easy and sensually minded world must have made
more irritable and nervous in the face of coquetry. He should have
known himself defeated, but his desire was greater than his interest.
Being alone in the world, after the loss of his parents, who had left
him a goodly inheritance, he decided at last to ask formally for her
hand--a hand which at one and the same time repulsed him and coyly
exhibited the proper place for an engagement ring.
How could he construct again from the laconic clauses of a contract
the traces of that love? One article conceded to his future bride,
in consideration of the marriage, a gift of one hundred thousand
francs; not, as is customary and almost fashionable in such
cases, a gift on the condition of her surviving the giver, but an
immediate settlement, resembling a transfer of property. This abnormal
generosity was the proof of his feebleness, the lamentable testimony to
his defeat. It conferred authenticity on his passion.
The maid who brought in his chocolate distracted him a moment from his
examination. She watched her master out of the corner of her eye as she
served him, and was astonished to see him with business papers in his
hands. Here he was examining a brief, while she was watching for an
outbreak of spite or fury, ready to make a good story out of it in the
town. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and breakfasted without
appetite, by sheer force of will. Should he not need to keep his forces
all intact, presently, and decide definitely what to do?
As he gulped down his steaming chocolate he succeeded in making the
dead years live again. He revived them from his own point of view,
incapable, like many men and almost all women, of representing
things from that of their partners. There was the marriage at
Tronches, after many hesitations and delays, which had not been
of his making; then the departure for Paris. In Paris there had
been revealed to him an unknown companion, a woman who passed
without transition or surprise from isolation and monotony to the
most delirious gaiety. If she did not manage him in his maturity,
neither did he respect her youth. It was then, in the hope of
finding more quiet in the country, that he had bought out Mr.
Clairval’s practice at Chambéry, in default of an office being
obtainable in Grenoble. His wife had adapted herself, with the
indifference of those whom life cannot satisfy further, to this radical
change in her existence. She appeared to accept their retreat as a
pleasure, without enthusiasm, but with no objections. Two years slipped
by thus, as peacefully as could be expected of a woman who even in
her calmer moments never failed to give him some anxiety. And now,
just as he began to think she was sunk deep in the comfort of good
surroundings, content with their daily jog trot, suddenly, without a
sound of warning, she was leaving her husband and running away with a
lover.
The lawyer was crushed by a catastrophe that had caught him so
unprepared, and mechanically went back over these memories, the deed
of gift bringing back all details to him. For the second time he
stood on the brink, and this time he measured it better. This Maurice
Roquevillard, whom he had disdained just now on his arrival, began
to loom larger in his jealous fury. Edith had not gone away alone.
She had gone with him probably, nay, surely. At this very moment,
far away down there in Italy, safely out of reach, he held her in
his arms. Mr. Frasne took his handkerchief and passed it across his
eyes, then held it savagely to his mouth with both hands, and gritted
his teeth upon it. Presently he gave way and wept without control.
“He loves me in his way,” she had said of him. His way was one which
is not the most noble, but is the most fertile certainly in devising
torments. It knocks itself against definite and cruelly imagined
things, it tears up the heart as a plow tears up the ground, and lays
hatred bare.
Mr. Frasne took up the letter and the contract again, this time not
to sound the depths of his misery, but to search for some plan of
vengeance. The clerks would be invading the office before long. Before
they came he must decide on his inquiry, and prepare to forge his arms.
The money that Edith had taken away, that she had stolen really, for
a gift between betrothed persons would in all cases be annulled in
consequence of a divorce pronounced against the giver, she must have
taken from the safe. He had recently deposited there the proceeds of a
one hundred and twenty thousand francs sale of land, a sum which was to
be turned over in a few days, or as soon as the deed was ready to be
executed. He had indiscreetly spoken of it, and she might have learned
of it from him. A key can be made or stolen, but how had she discovered
the mysterious combination of figures without which this key to the
safe was useless?
He rose and went up to the safe, which bore no trace of any breakage.
He felt in his pocket and took out his bunch of keys. Then he perceived
that this one key was missing. It must have been extracted the very day
of his departure. He had a duplicate, it is true, and had confided the
other, according to his habit, to his head clerk during his absence. He
would wait till the arrival of the clerk, who could open and verify the
contents of the safe, and at the same time serve as a witness.
Returning to his work-table, he found a penal code and began to run
through the paragraphs under the title of crimes and misdemeanours
against property. He read in Article 380 that abstractions made by
husbands to the injury of their wives, and by wives against their
husbands, can only give rise to civil actions. But the end of this
same paragraph that disarmed him against the faithless woman armed him
against her accomplice:
_With respect to all other individuals who shall receive or apply to
their own profit all or any part of the objects stolen, they shall be
punished as if guilty of theft._
Started on this scent, he found things better still. Article 408,
which treated of the abuse of confidence, gave it as an aggravating
circumstance when the theft was committed by a public or administrative
officer, by a domestic servant, a man under employment for wages,
a student, clerk, commissioner, workman, companion or apprentice,
to the injury of his master; and the penalty in such cases was
imprisonment. What was to prevent him from accusing Maurice
Roquevillard, and him alone? Was it not all probable and likely? The
young man knew the premises, the payments made through the office,
the dates of contracts, the absence of his chief. He could have
discovered the secret of the lock, have extracted the key for a moment
from the hands of the head clerk. With no fortune of his own, he must
have had to supply himself with funds to carry off his mistress.
Finally, did not his flight to foreign territory condemn him? Of
course, the statement made by Mrs. Frasne expressly contradicted this
version of the case, but Mrs. Frasne’s declaration, ineffective against
herself, though awkward for her lover, could well enough be suppressed.
This declaration out of the way, nothing could make the latter appear
innocent again. He would even be without any grounds of defence: for
to defend himself, would he not have to turn against his mistress,
admitting at last that they had both been supported by the funds that
she had taken? A man of honour could not do this. Maurice’s conviction
was, therefore, certain. Extradition would put an end to his amorous
flight. He would have to appear at the assizes. Branded, overthrown
and broken, he would expiate their fault for both the culprits. And
finally, his family, to make atonement for his fault, would perhaps
restore the sum that had been taken away. Thus the disaster would at
least result in no material loss. And already the material loss began
to seem not negligible to Mr. Frasne, the more so as he reflected
further upon it.
The more he explored in all its aspects a combination so rich in
inference, and traced all its possibilities to the end, the more he
felt his despair grow lighter. He forgot his sorrow in preparing a fine
punishment for his rival. He considered pitilessly the remotest
consequences of his revenge, not least of them the abasement of the
haughty Roquevillards, and this despite the fact that as Mr. Clairval’s
successor he had been received by them as a friend. In his unhappiness
he hurled his sufferings like curses in the face of the whole world.
For a last time he read this letter, the only source of difficulty to
his plan: then, his mind made up, he threw it in the fire and watched
it twist and blacken into ashes.
Nine o’clock struck.
Punctually the clerks arrived at the office, one by one, and took their
places at their desks. Their chief stepped at once to the door leading
from his own room into the office, and, without any salutations, began
to question the head clerk in a preoccupied manner.
“Philippeaux, I can’t find the key of the safe.”
“Why, here it is, sir,” replied the clerk. “You handed it to me to take
care of while you were away. I have not used it.”
“Good. Come with me, then.”
The two men passed into the study.
Mr. Frasne opened the safe and noticed at once a certain disorder in
its contents.
“You have been looking for something, a will perhaps?” he asked blandly.
Philippeaux protested with the greatest energy.
“No, sir. I can swear to it.”
“Then I don’t understand any better than I did at first.
Wait a moment. This envelope has been torn open. It
contained the money from the purchase of Belvade: one hundred and
twenty thousand francs. We counted it together.”
“That’s true,” agreed the frightened clerk.
Still very calm, the notary did not pursue his investigation any
further, closing the safe carefully.
“Some one has been in here.”
“But it’s not possible, sir.”
“I tell you some one has been here. We’ll check up the contents before
the commissioner of police. Who shut up the office last night?”
“Maurice Roquevillard.”
“Did he stay here alone?”
“Yes, to write some letters.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. I met him under the Porticoes half an hour later. He
gave me the keys.”
“The keys? The key of the safe was in your bunch?”
“Yes.”
“That was imprudent.”
After a silence Mr. Frasne resumed: “Why has he not come yet?”
“Who?”
“Maurice Roquevillard.”
“He won’t come,” flung out the clerk vindictively.
Mr. Frasne fixed him with his perspicacious eyes. He drew two
conclusions from this examination: the rumour of his misfortune was
already running through the town, and Philippeaux, whose jealousy he
suspected, would be a safe ally for him. Nevertheless, he pretended
ignorance.
“That’s right. He ought to be with his father.”
“No, Mr. Frasne. He took the train last night at midnight.”
“Where for?”
“Italy!”
“Ah, I understand at last,” avowed the solicitor this time.
And slowly he pronounced his decree against Maurice:
“It’s he, then, that will have forced my safe. How did he discover the
combination?”
Philippeaux bent his head: fear and envy made an informer out of him.
“The combination is written down in my memorandum book, though with
nothing to identify it: my memory’s not good. Roquevillard might have
seen it and suspected its use.”
Again Mr. Frasne, whom all the circumstances favoured, scrutinised his
clerk and concealed his inward satisfaction.
“You have been doubly imprudent, Philippeaux. Take one of your comrades
and call the commissioner of police. He shall make a strict search here
himself.”
Thus the safe was visited legally in the presence of several witnesses.
Mr. Frasne patiently made his inventory. Not a thing was missing
and the sum of the money deposited proved to be exact.
“The only thing left to examine,” said the solicitor quietly,
conducting the inquest methodically, “is this long envelope, which
has been unsealed. It contained the purchase price of Belvade, twenty
acres, one hundred and twenty thousand francs in banknotes. I counted
them before going away, with my head clerk, here, who can corroborate
me.”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“The sum was put away along there.”
Now the envelope contained no more than twenty bills.
“I have been robbed of one hundred thousand francs,” concluded Mr.
Frasne.
“How do you account for the fact that the thief did not take
everything?” objected the commissioner. “As a rule, they don’t
voluntarily limit their profits.”
“I’ll explain that to the public prosecutor, to whom I shall carry my
complaint at once.”
“That’s for you to say. You suspect some one, then?”
“Yes.”
“Your servants?”
“No. They would not have been in here. And, besides, they would not
have known how to make out the combination.”
“Good. I’ll go and draw up my report.”
“Come with me to the court-house. It’s only a step.”
“As you wish.”
They presented themselves to the prosecutor directly, and the notary
had a long conference with him, a conference that prolonged itself some
time after the commissioner of police had left them. As Mr. Frasne
came down the staircase he met Mr. Roquevillard at the foot, coming in
on his way to court. It was a quarter past twelve, the hour for the
opening of the hearings. The two men looked at each other and bowed.
V
A FAMILY IN DANGER
BEFORE the court sits, the barristers and attorneys customarily meet
and chat a few moments amongst themselves in the lobby. It is the
place where all the town news is subjected to the test. To-day Mr.
Roquevillard, famous for his good humour and redoubtable sallies, took
his robe from its hook in the cloak-room and went directly to his place
at the bar. His colleagues eyed him from a distance, with ill-natured
curiosity, while they made merry over the escapade of young Maurice,
which for the matter of that they treated lightly, and as a revenge
upon the constraints of country manners. As Mr. Roquevillard was
apparently absorbed in the preparation of his plea, a court attendant
came to his bench and touched him on the shoulder.
“Sir, you are wanted in the prosecutor’s office.”
He rose at once, respectfully.
“I’ll come,” he said. It happened every day that the
prosecutor took advantage of the presence of some lawyer
at the sessions to consult with him on some point
of penal business. Mr. Roquevillard, nevertheless, was not without
some anxiety. His encounter with Mr. Frasne at the entrance to the
court-house made him speculate:
“Will he be so foolish as to enter a complaint of adultery?”
Legally adultery remains a misdemeanour in France. A husband, but not a
wife, has the right to enter a complaint, but it is a privilege seldom
exercised. But the notary’s face was so difficult to make out----
The prosecutor, Mr. Vallerois, had held the office in Chambéry for
several years, and had had time to appreciate Mr. Roquevillard’s
professional probity, character and talent. People talked, it is
true, of his possible candidacy at the next election, and the
opposition would find in him, should he accept, its most energetic and
acknowledged chief. Mr. Frasne’s accusation fatally destroyed this
political danger. Ambitious office-holder that he was, Mr. Vallerois
was considering this aspect of things without displeasure when Mr.
Roquevillard entered the room.
But he thought less of this when he began his obligatory talk with him,
and it was to his credit that in the lawyer facing him he saw only an
honest man in trouble. He held out his hand to him and began:
“I have a disagreeable duty to take up with you.”
He stopped and hesitated. Mr. Roquevillard’s moral force showed to best
advantage in difficult circumstances. He appreciated the delicacy of
the prosecutor, but he went straight to the point himself.
“It concerns my son?”
“Yes.”
“In the matter of a divorce in which his name is involved? A complaint
of adultery?”
“No, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?”
The word could scarcely have any significance. In a firm but muffled
voice, Mr. Roquevillard demanded: “Does it concern an accident? A
suicide?”
“No, no. Reassure yourself,” cried Mr. Vallerois, realising the error
that he had provoked. “He eloped last night with Mrs. Frasne: the
whole town knows it. But what is more serious is that Mr. Frasne, who
has just been here, has placed in my hands a complaint of abuse of
confidence against him.”
In spite of his self-possession, the old lawyer, red to his forehead,
grew indignant.
“Abuse of confidence? I know my son. It’s impossible.”
The prosecutor let him read the accusation which the notary had signed,
together with the examinations made by the commissioner of police. Mr.
Roquevillard read them through attentively and without interruption.
It might be, it was, the foundering of his family, the disgrace of his
name. Master of him self, but stricken to his heart, he said at last:
“Mr. Frasne is taking a base revenge.”
“I believe as you do,” replied Mr. Vallerois, letting his
sympathy appear without circumlocution. “But the money has
disappeared. How can a public trial be prevented?”
“My son is not the only one in this case. When a boy of twenty elopes
with a woman of thirty, which of the two prepares and directs the
expedition?”
“I made him listen to all that just now, in this very place, with some
insistence. I recommended prudence, and insisted upon twenty-four
hours of reflection. I am forced back on taking some formal action.
Justice must take its course. I am obliged to lay the matter before the
examining magistrate.”
Mr. Roquevillard, summoning his courage to meet this blow of fate, said
nothing, while the prosecutor turned the insoluble problem over and
over again.
“There are presumptions against him, serious, precise and
corroborating. In the first place the facilities of his position in
the office, then his presence there last night with the keys, after
the other clerks had gone, his lack of resources with which to carry
through this bold elopement, and even his pains to limit the sum he
took, as if he were fixing the rating of a loan he expected to repay.”
“There are other presumptions in his favour,” replied the father
proudly. “In the first place, his family. The last of a long line of
honest people does not lie. And who told you that he left without any
money? When his own money is used up, he’ll come back. I’ll answer for
it.”
Their interview was interrupted by an attendant coming to summon the
lawyer, for whose argument the court was waiting.
“I’ll follow,” said Mr. Roquevillard, motioning him away.
“But he has been accused. How will he defend himself?” asked Mr.
Vallerois. “You must realise that he has a bad case. Evidence
accumulates against him. And even on the most favourable hypothesis he
must accuse some one else to clear himself. Do you wish that? And he
will pass always as having been an accomplice. At all events, if you
know where he is, advise him to wait there before he re-enters France.
I will deal lightly in the matter of the extradition.”
Mr. Roquevillard shook his head energetically.
“No, no. To run away is to confess. He must come back. I shall find
proof of his innocence.”
And after a moment of reflection, during which he weighed the pros and
cons, he added:
“Since our misfortune touches you, Mr. Prosecutor, give me leave to ask
a service of you, a great service which may yet save us.”
“Which is?”
“Propose to Frasne that he withdraw his complaint in consideration of
the full payment to him of one hundred thousand francs.”
“You would make restitution?”
“I will pay him the money.”
“And if your son is not guilty?”
“He’s in a situation from which there’s no way out, as you have said.
Our honour is worth more than that. Even pursuit must splash mud on it.”
“Mr. Frasne is supposed to be close. His complaint perhaps is only a
way of putting himself in funds again. Try him with half of it.”
“No; no bargaining. Full payment in consideration of withdrawal.”
The attorney was much distressed; naturally desirous of quiet and
propriety, he fell back now on his professional scruples.
“You are right, and I want to oblige you, especially in view of the
sacrifice you propose. But does it become my character to risk such an
abnormal step?”
Mr. Roquevillard put a little emotion in his reply.
“It’s abnormal, yes. But time presses. I am pleading in court. In a
little while the complaint will be noised about. You alone know of it
and can still suspend it. Quash it. I beg of you.”
“It’s impossible. I can’t deliberately seek out a complainant.”
“You can have him come here.”
“So be it,” said Mr. Vallerois. “The means are dear, but effective
surely. I will present the proposal in my own name, so that if by any
chance I fail, you will not be embarrassed. The offer on your part
might seem to be an admission of the crime.”
“Thank you.”
They separated. The lawyer returned to the court-room, where the
councillors were growing impatient, and began his argument with
his customary lucidity. Listening to the ordered closeness of his
reasoning, no one would have suspected that anguish tortured him.
But when he sat down, this old fighter who was never tired, he was
conscious at last of an extreme fatigue, heavy as the mysterious blows
of age.
After the argument in rebuttal and his brief reply, he regained his
liberty at last. He looked at his watch: it was half-past three. In
this interval of three hours the fate of his son had been decided.
He went up again to the prosecutor’s office, where Mr. Vallerois was
waiting for him. At a glance he could see that that officer’s mission
had failed.
“Mr. Frasne came here,” explained the latter. “You were right. He wants
revenge.”
“He refused?”
“Absolutely. He prefers his revenge to his money. In vain I pressed him
in every way in my power. I spoke of the scandal, which would react
against his wife; spoke even of his lack of evidence. He replied that
if I did not begin a public action, he would bring a civil suit before
the examining magistrate. He has the right, and his resolution is
unbreakable.”
“And if I should try myself to move him? Our relations were pleasant.”
“Your visit would be useless, painful; perhaps even
compromising. I don’t advise you that way at all. I spoke to him of
your family, of yourself: He replied: ‘His son has broken my heart. So
much the worse if the innocent pay for the guilty.’”
Mr. Roquevillard reflected a moment, and yielded to this advice, of
which he could not but approve. He took leave of the prosecutor,
stretching out his hand to him.
“There’s nothing left for me but to thank you. You have treated me as a
friend, and I shall not forget it.”
“I’m sorry for you,” replied Mr. Vallerois, who was really touched.
The lawyer, his portfolio under his arm, went on his way home. He
walked briskly, with his always youthful tread, holding his head
high, according to his habit, but his face was very pale. Under the
Porticoes, that resort for loungers, he came across friends, who turned
aside, while passersby stared at him insistently and mockingly. He
perceived that Frasne’s clerks were already hawking the shame of the
Roquevillards about the town. The Roquevillards: it was the first
failing, for centuries, of any of the race. It must have been watched
for, that it should be spread with so much spite. What base envy the
pride in their name stirred up! The weakness of one member undid a
whole past of energy and honour, a past that had furnished such manly
examples for so many years. Did not those who exulted in it understand
that this ruin reached them, too?
He straightened himself up and walked more slowly. No one
now could look him in the eye. Stiffening with contempt, setting his
face to the storm, he reflected: “Dogs, bark and keep away from me.
Don’t come nearer. As long as I’m alive I shall protect my own. I’ll
shield them with all my power. And you shall not see me suffer.”
Outside his door he was accosted by the Viscount de la Mortellerie, his
country neighbour. Must he submit already to condolences and sympathy?
Yet this eccentric, in hunting him out, showed himself the most human
of all. The old nobleman pointed out the castle, bathed in the evening
light.
“At the reception of the Emperor Sigismund in 1416,” he confided
mysteriously, “the Duke Amedeus VIII gave a banquet in the grand hall
there. It was prepared by Jean de Belleville, the inventor of Savoy
cakes. The meats were gilded and covered with ornaments and streamers
bearing the arms of the guests, and each one received the dishes that
were meant for him in single, double or triple portions, according to
his rank. I love the distinction, don’t you? That we should eat, not
according to our appetite, but our importance.”
“One portion would do for me,” replied Mr. Roquevillard, shaking off
his anger.
He could not, himself, beguile the present with these memories of
the past. He disappeared beneath the archway, mounted the stairs,
and reached his study, avoiding the room where his wife, as always,
kept her bed. But she heard him pass and sent for him, hoping that
he might give her some news of her son. He found her alone, sitting up
in bed, in the falling shadows.
“Margaret has gone out,” she murmured; and scarcely daring to frame her
question, she added: “You know nothing of Maurice?”
“No, nothing. For a long time doubtless we shall know nothing.”
“How hard your voice is, Francis,” replied the invalid. “This woman has
bewitched him, you see, the poor boy.”
“Feebleness is one kind of guiltiness.”
She was struck by this rigid tone, and pressing the button of the
electric light, beheld her husband looking as if stricken with a sudden
old age, so pale and hollow-eyed that she felt at once a presentiment
of danger.
“Francis,” she begged of him, “there is something else that you’re
hiding from me. Am I not your comrade as I used to be, from whom you
have no secrets?”
He moved nearer toward the bed. “Why no, dear wife, there’s nothing
else. Isn’t our son’s desertion of us enough?”
Sitting up again, her arms stretched out, she only entreated him the
more.
“I can read in your look some terrible menace that hangs over us. Don’t
spare me as you did last night. Speak. I shall be brave.”
“You are exciting yourself needlessly. There’s nothing.”
“I swear to you that I shall have the courage to bear it. Don’t you
believe me?”
“Valentine, calm yourself.”
“Wait, you shall believe me.”
And joining her hands, the aged woman on her bed of pain called aloud
to her God for help. In her pale and emaciated face, through which the
pulse of life moved so feebly, her eyes flashed with an ardent flame.
“Valentine,” he said softly.
She turned toward him as if transfigured.
“Now,” she said, “now speak. I can bear all. Is he dead?”
“Oh, no!”
Her heart had given the same cry as his. Conquered by this faith that
animated her, he confided to her the terrible accusation that had
attainted their flesh and blood. She thrust it from her indignantly.
“It’s not true. Our son is not a thief.”
“No, but for every one else he is.”
“What of that, if it is not true? And that I know, I’m sure of it.”
He cut her short with a quick gesture, dwelling upon the disaster:
“He has brought disgrace on us.”
It was the crime against his race, head of the family as he was, that
he condemned, while the Christian woman thought only of her boy’s heart.
“God will not abandon us,” she declared solemnly.
As she uttered these single words of hope Margaret entered, much
upset and evidently battling with her dismay. She looked at her father
and mother, saw them both suffering there with the same sorrow, and
like a stream that breaks its barriers her self-restraint gave way in a
burst of tears.
Mrs. Roquevillard drew her to her heart.
“Come to me,” she said.
“Who has been hurting you?” her father demanded.
She was feverish with excitement, but controlled her distress to make
some explanation.
“People are insulting us,” she began.
“Who?”
“I’ve just come from Mrs. Bercy’s. Raymond was there. ‘A pretty brother
you have,’ said Mrs. Bercy to me. It was horrid of her. As for me,
I only kept my head down. Then she began again: ‘You know the story
the clerks in the Frasne office are telling about him?’ Still I held
my tongue. ‘They say your brother wasn’t content with the wife.’
‘Mamma,’ cried Raymond feebly. But I was already on my feet. ‘Go on,
madame, you must,’ I said. And she dared to finish: ‘He took away the
cash-box, too.’ Then I said, ‘I forbid you to insult my brother.’ And
to Raymond I added: ‘You, sir, who can’t protect me in your own house,
may consider yourself free.’ He wanted to keep me back, but I would not
listen to anything more, and here I am.”
“Dear little girl,” murmured her mother, putting her arms around her.
“Oh,” cried Mr. Roquevillard, standing over the two heads, his wife’s
and his daughter’s, “people always condemn you thus, without hearing
you.”
But already Margaret had forgotten her personal troubles in the common
sorrow. She rose and went up to her father, gazing earnestly into his
eyes.
“You, father, in whom I have such confidence, tell me, it isn’t true,
is it?”
“It’s false,” the invalid assured her.
“I hope so,” said the head of the family. “But all the appearances are
against him, and he runs the risk of being sentenced.”
“Sentenced?”
“Yes, sentenced,” replied the lawyer, “and with him all of us that bear
his name, all of us who come from the same past with him and are making
toward the same future.”
He made a movement as if at once to protect the two weeping women and
threaten the deserter:
“One feeble moment has been enough to wreck the efforts of so many
close and solid generations. Oh, let him down there in his shameful
flight measure the damage of his treachery! His sister’s betrothal
is broken, his brother’s future is spoiled, his mother’s health is
shattered, his family’s fortune is compromised, our name spotted and
our honour stained! That’s his work! And that is called love! What
does it matter whether he has stolen a sum of money! From us he has
stolen everything. What is there left to us to-day?”
“You,” cried Margaret. “And you will save him.”
“God,” said Mrs. Roquevillard, finding a strange serenity in
her sorrow. “Have confidence. The worth of a race can never
be undone. It will redeem the culprit’s faults.”
PART II
I
THE MAKER OF RUINS
OF all the lakes of Lombardy Orta is the least frequented. It is lost
in the reputation of the Lago Maggiore like a small boat in the wake of
a vessel.
From the train which runs along its border the voyager is content to
regard it negligently and does not deign to stop. He sees the clearly
drawn lines of the wooded mountains that shut it in, and the hollows
of the valleys where the white villages half hide themselves like a
flock of sheep in a pasture. He catches a hasty glimpse of a little
hill planted with trees thrust forth on a promontory into the waters,
of a straggling town on the bank, of an island all built up, and in
this rapid flight he imagines he has culled the smiling delicacy of
this landscape, which indeed stores up and epitomises the whole charm
of the Lombardy country: a mixture of grace and harshness. The shore
of the lake rounds itself off lazily, but the contours of the hills
against the horizon are crisp and well marked, not soft and vaporous
as under the paler skies of Switzerland and Savoy. In the evening they
seem to sink deep into the clear background. The almost symmetrical
undulations of the hills repeat the same forms, exaggerating themselves
accordingly as one looks toward the north, so that one feels almost as
if they could be measured by the clearly marked stages with which the
Novare plain comes up at last against the formidable barrier of the
Alps.
Orta Novarese is not yet equipped for the reception of travellers,
and on that account enjoys its fortunate neglect. A single hotel on
the side of the Sacred Mount--Orta is crowned by a little mountain,
where twenty chapels, scattered among the trees, illustrate the life
and miracles of St. Francis of Assisi--the Hotel Belvedere, from
spring until the beginning of winter, receives a limited number of
lodgers. But all through the green of the woods, along the lake’s edge,
one discovers country houses, where the aristocracy of the province
come for rest and recreation. The iron gates are left open, and from
well-kept gardens comes a perfume of flowers that is quite delicious
after the musty smell of table-d’hôte that vitiates one’s stay at
Pollanza or Baveno.
Fleeing from the large towns where they had spent the stormy months of
winter, Mrs. Frasne and Maurice Roquevillard had installed themselves
at the Belvedere in May. They had been tempted to stay on there because
they were tired of change, as well as by the moderate prices, so that
they found themselves still there at the end of October. An exceptional
autumn followed almost slyly in the steps of summer, and but for the
shorter days, and a little freshness in the air, or the timid gold
that began to touch the foliage, the sun would have inspired unlimited
confidence in good weather.
This morning, in the sitting-room of their suite at the hotel, the
young man was occupied with the translating of a little Italian book,
_Vita dei SS_. _Jiulio e Giuliano_, a history of those two
apostles who came from the Ægean Sea in the fourth century to preach
the gospel in Orta. A passage taken from Lamartine, and left there in
the original text, held him longer than the obscurest phrase. In a
reverie he lifted his head from the prospect near the window. His eyes
disdained the bouquet of trees which finished off the peninsula below
him, the calm and transparent lake, the little island, a place where
enchantments were performed in ancient days, which the poetic author of
the biography compared to a camellia on a silver plate. Spontaneously
they sought the ridge of the mountains which barred the horizon, as if
he would pierce them and look beyond. While he was thus absorbed, a
white form glided into the room and bent over his shoulder to glance
at the open book. From among the foreign phrases the passage from
Lamartine detached itself in italics:
_The predestined fate of the child is the house in which
it was born: his spirit is made up above all else of
impressions there received. The look of our mother’s eyes
is a part of our soul, entering through our oxen eyes into our inmost
parts._
Mrs. Frasne quietly closed the book; and her lover, who had not heard
her come in, started at the movement. Between them passed a look full
of those things which lovers hardly dare to speak or even think.
“What day of the month is it?” she asked indifferently.
Reassured, he replied:
“The twenty-fifth of October.”
Then all at once she made him anxious once more:
“A year ago, do you remember, we met each other at the Calvary of
Lemenc. It was there we made up our minds to flee together. Only a
year, and already my love is no longer enough for you.”
“Edith!”
“No, it’s no longer enough for you.”
And with a sad smile she added simply:
“See, how you work.”
“Edith, must we not think of the future?”
“No, not yet. What do we need?”
He took umbrage at her question:
“My resources are used up. The money we’re spending now is yours. I
can’t forget that.”
“But all is the same between us. Am I not your wife?”
He wrinkled his eyebrows with a purposed look.
“I want your dot to remain intact. I’ve asked one of my friends,
who is a political writer in Paris, to find me a place with the
newspapers. Can’t I send them some review from the foreign journals? I
learned English at college, and later German for my doctor’s thesis.
And I speak Italian already. This side work and a place in a lawyer’s
office will give us enough to live on.”
She listened to him with an enigmatic smile, while she stroked his face
with that gesture of adoration so familiar to him.
“To-morrow we’ll talk about the future. To-morrow, not to-day,” she
said.
“Why should we wait a day? On the contrary, we ought to decide at once
on the date of our departure.”
“Our departure?”
“Yes, for Paris.”
She could not conceal her discontent.
“Always Paris. You talk about it all the time. You are obsessed by it.”
“It’s in Paris that I must earn my daily bread,” he replied, in a
melancholy voice.
Supply and fawningly she slid into his arms, and sought the red of his
lips beneath his moustache, murmuring close to him:
“I asked you for one year of your life. To live one year with neither
past nor future, to breathe in our tenderness every day, to have you
forget all the rest of the world for me. Don’t you remember?”
“Have I not done all this for you, and much more, too?”
“There’s one day due me. To-morrow is our anniversary.”
“To-morrow, Edith,” he repeated, with some emotion.
All trembling with her memories she stood erect again.
“Don’t spoil this day that’s left us. Since it’s the last, let’s have
it the most beautiful of our year that has run away drop by drop. Don’t
let us talk of the future before to-morrow. Will you promise me?”
He smiled at so much ecstasy.
“I’ll do as you wish.”
“Then I’ll go and dress. It won’t take long. And we’ll go out together.
We’ll have lunch on the island.”
She disappeared, and during her absence he tried to begin again at his
work on the translation. But for the second time he began the phrase
from Lamartine:
“_The predestined fate of the child is the home in which it was
born_----” And again he paused.
Edith was right. The present did not suffice him any more, had never
sufficed him. By tacit consent they had both of them brushed aside
the future, but into the past, of which they dared not speak, their
minds looked when their mouths were mute. Silence, for him, became a
supplication. Beyond those nearer mountains there, at this hour, what
were _they_ doing, those dear ones from whom he had no news?
Edith reappeared on the threshold, soliciting his approval.
“Don’t you think I look nice this morning?”
She wore a summer dress of white serge, which, without fitting too
closely, outlined her flexible form, and a hat surmounted by white
wings, which gave her whole person a finishing touch of light and
slender grace. This year had rejuvenated her. Her eyes of fire could
not have flashed more brilliantly than before, but her cheeks were
rounder and less pale. Her thin body had taken on an appearance of
weight, and through her whole person was diffused an indefinable and
pervasive air of love.
He admired her, but did not put in words the compliment for which she
waited.
They went down to the port of Orta by a steeply inclined path,
paved with round stones, so little used that grass was growing in
the crevices. In the square, before the bank where the boats were
moored, they came upon a young girl in a red bonnet, whom they had
already encountered several times in their walks and who must have
lived somewhere near. The little foreigner stared at them, especially
Maurice, without timidity.
“She is pretty,” remarked Maurice, after they had passed.
His companion made a little grimace of sadness, which for a moment
brought back all her age.
“Don’t look at her,” she said. “I am jealous.”
“Jealous? And can’t I be, too?” he asked, teasing her for her severity.
“Of whom, good heavens!”
“Why, of that black and moustachioed Italian at the hotel. He forgets
his mistress during meals and makes bold eyes at you.”
She burst into laughter.
“Lorenzo!”
“You know his name?”
“He told me. He made me a declaration, rolling up the whites of his
eyes. It was too funny!”
He forced himself to laugh in his turn. But when they were installed
in their boat, and two or three strokes of the oars had carried them
from the shore, he was conscious of the same feeling of uneasiness.
This present that they were managing with so much art, from which they
set aside all memories and consequences, so that they might extract its
essence in all its force, here was the least little incident tainting
it. What barriers must be built for love to give it shelter from
the world even for a year! This love, for which they had sacrificed
everything, was pressed upon from every side by life and by the
impulses of their own hearts, even as the shores of the little island
that lay before them were laved by the waters of the lake.
She was the first to feel the consciousness of their
misery. She leant from the thwart and drew nearer to him.
But instead of divining what she meant, he began and told
her the legend of St. Jules, for whom they neither of them cared a rap.
“This island in olden times,” he recited, “was infested with snakes.
When St. Jules wanted to go to Orta the fishermen all refused to lend
him their boats, whereupon he spread his mantle on the water for a boat
and used his staff for an oar.”
She was vexed, and murmured sardonically:
“How much you know!”
“I’ve just been reading about this miracle.”
“I detest your book.”
He guessed her reason for detesting it. In this last day of their first
year of love, that was to sum up all its sweetness, everything hurt
them, everything turned sad for them, even the most innocent words.
They got out at the foot of a staircase that led up from the beach,
and fastened their boat to an iron ring fixed in the gravel for that
purpose. They went into the old Roman basilica, which contained
some Byzantine frescoes, recently discovered under a thick coat of
rough-cast, a chair of black marble, a sarcophagus and some frescoes
by Ferrari and Luino. Because they had seen these at other times
together, they visited them now without pleasure. Lovers must always
have new sights, so much do they shrink from blunted sensations, for
fear instinctively of wearying each other. Maurice and Edith preferred
to explore this morning a narrow passageway that was quite new to them.
The whole summit of this precipitous little island is covered with
the buildings of a seminary that looks as if it were a fortress. The
little road turned presently and led them abruptly up to a closed door.
Their progress was blocked, and they found themselves face to face in
the most utter isolation, shut in by two high walls and on an island.
There could not have been a completer effect of isolation for them, of
having no one besides themselves in the whole world. Surely this is the
professed desire of lovers. One year ago they would have welcomed for
all their lives an isolation like this. To-day, without a word, they
turned and fled back to the beach.
An old man was fishing with his line in the midday sun. Under a willow
tree near the strand two barefooted children were playing ducks and
drakes. Along the shore country houses appeared among the trees, whose
leaves autumn was slowly garnishing with colour, and Orta, a mass of
white, was reflected in the motionless lake. The spectacle of this calm
and normal life in the midday stillness helped to restore their spirits.
They ate their lunch on the steps of the stairway that led up to the
basilica. Afterwards they floated here and there over the water for a
part of the afternoon, seeking some place unknown to them in which they
might revivify sensation. Finally they went back to the port, and once
on shore again, still sought some new use to make of time.
“Shall we go back to the hotel?” he asked, as they stood in the little
square.
But she protested against the idea of shutting themselves up in the
house.
“Oh, no! The sun is still high above the mountain. Let’s go back by the
long way, and not hurry.”
The road, after crossing through the town, which was quite destitute
of sidewalks, ran along the shore of the lake, rising little by little
from its level, and following the contours of the Sacred Mount, whose
trees and chapels dominated the peninsula, past the iron gates or walls
of villas, with ornamental palms and orange trees at their entrances.
In front of one of these villas, a quite modest and shabby one, which
they could see at the end of a short avenue through the open portals,
Edith caught the smell of roses.
“Wait,” she said to her lover. “They are so sweet, and they must be the
last.”
“Let’s go in,” he said. “I’ll beg some for you.”
They went in together, and discovered in the inner garden a strange
assemblage of statues--small truncated columns, little stuccoed
towers with their coating half peeled off, unfinished porches, all
the devastation of a miniature art city, but regular and organised
as with a decorative motive. In the midst of this symmetrical group
of stones, all symbolising with factitious grace the injuries of
time, a little marble Cupid stood on his pedestal, with roses all
around him, bending his bow with a smile upon his lips.
The young woman saw only Love among the roses.
“He is charming, and the day caresses him.”
“Isn’t it bizarre?” observed Maurice. “We must be in the grounds of
some collector of monuments. They’ve no objection to such things in
Italy.”
An elderly man with a white blouse put on over his clothes, and a
sculptor’s chisel in his hand, came forward to meet them, and greeted
them quite solemnly, with a mixture of obsequiousness and nobility.
He entered into conversation with Maurice in Italian, while Edith,
with his permission, gathered some flowers. She rejoined the two men
presently with a sheaf of them in her hands.
“Here is my bouquet. I’ll give you each a rose,” she said.
The despoiled proprietor stumbled through some half intelligible form
of thanks and greeting. Maurice introduced him:
“Mr. Antonio Siccardi, a maker of artificial ruins. It’s a fine
occupation.”
Edith raised inquiring eyes to her lover.
“I’ll explain,” he added for her benefit.
When they were on the road again, after having taken leave of their
host of the moment, Edith made game of this very unusual and unheard-of
occupation, and repeated in a jesting tone:
“A manufacturer of artificial ruins?”
“Exactly,” said Maurice, “for decorating parks. In the
shrubbery, or near a garden bench, you put a broken
column, or an unfinished archway or some clever rock work: it’s quite
effective. I knew a good man in the Latin Quarter who made cobwebs for
old wine bottles, and people bought them that very evening for their
grand dinners.”
“And could he make much money at such work?”
“A good deal.”
“It doesn’t seem possible.”
“He told me, as a matter of fact, that all the newly rich, and there
are a great many of them, people who have made money at finance or
trade, were mad about his art. Their houses are brand new, and they
themselves have just risen from the soil, but they must have ruins for
beauty.”
“Fancy! But Cupid? What is Love doing in the midst of those dreadful
ruins? Roses would be enough for him.”
“I asked the good man that question, too.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“‘He delights in ruins,’ he assured me, with a mysterious smile, a Mona
Lisa smile that merchants can put on at will, I’ve noticed.”
“Yes, it’s funny,” she concluded. “The Italians put marble groups in
city clothes in their cemeteries, making them look like dressmakers’
parlors, and they select the emblems of death to decorate their
gardens....”
Slowly they climbed the Sacred Mountain, which rose
about a hundred yards above the town. When they reached
the summit they found evening there, and a new secret sweetness in
the great woods of firs, larches, chestnuts and parasol pines, in the
midst of which, here and there under the declining sun, were scattered
the twenty sanctuaries of St. Francis. These little chapels, built
between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, are all of different
styles of architecture, round or square, with or without peristyles,
Gothic or Romanesque, Byzantine effects prevailing. Each of them
encloses, instead of an altar, some scene from the saint’s life, done
in life-size terracotta images, a motionless Oberammergau. A naïve and
candid art had presided over the installation of this pilgrim’s goal.
The stigmata of the saint are the ends of the wires that raise his
hands to the gold rays in the ceiling that denote God’s presence there.
Since they had come to Orta Edith and Maurice had never let many
days go by without visiting the Sacred Mountain. You could reach it
from the Belvedere Hotel in a few steps. Among all the chapels they
had elected the fifteenth, which, according to tradition, had been
designed by Michelangelo, as their special favourite. It was circular
in form, with a cupola, and had a peristyle supported by slender little
granite columns. It reminded them of the Calvary of Lemenc, where
their flight had been decided on. Along its gallery, which rose a few
steps from the ground, the graceful vaulted arches framed successively
the various perspectives of the woods: sometimes a view of other
chapels among the foliage, sometimes the outlines of a well-curb, and
sometimes, between the branches, a panel of sky, a corner of the lake,
or the island of St. Jiulio, with its campanile at its front, looking
like some big ironclad run aground in the tiny water.
They made their way instinctively toward their special chapel, and
climbed its steps. The pine trunks near them stood out against the
reddening background of the sky, and here and there one of the other
sanctuaries gleamed among the trees like a friendly dwelling.
She held her roses in one hand and rested the other on the shoulder of
her lover.
“It was a beautiful evening, like this,” she sighed.
“When?”
“A year ago. You are not sorry?”
He turned away his eyes.
“No.”
“You aren’t going to be sorry for anything?”
As she pressed him for an answer he replied, almost sternly:
“No, never.”
She leant nearer to him to reach his lips, and in his eyes she caught
a distant look that frightened her. The something that had been
separating them all day, all this last day of their year of tenderness,
showed there now with more distinctness than ever. She said at last
something that prudence should have counselled her to leave unsaid:
“Maurice, where is Chambéry?”
“Down there.”
His reply came so quickly, and with a gesture so certain, that she was
all upset by it. He took his bearings often, then, from that quarter
of the sky. Even in his love he had forgotten nothing. Tears started
in the young woman’s eyes. He did not ask her the reason of them, but
tried to console her with caresses.
“Edith, I love you so.”
She made a little face to show that she was not deceived.
“More than everything?”
“More than everything.”
“Enough to die for me?”
“Yes.”
“Not more than that?”
“It would not be possible.”
With insatiable ardour she cried out:
“But I don’t want to die, I want to live. Shall you love me as much
to-morrow?”
“Why not to-morrow?”
“Because I’m afraid. Don’t you see that we can’t go on like this?”
“Oh, you see it, too, then. No, we can’t any more. The future, the
past, the world, we can’t suppress them. Each day you have been putting
off the final reckoning.”
“Keep still, Maurice--keep still.”
She put her hand against his mouth to stop him, and for a second time
she begged him:
“To-morrow, to-morrow, I promise you. I’ll do as you wish to-morrow.
You shall decide our fate. But not this evening. This last evening is
mine.”
And she put her lips to his, where her hand had been.
The day was waning swiftly. Among the trees the red streak that edged
the mountain grew softer, and the waters of the lake took on a uniform
tint of grey, barely streaked and lightened here and there by the last
reflections from the setting sun.
It was he who first moved down the steps of the peristyle. He walked,
unheeding what he did, in the direction that he had just pointed out
to her with his hand. When he turned back again he saw his companion
motionless there between two columns. So she had waited for him that
other time before the Calvary of Lemenc. Her white figure stood out
against the greyer wall.
“How beautiful she is,” he reflected, defeated a second time.
She was smelling of her flowers, watching the evening light, and he
recalled their queer visit of the afternoon: “Love and his roses.”
He called to her:
“Edith, aren’t you coming? It’s getting chilly, and you have no wrap.”
As she came over toward him he gazed still toward that point in the
horizon that marked his native land for him, and thought:
“The ruin is down there.”
Had not the artist in Orta assured them, with his engaging
smile, that Love took delight in ruins?
II
THE ANNIVERSARY
EVEN on the day of their “anniversary” Maurice tried to persuade his
companion to decide on their departure. After lunch he led her into the
avenue that bounded the Sacred Mountain and widened at intervals into
little terraces, with stone balustrades placed so as to give good views
over the lake.
The sunlight filled it everywhere, but at the end of October the sun
was grateful and not a thing to shun.
Whether from sadness or absent-mindedness, she did not appear disposed
to talk. He was the first to speak, breaking the silence that now
separated them, instead of bringing them closer to each other.
“This day had to come, Edith. We have been happy here. But we must go.
They are waiting for me in Paris. It will be the beginning of a new
life.”
He hoped for an answer, some encouragement, and began again with some
embarrassment:
“We’ll set up housekeeping for our love. We’ll have a
home. I’ll take steps to legalise our situation, and get
a divorce for you. You haven’t wanted me to do anything
about it hitherto. We’ve broken all our bonds without a backward
glance.”
Edith eluded this question of getting domiciled. She had only a
confused idea of not leaving Italy, and seemed without a hint of any
plan besides.
“How good it is at this hour of day,” she murmured. “Last evening I
felt cold.”
He followed her lead patiently.
“Cold? The air is so soft it seems almost summer still.”
“And yet it’s autumn. Look.”
At their feet stretched the high irregular shores of the lake. Opposite
them rose the clearly drawn forms of the mountains. Here and there a
shrine, a village, or a tower fixed the salient points of the landscape
for them. Trees and shrubs in a few days had changed their colours:
only the group of pines kept their green intact in the pale gold sea.
They were leaning on the balustrade. As in Savoy, the menacing beauty
of things made Edith feel an almost painful ecstasy. With nostrils
dilated and nerves taut, vibrating in all her being, she breathed in
the autumn’s mortal grace. And he, gazing on that face across which
some passion always stirred, that seemed to burn with some inner
devouring flame behind the windows of her soul, that face which
probably he had never yet seen in utter calm, could not tear his eyes
away. Certain delicate lines, the coursing of the blood beneath her
healthy skin, the smell of her dark hair, blotted out the beauty of the
world for him, or rather gathered all beauty in that little space. He could
not help noticing the effect upon her of the year that had slipped
by. Her youth recovered, liberty, pleasure, the cities and works of
art which they had seen together, had helped her and brightened her.
Her heart had been seething with confused desires when they had set
out, and her year had purified and completed her at the same time.
Never until now had he appreciated so distinctly the work his love had
wrought in her. He felt an anguished joy in reflecting that he might
lose her.
She was conscious of Maurice’s persistent gaze, and smiled at him,
pointing toward the horizon with a comprehensive gesture that seemed to
gather it all in at once.
“It’s lovelier even than in those first days.”
He could not help translating his recent thoughts for her.
“You, too, are more beautiful, Edith.”
The unlooked-for compliment took her by surprise.
“Really?”
“Yes, I mean it. Do you see those trees? They are more graceful, as if
they had thrown off some useless weight. You can see farther through
their branches. In the same way I can see deeper into your eyes.”
“As deep as my heart?”
“Into your heart.”
She smiled, thinking how much a young man has yet to
learn of a woman’s heart. And doubting her power no longer,
she judged the moment favourable to begin, herself, the explanations
that had been so long postponed. Her idea was to cast aside all
falsehood, and bind her lover to herself irrevocably by making him
accept a complicity that he could not disavow at so late a day. Such
an acceptance of a share of guilt with her would be the greatest proof
of tenderness that he could give her. She would have given it to him,
herself, without hesitating, were the case reversed. But with men, one
could never tell till the very end, so strange is their idea of honour.
Herself she had not had a single doubt as to her right to take away the
amount of the settlement Mr. Frasne had made her of his own accord.
What sort of gift was it that the giver could keep hold of? She thrust
aside even her scruples as to the manner in which she had gone about
the business. What did the way of it signify to her? Women only half
understand any questions of self-interest that bother them.
It had been explained to her that this money belonged to her, and
this explanation sufficed her. Even if she had robbed her husband she
would have felt no remorse, because she hated him. But in good faith
she did not believe she had despoiled him. She had only taken what
was strictly due her, and had only to have opened her hands to take
more. _She_ had given him her youth and beauty. She had paid
with her life, and tears. Could she be paid back for her nine years of
repugnances overcome, her nine years of accumulated distaste?
Nevertheless, at the moment of revealing all to Maurice, she hesitated.
With her most coaxing voice she began:
“Happiness improves one’s looks, then? Since my childhood this has been
my first year of happiness. Oh, if you knew my past!”
“I have often asked you, Edith. Tell me about it now. Let me have the
story. Neither you nor I must keep any more secrets from each other.”
It was her own version that she told, somewhat adapted, like all
autobiographies: a childhood happy and petted, an environment of
prosperity and luxury; then the ruin of her father, overtaken by his
passion for gambling, a ruin that brought out the worst in him and
led rapidly to idleness, then drunkenness and fatal illness: next
her retirement to the country with her forlorn and feeble mother,
and already the revolt within herself at her monotonous existence,
the fever of desire and envy that consumed her girl’s heart. She had
inherited her father’s imprudence and generosity, but was reduced to
giving music lessons to the children of the surrounding villas and
waiting impatiently for the lover that should set her free. Maurice
interrupted her recital to murmur:
“It was misery.”
She believed that he pitied her, and she smiled on him,
thanking him for his compassion. She was absorbed in her
recollections, and did not see the strict attention that he was
concentrating on her every word.
“Almost,” she replied.
“And already you were pretty?”
“I don’t think so. I was so thin. A grapevine.”
But she understood herself very well, for she added in a tone of
mischief:
“Good for kindling fires.”
Then began the pursuit of her by Mr. Frasne. With his pop-eyes and his
set ways, which she could feel underneath his insipid airs, her only
sentiment toward him was one of repulsion. She was revolted by it all.
He was the first of all her suitors to ask for her hand. He possessed a
comfortable fortune, an honourable position in Paris; he could, if he
liked, acquire a lawyer’s practice at Grenoble or in some neighbouring
village. It was the marriage of convenience in all its horrors. She
detested poverty; her mother, who was not accustomed to it, objected
to it still more. Old people want to live, and mere love does not move
them. All her relations got round the girl.
“And so I sold myself,” she concluded.
He had not interrupted her once. With heart beating, he followed her
throughout, like one who skirts the edge of an abyss. When she ended
her story with this climax he hurled the words at her which came in an
instant to his lips, brutally:
“And your dot?”
“Wait, you’ll see.”
Only a few pedestrians were taking the air in the avenue. Some children
were playing in the woods, quite far from them. They were almost alone,
but even by the presence of these discreet witnesses she lost her
best argument in this crisis that she had so adroitly postponed until
to-day--the argument of her kisses. She had understood, she could not
fail to have understood, what was agitating her lover: so often had it
lain upon her own mind, too. It had for so long a time tormented both
of them; and at the expense of much effort, by many lies and refusals
to talk about the past--which counts for so little when one is in
love--she had succeeded in keeping it until now at a safe distance from
their happiness. At the back of her head, however, was the idea that by
this very thing she would chain him to her forever.
She was bravely straining her intelligence, like a bow, to drive her
arguments far forward; she wanted her explanation to be sincere and
loyal as well as decisive; and all the time he was repeating in a
strangled voice:
“Your dot? You had no dot?”
He showed a tone of command that he got from his father, and gave his
orders sharply:
“Speak. You must tell me now.”
She was surprised, dismayed, staring at him almost in terror. This big
young man of twenty-five, so sweet, so adorable, whom she had felt so
sure of, lo, how abruptly he became the master. Then she had not yet
explored all the corners of this heart that she had thought was hers.
Instinctively, to shield their love, she shifted her tactics, and
yielded up the least possible portion of the truth.
“My dot, Maurice? It truly belongs to me, my dot.”
“Where did it come from? It was not settled on you, then, by your
relatives? Oh, I can guess how it was. It was he, wasn’t it, who
settled it on you in your marriage contract? Answer me.”
She tried to hold out against him.
“Yes, it was he who gave it to me. And afterwards? It’s mine now.”
He was more upset than she was, but contained his anger on account of
the passersby, going on with his questioning of her, nevertheless.
“No, unfortunately, it isn’t yours. I am familiar with these contracts.
It was a settlement made in case of your surviving your husband. That’s
what it was. I’m sure of it. Try to remember now, and be careful.”
She stiffened with all her being at these menacing words from these
two dear lips, these set red lips. It was not a question any more now
for her of making an accomplice of her lover, of getting this supreme
gauge of love from him, only of saving that love. Her only weapons were
the caresses in her voice, and she knew he would yield to them; and,
besides, was it not the truth, what she was telling him?
“Maurice, don’t treat me like this. You deceive yourself. My dot
belongs to me. It was mine from the beginning. A friend of my father’s
insisted upon it. Do you want proof of it? As long as my mother lived
I used the income from it for her. I could dispose of it as I saw fit.
You see, you are mistaken. Don’t treat me like this.”
In his mental disarray the former law student of the Frasne offices was
summoning up all his ideas of law, trying to reason the thing out.
“It’s always been a gift. A gift from him. And a settlement is
revocable in case of divorce.”
“Not mine, I swear to you,” she assured him, hazarding everything on
the throw.
“Try to think, Edith. It is so serious. My very life is at stake.”
“Your life?”
“Yes. Or my honour. It’s the same thing. Was it you who took charge of
this sum, who handled the revenues?”
“Yes, I.”
She was on the alert now, and guessed swiftly what way she must make
her answers, plunging into falsehood greedily.
The settlement of one hundred thousand francs to which Mr. Frasne
had consented upon her marriage was her own property in fact, but
under the administration and control of her husband. It was not to
continue in the event of an action for divorce against her. In any case,
she had not the free use of it, she could not arrange, by herself
alone, for withdrawing any of it. But what did these quibbles amount to?
Nevertheless, Maurice went on, implacable as a trial judge.
“Where was this money deposited?”
“In the Universal Bank, in funds that I negotiated myself with it. I’ve
told you all this already. Let me be, Maurice.”
“Deposited in your name?”
“In my name.”
“Was it there you drew it out before we left Chambéry?”
“Yes, there.”
“You were able to withdraw it from the branch at Chambéry on your
endorsement alone?”
“Yes.”
“Then you were married under the arrangement of a separate maintenance
account?”
“That was it.”
Several times he had questioned her on this subject, since she had
told him, a little while after their flight, of having realised
upon her personal fortune, which she represented as having
been an inheritance from her family. This fiction of a deposit
account, conceived at that time to avoid rousing the young man’s
susceptibilities, she was maintaining now energetically the very
day on which she had thought to give it up completely.
Her replies, made clearly and rapidly, and conforming to her previous
explanations, were plausible, taken as a whole. It was not improbable
that some counsellor of the Dannemarie family should have interposed
before the signing of the marriage contract, to turn Frasne’s passion
to account and exact an absolute and definite settlement on her; it
would safeguard the young woman’s future and make her circumstances
more dignified and independent. Why did Maurice doubt these statements?
Did they not sufficiently destroy his happiness? It was already too
much that he had yielded to a sort of entombment, from which he
awakened now in anger; too much that by an unworthy compromise he had
delayed his return to work until this end of their year of love. But he
had not suspected the tainted origin of this fortune of Edith’s, though
he deluded himself into thinking that he would restore it completely
some day by his own earnings. And, lo, here was the truth now shedding
the veil that hid it, crushing his pride and shattering all his
self-esteem. This fortune, even if it belonged of right to Edith, came
really from the man whose home he had ruined. That he should have
turned the least particle of it to his own account was an infamous
proceeding that he could not tolerate at any price.
With a sinking sensation, he made a mental calculation of the amount of
his indebtedness to her.
“Your money is deposited in the International Bank of Milan,
Edith. Do you know how much of it has been used?”
“You have had charge of it.”
“Eight thousand francs, more or less.”
“We have not spent much,” she protested gently. As a matter of fact,
this sum, added to what he had had himself, came to a very moderate
figure for the expenses of a whole year spent in travel. But at
Orta, where they had stayed for six months, living was very cheap,
diversions were infrequent and not costly. Edith, after a brief fling
of extravagance, had shown herself always easy to please, quite simple
and content with few expenditures, finding her love enough.
When and how could he get hold of eight thousand francs? As long as he
was unable to reimburse her he should feel crushed, and dishonoured,
his life a burden to him. Because he deeply resented his humiliation,
Maurice loaded his companion with reproach.
“Very well, then. I am your debtor. I will pay you back, though. After
that we’ll see.”
“What a discussion for two lovers,” sighed Edith, at her wits’ end,
discouraged, beaten: “on the day of our anniversary!”
She hid her face, and Maurice, more miserable than herself, came up to
her and tried to pull away her clenched hands.
“Listen, Edith, I don’t accuse you, not you yourself.
We have been living together as if we were married. I have
had no thought but for our happiness. I was wrong. I am still quite
young.”
She yielded her hands up to him, not afraid to show him her poor
swollen eyes.
“Shouldn’t I have accepted everything from you and been grateful for
it?”
“And I from you, yes, but from him? Oh, he’s well avenged. If I have
destroyed his home he has crushed my honour.”
“Have I been thinking of him, do you suppose?” But he continued gravely
and with sad insistence: “We were living so heedlessly. It’s all
finished now.”
There was such despair in his voice that she flung herself impulsively
into his arms, and cried, “Hush!”
Her whole scheme of life had crumbled under them here on this little
terrace; she must get him away from it.
“Maurice, come to our woods with me,” she pleaded. “Come and sit in the
shade behind our chapel. We shall be alone there, and less unhappy.”
He made up his mind abruptly that he would listen to her.
“Yes, let’s get away from here,” he said.
The rays of the sun coming through the pines marked bands of
clear light on the leaf-strewn ground. On the shadowy path they
lay like golden puddles that must be stepped across. Edith led
him round the chapel, and searched out a mossy corner a little
to one side, making her lover be seated there. She took his face
in her hands and covered it with kisses, and he seemed to yield to her
caresses a moment, then suddenly thrust her off.
“No, leave me, Edith. Please don’t. When your lips press mine I’ve no
more force of will. I am just nothing any more, only a beating heart.”
“I love you,” she moaned.
“That’s just it. I love you.”
He stood up, and half wildly pointed out the lake to her, where it lay
glowing through the trees. Already Edith was trembling, and divined the
temptation that was upon him.
“But I love you more than ever before,” she coaxed. “You may command me
and I’ll obey. I’ll listen.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Where will you take me to, Maurice?”
“Down there,” he said, pointing to the lake.
“Hush!” she cried, and recoiled instinctively.
But as on the Calvary of Lemenc the year before, when she had urged him
to come away, he in his turn felt a kind of ecstasy in conquering her
will.
“Yes, come. Our year of love is dead already. Come, Edith. Already our
love is dead. No one will look for us. The water isn’t cold. We’ll let
ourselves slip over the edge of a boat. I have no more honour left.
Will you come, Edith?”
She took him in both her arms and cried out in a frightened voice:
“No, no, no! Because I love you. When you love you don’t
want to die. You lie, you steal, you kill, but you don’t
want to die. Lovers who kill themselves don’t love their love.”
He broke loose from her grasp roughly, heedless whether he wounded her
or not.
“Let me go,” he cried. “Don’t touch me again. Don’t hold me back.”
He fled away from her, and she, almost as agile, started in pursuit of
him. Some children playing nearby stopped their games to watch the race.
When he was safely out of reach he turned his course and hurried away
in the direction of the Tower of Buccione. It was a place he had
discovered once in his walks with Edith, behind the ruins of an old
fortress castle, a high square tower surrounded by panelled walls now
in ruins and overrun by climbing plants. It stood at the far end of the
Lake of Orta, on a hill covered with chestnut trees, and commanding a
wide view from south to north. You could see as far as Novare, that
shining city at the other end of the plain, and Monte Rosa, whose
distant summit and glaciers scintillating in the sun looked round on
all the other mountain levels. From no part roundabout was there a
wider view than from this deserted place. Often when his companion’s
fatigue left him with empty hours to fill Maurice would come here to
gaze toward home and sense his exile to the full.
He stayed there now a long time, letting his wounds rankle. Why should
he now in this hour be feeling only misery from his love, that passion
that should have been the crown of all his youth? Was there, then,
something besides love, something so considerable that even if it could
not destroy love it was strong enough to reduce it to a second place in
life and spoil its pleasures? Love was not all of life. It could not
even isolate itself, or detach itself from the rest of life. Of itself
it was only a disorganised and destructive force. On the other side of
those mountains that marked the horizon there his love had certainly
wrought disaster. Maurice was sure of that now.
Could he honestly say that only circumstances were to blame? No,
his past, when he summoned it back frankly, condemned only him. The
evidence showed that he himself had been guilty of lightness and
feebleness, culpable in having consented to go away with Edith at
all, when he could easily have foreseen that their resources would
not hold out; himself to blame for having accepted without proofs
the explanations which Edith made him, when it should have been easy
for him to see her inconsistencies; responsible for having yielded
to the influence of her caresses in the present without binding that
present to either past or future; responsible for having yielded to
her when she insisted upon a year of forgetfulness from him, a year of
happiness, a year of indolence and cowardice.
And it came to him distinctly that if it was a question of his honour,
there could be no salvation unless it reached him through his family.
Without his family, he knew that he was lost. He could not, perhaps
for a long time, make good that money of Edith’s which he had used and was
not willing to have lived on; but with his family, if he asked their
help, he might be saved. How could they refuse to save him? Were they
not all one with him in his shame? But if they were one with him in
shame, he had also duties toward them, and had neglected them.
Fortunate in his birth, he had contracted obligations that he had
turned his back on; a compact, and he had broken it. If our families
owe us help in evil fortune or in peril, by what right do we forget
them and pursue our egotistical bents, sowing our own happiness and
reaping consequences that do them harm?
Pride kept him from appealing to his father. His mother had been his
confidante: he would ask her for the sum he needed for his liberation.
That was the pressing thing. Above all things, he must win back his own
self-esteem.
Having come to this decision, he returned promptly to the hotel and
wrote a letter to Mrs. Roquevillard. He had just finished it and put
it in the postbox when Edith came in. He saw her at the end of the
garden walk, almost with a feeling of astonishment at beholding her so
soon again, so far away from her had his thoughts translated him in a
few hours. For a year she had filled all his days, each beating of his
heart. Was she so soon dispossessed of her kingdom?
When she saw him she stopped, as if stunned, then
ran and threw herself into his arms.
“It’s you--it’s you----” she cried.
“Dear sweetheart----” he murmured, very gently.
“You’re here! I’m so glad----”
She pointed toward the lake with a frightened gesture, to explain to
him where she had been.
“I’ve been down there. I went along the beach. Let’s sit down, shan’t
we? I can scarcely stand. I was so afraid.”
She could not turn her eyes away from him, and again the old
enchantment at the sight of her came over him. The autumn landscape was
all around them, tender and voluptuous. Love stood victorious amid the
ruins.
Desperately they tasted of their happiness, both knowing that it had
been condemned to death.
Thenceforth they talked no more about the past. He was waiting
for an answer to his letter, and she dared not question him, only
redoubling her charms to keep him pleased. She modified and adapted
her fascination. She was no longer provoking and perpetually agitated.
The fear of losing her lover made her humble and submissive, kept her
quite frail and tender. She sought out the things that he liked to
talk about, the books he preferred to read. She divined what music
he would have her play to him on the piano. And he, on his part, was
more than ever good to her. It was only that both had some feeling
of embarrassment in this renewal of peace and affection between them. It
was a joyless concord, lacking confidence, and unconvincing.
The second of November was a particularly cruel day for them. Maurice
wanted to give himself up more freely to the memories of his family
on this day of the Dead, that should have made them more vivid for
him, and would have preferred to take his walk alone. Edith, however,
begged to go with him, and he consented, though with no pleasure in the
prospect. She went off to get ready, and he was to wait for her at the
Sacred Mountain.
“Where shall we go to-day?” she asked, when she joined him there.
“To the cemetery. Everybody goes there to-day.”
Before you come to the cemetery at Orta you have to cross an untilled
field which once formed part of it, but has been gradually disused. The
graves enclosed in it were now unrecognisable and anonymous. Nothing
marked them any more--neither name nor cross, not even a mound of
earth. In memory of All Saints’ Day some unknown hand had scattered
clusters of chrysanthemums here and there on the field, and the waste
place was transformed into a kind of temporary garden.
Edith and Maurice stopped a moment in this enclosure. It was
bordered by a row of chestnut trees, whose leaves fluttered in the
supporting softness of the air. A breath of wind was enough to strip
them. With the coming evening a bit of fresh north wind arose, and
the golden leaves fell indeed, spinning round and round and piling
themselves up at last in the gutter along the main alley-way of the
cemetery. One of them in its flight alighted on Edith’s hat. It was
a desolate symbol to poise above that warmly tinted face, with its
eyes of fire, that fleshly shape so animate with life in its most
immobile moments, and it stirred the last depths of emotion in Maurice,
overwrought as he was this day.
He said nothing still, and she pointed out the chrysanthemums to him.
“The pretty flowers,” she said.
And to both of them came the reflection that the flowers were strewn
above the dead. By an instinctive recoil upon themselves they
glanced at the line of trees which half concealed them, and, moving
nearer each to the other, embraced among the graves.
III
THE RUINS
THE morning after this walk Maurice was called to the office of the
hotel.
“It’s for a registered letter. The postman wants you.”
He recognised the yellow envelopes that his father used, and rapidly
stripped off the seals, while the manager, catching sight of the amount
of the remittance, observed him with an admiring air. The letter inside
contained a French bill of one hundred francs and a cheque on the
International Bank of Milan for eight thousand, signed by his sister
Margaret.
“Now,” he said to himself, “I am my own master.”
After his recent humiliation his first thought now was pride. In his
reassurance, however, he noticed the black border on the letter and
his heart beat fast again. There had been some sorrow, then, a great
sorrow, during his absence. In one’s extreme youth, and even later
on in life sometimes, one does not take in the possibility of losing
those one loves: one goes away from them with no sorrow, feeling sure
of seeing them again when one comes back. Only with our first grief is
the future’s credit injured. Maurice, separated from his own people,
deprived of news, preserved by the heedlessness of his age and the
egotism of his love, had not been conscious of the inquietude that
wrung his heart brutally when memory intervened. Often, more and more
often, he found himself calling up the memory of his family, picturing
the empty place that he had left among them. Edith’s presence was not
always enough to chase away these phantoms. But he had never had any
presentiments of death. And yet for several days of late, ever since
the season and his happiness had begun to wane together, the vision
of his mother’s pale face had risen before him; he had felt her last
caress on his cheek, the caress of that cool hand, the touch of which
he could feel again now after a whole year.
The blow which struck him found him unprepared. Why was the letter in
Margaret’s handwriting? For whom could she be in deep mourning, unless
it were--? He dared not answer this question to himself: it was already
answered. He took his hat and went out, holding the letter in his hand.
How could he have read it there in the hotel office? He could not read
it on the terrace, nor in the avenue, nor in the woods. Edith would
come upon him in a few moments and surprise him, and this sorrow was
for him alone. He would not share it with anybody. To share it would be
to make it less, when he wanted to extract its essence to the full.
Outside the hotel he read the first lines, and fled down the path
like some creature wounded and pursued. As long as he was in the
neighbourhood of houses he kept on his way. He wanted a solitude in
which to weep without being seen, and his feet turned again in the
direction of the Buccione tower.
He did not stop once till he had reached the summit of the hill. At the
foot of the tower, all out of breath, he threw himself down on a patch
of grass which grew between the fallen walls. He had been running, as
if one could run away from fate. As he regained his breath, fear seized
hold on him and tortured him still further. The letter, several pages
long, which he had held crumpled in his hand all the time, he did not
dare to read at once in its entirety. He had to make a great effort to
go on with the reading of it, to interrupt himself more than once. It
brought him news of more sorrows even than he had foreseen.
CHAMBÉRY, _November 2d_.
MY DEAR MAURICE:
_Your letter to mother was delivered to me. I opened it. I had been
waiting for it a long time. I thought surely it would come, or you
yourself. Mother told me it would. You could not have forgotten us for
good._
_I can see from reading it that you’ve heard nothing further about
us since you left, and I can explain your persistent silence better.
As for you, you know now that mother is no longer with us. To have
to tell you about it brings back all my suffering again, and yet I don’t
want not to suffer, for it brings me nearer to her. Weep with me, my
poor brother, shed many tears for all the times you have not wept. But
don’t give up and despair of things, for she did not wish it._
_She left us the fourth of last April, nearly seven months ago. All
winter her strength had been growing less, slowly and gently. She did
not suffer; at least, she did not complain. And she never ceased from
prayer. One evening, without anything to give further warning of such
a sudden end, she passed on, praying. Father and I were with her.
She looked at us, tried to smile, and murmured a name which we both
caught, and which was yours. And then her head fell backward. That was
all._
_A few days earlier she had talked to me about you, as if she were
explaining her last wishes to me. I realised it later. She spoke as
usual, so simply. She said to me: “Maurice will come back. He is more
unfortunate than guilty. He doesn’t know yet, and he’ll hear of it. He
will need all his courage. You must promise me, when he comes back,
to receive him, to reconcile him with his father, with his family, to
defend him, indeed never to abandon him whatever happens.” There was
no need of promising, but I promised. And so, when your letter came, I
did not hesitate to open it. I am taking mother’s place, very badly,
but with all my heart._
_And you ought to know this: that mamma did not believe
you guilty. Neither did I. And father did not, I am sure
of it. Yet he told us that weakness was a form of being guilty; and
that a young man, whose family had taken care of him through all his
early years and up to manhood, is not free to do anything that brings
havoc on all his race. Now he doesn’t talk about you, ever. I suspect
that he thinks about you often, and that it gives him great pain.
Be considerate of him, Maurice, as well as of our mother, who is at
rest. He has changed, very much. He had so much youth in his gait, his
expression, his voice, and he grew old in a few days. He works without
any rest. He forgets his misfortunes in his work. But I promised not
to reproach you with anything. Nevertheless, you ought surely to be
told what has become of us all, not having had any news of us for more
than a year. He is so well thought of that not one of his clients has
withdrawn his confidence from him._
_Hubert, who ought to have stayed two years in France, secured leave
to go back again to the colonies. He sailed last May for a post in the
Soudan. He commands some quite advanced post, Sikasso, in the interior
of the country. It is rather an exposed place, which was what he
wanted._
_Felicie is still in the hospital at Hanoi. She is very anxious
about you. Not long ago she wrote to us about the death of two
Belgian missionaries who were massacred on the frontiers of China.
Instead of grieving over them, she rejoiced for them in their
martyrdom, and regretted that she could not give her life for
some one whom she called “the prodigal son”--some one whom you will
recognise. She has inherited our mother’s ardent piety. May God keep
her for us down there at the other end of the world._
_The Marcellaz have left us. Though Germaine begged him not to,
Charles sold his practice here, and acquired another at Lyons. It was
very hard for us to have them go. Yet father maintains that Charles
was right about it. He had an opportunity to settle nearer to his
family, who are at Villa Franca, you see; he had to take advantage of
it. They have spent their vacations with us at La Vigie. Peter and
Adrienne got good red cheeks there. Little Julian, my favourite, is
still rather pale, and as the air of Savoy agrees with him better than
the Lyons fogs, Germaine has left him with us for the winter. He gives
a bit of life to our big house, which is quite sad._
_And that is all my news. In other times it was our mother who took
charge of the news from the absent ones, and sent it on from one to
another. You see I am trying to take her place. What I have still
to tell you, Maurice, is the most difficult thing of all. However,
I’ll tell it to you without recriminations. It seems to me it will be
better so. First of all, I must tell you I am devoted to you just the
same, then let you judge of our misery, which is yours, too._
_You cannot surely be aware of what happened immediately after
your departure: otherwise you would not have kept still so long and
brought such sorrow on us. Mr. Frasne entered against you, yes, you,
Maurice, a complaint of abuse of confidence. That’s what it is called:
I’ve heard it talked about so much. He accused you of having stolen
one hundred thousand francs from his safe. He brought a civil suit
to bring about your extradition, and since you did not appear you
were adjudged guilty by default. I’m explaining it to you with the
words I have heard used. The council did not want to condemn you.
But the clerks in the office, especially Mr. Philippeaux, testified
against you at the hearing. They declared that you were aware the safe
contained all that money, and that you stayed the last of all of them
in the office, and had the keys, and that you knew the combination
that would open it. And so the verdict was against you, though with
extenuating circumstances, and they sentenced you to a year in prison.
It seems that is the minimum. They took account of the influences you
had come under. But they sentenced you, you understand. That was last
month. Mamma was no longer here. When father told the news to me his
face was so white that I was afraid for him. He controlled himself, as
always. I should have preferred to see him weep. But he isn’t one of
the kind that weep. He suffers inside, and that’s worse._
_The judgment was posted on our door, published in the papers.
It seems that is the law. All the old Roquevillards that have done
so many services for their country could not shield us from this
flaunting of our name._
_There are also the one hundred thousand francs which you must
restore to Mr. Frasne. Father is of a mind to sell La Vigie to pay
them back. He says the length of your absence proves, unfortunately,
that you must have used the money, which, from the point of view of
honour, is the same as theft. Charles, on the other hand, argues that
to pay the money is to admit that you are guilty, and that no such
admission ought to be made at such a price. But he has not the family
honour in his charge, and I for my part am with father. At all events,
the court has decreed a sequestration to divide our mother’s fortune
and obtain your part. From my own, since I am of age, father gave me
the sum I am sending you, when I asked him for it. He appeared very
much surprised. I don’t know if he suspects. I offered to show him
your letter, but he refused to read it, with these words, which I copy
down for you:_
“_No, he is dead to me, unless he comes back to prove his
innocence._”
_I have added one hundred francs for your return journey. You must
come back. Consider the wrong that you have done to us. In the name
of our mother, whose last desire it was, her last command, for the
sake of father, whom you have wounded to the heart, such a noble
and tender heart, in the name of Felicie and Hubert, who deserve it
from you, of Germaine and your little sister, in the name of all our
race, who for so many years have never given examples of anything
but honesty, and who conjure you now not to upset in one day what
so many successive generations have built up, come back, Maurice._
_I’m waiting for you. I shall be here to help you. I am confident
that if you come back all can yet be set right. For you are not
guilty. It’s impossible that you should be. From your letter I can see
quite well it was not you. If there is danger for you in coming back,
come just the same. It is right that you should take your turn at
suffering, and you will not be cowardly enough, I know, to shun it._
_That’s all. I should like so much to feel that I have convinced
you. However, if_ SHE _prove stronger than we are, if in
spite of our sacrifices and suffering you can’t come back now, I shall
wait for you still. I should wait for you all my life. My life is
only for you and father now. You know that I shall never abandon you.
Did I not promise mamma? You were her last thought. And if my letter
brings despair to you, remember that it has commended courage to you.
Remember these words of father’s, too: “So long as one is not dead
there’s nothing lost._”
_Good-bye, Maurice, I send my love to you._
_Your sister_,
MARGARET.
The sorrow and shame which had seized hold of Maurice when his mistress
had made her semi-revelations to him about her dot were as nothing
in comparison with the flood of pain that Margaret’s letter now let
loose upon him. How could he resist the appeal it made to him: had he
not listened to the call of death, merely for an infamous suspicion?
At his feet the lake still invited him, offered forgetfulness to him,
silence and peace, yet now he did not even see it. The call of his race
resounded in his breast, and behold, instead of being feeble, he was
gathering all his strength and setting his face against the disaster
that had overwhelmed him. The idea of death comes naturally to lovers
the moment they conceive a doubt as to the eternity of their love.
Now, it was not a question any longer of his happiness. That was an
individual matter of which he believed himself to hold control. Losing
that, he should think himself justified in not living on any longer,
if he judged that best. All his family was concerned with him in this
trial. No longer did he belong to himself alone. Whether he wished
it or no, he must yield to a dependency, and the isolation that he
had created round himself was nothing but chimerical and vain. And as
he lost his lover’s eternal illusion of love’s solitude, of love’s
unrelatedness to all the rest of the world, he drew comfort as from a
reservoir of energy out of that depth of family ties and bonds that
imposed themselves on him with such authority and power.
His cruellest suffering came from not being able to
mourn for his mother freely and alone. He envied those
mothers’ sons who could gather round a grave and surrender to
their grief, with nothing to throw their thoughts back upon themselves.
Had he not had some part in her unlooked-for end? He recalled the fact
that the doctor had not given the sick woman up when he had left, that
he had hoped for benefit from a regimen of quiet and rest. But how
could her frail life have resisted such a storm?
And this storm that he had let loose behind him had indeed ravaged and
destroyed his home. It was the dispersion--the Marcellaz gone, Hubert
exiled, to seek a little honour for his tarnished name; the threat
of ruin with the selling of the old estate. Only Margaret and his
father, an old man already, were left at home. But why was Margaret not
married? Could her fiancé have been so cowardly as to blame her for
her brother’s fault? She said nothing of it at all in her letter. She
forgot herself in her chronicle of their trials. “My life now is for
you and father,” she said simply, without any other allusion to her
sacrifice. No one of them had been spared, except the culprit, culling
life’s sweetness under these cloudless skies.
For if he had not deserved all the ignominious accusations which Mr.
Frasne hurled at him, he was guilty none the less toward his family
for having believed he had the right to give them up. He accused his
mistress for her imprudence in thus dishonouring him, for whose love he
had been degraded. But was it really her love that had degraded him? He
attributed all his sensibilities to love, as the harmonies in those
legendary lyres that hung in trees were due the wind--love which he had
so coveted in his at once studious and ecstatic youth, and which had
passed across his heart as the warm winds across the lyres’ strings
that waited for them. And he blamed it for enthusiasms and weaknesses
that had their source in him alone. In his distracted retrospect across
his life he summoned up the memory of Edith’s eyes, her mouth, her
every movement. Yes, his heart had been hung up to catch this song of
her grace, the caresses of her voice, the flame of her eyes. He would
leave the woman, but he would not disown his love.
And, besides, what had he to reproach Edith with? What did she suspect,
though it was through her fault, of this lamentable drama in which a
whole race rolled in the dust? Nothing, surely. She had taken this
money as she had stolen hearts, without meaning any ill, and believing
she was within her rights. If he warned her of his danger, she would
be astonished, and without hesitation, no doubt, she would return to
Chambéry to proclaim her lover’s innocence to his judges. He did not
want to profit by such generosity. He thought it better that she should
always remain in ignorance, that she should run no risk for herself.
He would leave this evening--no, not this evening, to-morrow morning,
without saying anything to her, after having made good the amount of her
wrongfully taken dowry, so that she should not want for anything.
But what was to become of her, thus abandoned? Had he not also some
duty toward her, whose whole life was love? He tried to imagine her
future. He saw her cruelly torn, cursing him and weeping for him by
turns, calling for him in the sacred wood, among the chapels, in all
the places that had been the witness of their tenderness. He shared
truly in her agony. However, there was so much of life’s resource in
her, such a frenzy of living, that she would hold out against her fate
in the end and find herself. Had he not seen her rise against him,
trembling and revolting against him, when he had spoken to her of
dying? Yes, she would find herself again, she would resist fate and
live. And he felt his heart yearn at the thought of her being loved
again, the thought that perhaps some day this devouring flame which
consumed her should burn again for some one else.
“No, not that,” he sighed; “I don’t wish that.”
It was the last struggle.
From the first moment he had acknowledged his defeat. His mother’s
death, his family’s supreme appeal to him, the infamous sentence that
had been dealt him, did not permit him to discuss it with her. It only
remained for him to set right the details of his departure, to lessen
as much as possible the sorrow it would bring to her. He could not
consent to live with her any longer, and though he was separated from
her only by this frail decision, he suffered and almost cried out in
pain....
She was waiting for him on the steps of the hotel. The moment she saw
him she came running to meet him.
“At last,” she murmured, her words coming like a soft moan, but not
with any scolding.
He tried to smile.
“Good-day, Edith.”
Tenderly and attentively she scanned her lover’s face, and noticed the
traces of tears there.
“I’m always afraid now,” she said, “when you are away.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid that you may not come back.”
“My dear----”
“Oh, I know,” she said gravely. “One day you’ll not come back. Tell me
that day hasn’t come yet.”
“Hush, Edith. I shall always love you.”
“Always? No matter what happens?”
“No matter what happens.”
She took his hand, and with an adoring gesture raised it to her lips,
then asked timidly:
“You had news from France this morning. They told me.”
“Yes.”
“Good news?”
He had the courage to nod his head. He kept his sorrow for
himself alone; they were already separated.
“I never expect any news, myself. You are my whole heart and life.”
And as she went ahead of him along the terrace, where their little
table had been set for them out of the wind, he asked himself:
“Shall I have the strength to go away?”
IV
THE RETURN
EDITH sat up on the edge of the bed and propped her chin in her hand
while she watched Maurice finish his dressing. He had set the lamp
on the floor, with a shade that threw the light downward, so that it
should not bother her.
“Why do you get up so early?” she asked him in a sleepy voice, her eyes
half opened.
“I can’t sleep any more. It’s almost morning.”
He blew out the lamp. A meagre light began presently to filter through
the blinds.
“It’s night, Maurice.”
“Don’t you see a little daylight?”
“That isn’t day. There’s a moon.”
“Rest a little while yet, Edith. You’ve time enough.”
“Yes. I’m so tired, so deliciously tired.”
She let herself fall back on the pillow, and closed her eyelids.
Even in sleep there was still an air of passion about her. He
came up to the bed and bent over her in the fitful light that
came in through the window, looking long at her face.
“This little flame of love that lighted up my life,” he thought, “is
put out for me now. I shall no longer see it burning, I can’t see the
blood flowing through her cheeks, nor the gleam of her teeth through
her parted lips, hardly the curve of her mouth, the line of her nose,
the dark mass of her hair with all its perfume. And her body is lost to
me----”
He was growing tender over her, dangerously so. The temptation came to
him to stay. He bent over and brushed her forehead, of which he could
feel the sweet warmth with his lips. She smiled vaguely, keeping her
eyes closed. He left her there and went out.
In the corridor of the hotel he met only a waiter, who yawned as he
polished the floors, and paid no attention to Maurice’s appearance. A
hand-bag was all the baggage he carried, an overcoat and a cane.
The shortest road to the railway station at Orta leads across the
Sacred Mountain. The moonlight, which was growing pale before
the threats of day, penetrated in fear and mystery through the
half-leafless woods. Between the tall trunks of the pines and larches
its beams fell upon the dead leaves that strewed the ground, and rested
on the façades of the little chapels. When Maurice reached a point
opposite the fifteenth chapel he raised his head and stopped. The
slender columns stood out quite white, one or another of them throwing
its reflection in a black shadow against the wall.
He mounted the steps and turned to take in the familiar
landscape with a last glance. The well-curbs and the clear
outlines of some of the sanctuaries rose round him like apparitions.
He could see opposite him the dark mountains, and portions of the lake
on either side the hill. Even at this distance he could no longer see
the Belvedere Hotel, which was hidden by the hillside, though it was
just this that he was looking for. These stones he trod on, these trees
and chapels, all these vague outlines which the sun would presently
restore in their full values, he would bear away with him in his
memory. So long as he should have the power to remember them he should
see them all in his mind’s eye, not for their own particular grace,
but subordinated as scenes and accessories for one principal figure.
Even at a distance, this chief figure, this unique flower of his youth,
still exerted its fascination over him. Instead of fleeing from it,
fleeing without a backward look, he stood motionless in this place
that Edith had so loved, where she had longed to be with her roses in
her hands, the evening of their anniversary, that last day of their
happiness.
In their room there she was sleeping still, deliciously tired. In an
hour, in two hours, perhaps sooner, when she rose to come and join him,
she would find his cruel letter on the dressing-table, telling her in
tender words that the moment for their separation had come. She would
not understand it quite at once. The papers enclosed in the envelope
would tell her more. They were the hotel bill, paid and receipted,
some banknotes, and a receipt for the money deposited in her name
with the International Bank of Milan, the sum completed by Margaret
Roquevillard’s cheque which Maurice had endorsed to her. By these she
would see what it was that had come between them and broken her sway.
The family which she had vanquished was recapturing her lover. She
would give a great cry of sorrow then. However far away he might be
from her, he should hear her cry resounding in his ears....
In the woods the moonlight was losing itself in the light of morning.
The hour was passing. He leant against one of the columns, and could
not make up his mind to go.
“Where did I get the courage,” he asked himself, “to break her heart
and mine? She is there, quite near me yet. If I go back again she’ll
never know. Her waking will be sweet and easy. But no, I shall
never see her again. There are ties that love cannot obliterate.
Happiness, I can understand it now, is not one’s right. I wound
her, yet I love her. The wrong she did me was involuntary. I don’t
remember anything but having felt life near her, of having lived it
near her each minute to the full; and yet I can’t stay near her now
any more. Do you remember our first days, Edith? You gave me some
flowers the first evening. And then you gave me your lips, as sweet
as flowers, and were glad to give them. When you said to me, ‘I will
be yours, but yours alone, when you want me,’ I could feel even
then your caresses that made you one flesh with mine. Because you are
too sensitive to love’s touch, because even now when I am going to
make you suffer, I tremble for your frailty, tremble for the future,
oh, Edith, don’t think I love you less. When I realise that for that
very thing in you I may lose you one day, Edith, I ought not to think
this of you, yet perhaps I love you all the more. What memories shall
you keep of me? Between two autumns our love has run its course. You
preferred this autumn season, when nature’s mood is high. I found its
gold again in your eyes, and its fever in your arms. I discovered
enthusiasm in it, and desire. Now it is like the chrysanthemums in the
cemetery at Orta for me. It covers Death. Yes, death, you understand. I
have not said good-bye to you, yet all is over for us. It is like death
for us. You will weep as you have been used to do. You’ll talk, you’ll
walk, you’ll be for others a living creature, a being of grace and
youth: but for me, who shall know nothing more of you, you will be as
if you had died. It might be better if you were dead indeed: you would
not curse me--curse me who love you, and who must choke our love----”
The whistle of a train caught him back brutally from this state
of desperate reflection, in which little by little his will
was losing force. Had he waited too long here? No, that must
be the express which comes down to Novare, and which gets in a
few minutes before the up train to Domodossola. The opportune
summons resolved him in his last decision. He left the chapel,
crossing the woods at a run and reaching the railway station in a few
moments. On the mountains the day was growing brighter, and the moon
had begun to efface itself in space. He bought a ticket for Corconio, a
station quite near Orta, but in a direction opposite that to which he
must travel, his idea being to hinder Edith’s search should she try to
overtake him. On the way he would pretend that he had made a mistake.
As far as Omegna the railway follows the height above the little lake.
In the railway carriage Maurice seated himself so as to ride backwards,
and leaned over the door so that his gaze might take the impress of
these places that had so belonged to him. In the rising daylight the
waters of the lake wrinkled and quivered lightly. The trees of the
peninsula showed him their tapering trunks and the play of their
branches. Here he had known happiness. The train left Omegna. In vain
he tried to see Orta Novarese still, to retain in his eyes, in his
heart, the look of this land from which he fled. The seconds which made
the distance grow fell like stones in a whirlpool--one by one he heard
them.
An hour later he arrived at Domodossola, a little Italian town
perched among the high Alps, bathed by the green and rapid
Rosa above Lago Maggiore. From here the stage between Italy
and Switzerland, by way of the Simplon Pass, made its regular
departures. With good teams of horses and well-posted relays,
it covered the sixty-four kilometres between the Vale of
Ossola and the valley of the Rhone in a dozen hours.
The journey costs about one louis, and to acquit himself fully of any
debt to Edith Maurice had almost exhausted his own resources. He had
consulted the time-tables. By way of Turin the fare was too dear. When
he should have paid the third-class rate from Orta to Domodossola, and
from Brieg to Chambéry, he should have left in his pockets, according
to his calculations, nothing but the price of three or four very modest
meals. It was truly the return of the prodigal son. He bore without
displeasure the penury which made him one with the humble workmen
with whom he shared the compartment. It distracted him from his pain
by its shabby trials. Besides, it gave him no real concern. He knew
how nice people sometimes managed their little economies to afford
their carriage and expensive houses at Brieg. At the head of the pass,
the hospice of the Simplon, like the one at the Grand St. Bernard,
gave free hospitality to the poor who crossed the mountain, and even
tourists were not ashamed to profit by it. His neighbour from Piedmont,
who knew the country, ended up by instructing him on the subject. “The
hospice is always open,” he said. “Day and night, night and day. At
night you just go in and find a room on the first floor, without saying
anything to anybody.”
Thus the difficulties of the journey were made simple. He would go
through the Simplon on foot, and sleep at the hospice.
At Domodossola, the extreme end of the line, he got out of the train,
and started out proudly by the side of the diligence, which stood in
front of the station, and, once filled with passengers, started off
at a trot, the ardour of the five horses very fresh at the beginning
of the interminable ascent. The guard took a good look at this
well-dressed young man with a satchel in his hand who was not afraid
to use his shoes. He brought his team to a stop, cracked his whip to
attract attention, and with a gallant gesture, as if he were offering a
lady some bouquet, he pointed to a vacant seat in the coupé.
“Thanks,” replied Maurice. “I’m going on foot.”
“Impossible! Impossible with a gentleman’s legs. And so far. I’m sure
the Signorina is waiting for you.”
“No one is waiting for me,” said Maurice.
“Oh, so much the worse. A good fire, a warm soup and a wife are nice
things to find when you get home.”
He gathered up his reins and shook up his horses again, the
carriage soon pulling out of sight. Maurice continued on his way
alone. Slowly he drew higher above the valley. Before he entered
the various gorges of the Alps he turned again, and gathered in
the last grace of the Italian country. It flowered above the
sinuous plain of the Tosa and on the wooded slopes; even the abrupt
declivities, which some golden thickets decorated, profited by it.
In the sunlight it was clear that this country tried to please in
spite of its mountain rigours. The peasant women coming down to mass--it
was a Sunday--wore coloured kerchiefs, which fell in a point down their
backs, with short and many-coloured skirts. The women first saluted the
passersby, with a gentle good-day, which gave the young man a tender
feeling of accord with them.
He had an impression as of going voluntarily into exile. Was not Edith
his native land? Edith! She would be waking at this hour, she would
know. And he walked more briskly, to tire himself and forget his grief.
He had divided the sixty-four kilometres of the crossing into three
stages--Isella eighteen, the Pass twenty-two, Brieg twenty-four. He
counted on lunching at Isella, reaching the Pass, an altitude of two
thousand metres, to dine and sleep at the hospice, and descend to Brieg
the next morning, in time to catch the train from Lausanne and Geneva
which made connections at the frontier for Savoy. Monday, at six in the
evening, he should be in Chambéry.
Isella, at the head of a verdant little valley, is the last Italian
village before you come to Switzerland. Here you have truly the
impression of saying a melancholy farewell to Italy. Built lengthwise
along the borders of Napoleon’s route, it is enclosed between two
natural high walls of four or five thousand feet, but one has only
to look backward and see prairies and groups of trees, like a shaft
of light across the mountains. The bells of the stage-coach, which
relays at Isella, and the proceedings of the customs officers, who
are as proud and smart as soldiers and bear the majestic title of
Financial Guards, were formerly the only excitements of the little
burg; but in August, 1898, began the work on the new iron route scooped
out across the Alps. As if by enchantment the population quadrupled.
Workmen’s cities were built, with little villas and gardens for the
engineers and overseers. Alberghi and tratorie multiplied themselves,
with announcements of the glory of the Simplon, and advertisements of a
sparkling asti.
As the day was Sunday, all this floating population was afoot. Bells
were sounding the letting out of high mass when Maurice arrived.
He passed a procession of women coming home with prayer-books in
hand, while the men devoted themselves to bowling, and from each
public-house sounds of guitars and harmonicas issued forth with the
smell of cooking. Maurice ate for a modest sum in a shabby-looking
osteria, in company with noisy comrades. Instead of profiting by the
daylight and leaving abruptly--night in November falls so fast--he
lingered improvidently, as if he preferred the vulgarest noisiness
to solitude. He could not make up his mind to cross the frontier. It
was the material symbol of his break, and he clung desperately to his
love. Even in this smoky room, whose deafening noise, by keeping him
from thinking, allayed his misery, it seemed to him he still lived in
distant communication with Edith.
A little before the gorges of Gondo, with its roaring
cascades, he came upon the stone that marked the dividing line
between the two countries. Once past it, he was conscious of a shadow
that fell across his heart, before even he could pick out the bit of
thin earth between the rocks where the path led. Raising his head, he
could see the last rosy light fading from the sky. Night, which came
upon him much sooner than he had counted on in his itinerary, prevented
him from taking the short cut by which the long climb round Algoby is
avoided. He arrived very late and tired at the village of Simplon,
where he had supper and got some rest.
When he took up his journey again complete darkness and silence
waited for him outside the inn door. He accepted them as the natural
companions of his dreary voyage. He was fulfilling a duty: outward
conditions mattered little to him. Had he not killed his happiness with
his own hands, and must not murderers expiate their sins? The moon was
on the wane, and did not show herself till eleven o’clock, as he neared
the summit of the path. In the moonlight he could see that he was alone
in a deserted and desolate amphitheatre, covered with snow that made
all objects look alike. He could not even hear the sound of his own
footfalls. His shadow kept him company fitfully, now lengthening out,
now growing thin, appearing and disappearing.
Out of breath and with weary limbs, he searched the horizon for some
sign of the hospice. Could he have passed it farther back without
noticing it? He was so tired he could not judge of distances any more.
And, after all, what was the use of so much effort? He had only to let
himself sink down by the roadside. In the snow he could sleep or die
with equal ease. It would be the end of thinking, of tramping.
“Edith!” he murmured aloud.
At the sound of his own voice he stopped, startled as if some one had
called to him. Was it not she who called him once again, the last time?
He was going to join her painlessly. Already he was no longer conscious
of his limbs. He would slip away toward her, as gently as the moon’s
rays fell upon the snow. The excess of his fatigue, the cold, the
rarity of the air, not less than his despair, gave him hallucinations.
In this stage of exhaustion from cold one who stops is lost. He could
no longer put one foot before another. He was only a broken mechanism.
“Edith!” he called again.
And he smiled. No suffering touched him. It was so simple to sit
down and wait. In front of him, toward the right, the glaciers of
Monte Leone flashed and trembled, as if some movement animated them.
It seemed to him that the whole white landscape was displacing
itself, moving back toward Italy. He felt a kind of exquisite
beatitude in his torpor. The instinct of self-preservation, or his
curious watching for the mirage, made him keep his eyes opened,
though sleepiness was heavy on them; yet he had no more desire to
stir. The silence of the mountain, accentuated by the snow and
moonlight, filled all space, rising even to the stars.
In this shifting of the landscape through which he slipped away
there was an arresting moment when his satchel fell, relinquished
mechanically by his hand. The movement that he made to pick it up broke
the spell. He knew his danger from the difficulty he had in moving his
limbs at all.
“But here, I’m going to die,” he said to himself sharply. “All alone
here in this waste.”
To die! Edith, toward whom he had fancied he was going back,
disappeared immediately from his thoughts, like a siren into the depths
of the sea, and in her place appeared the country of his childhood, the
hillside of La Vigie, and his family.
“They are waiting for me.”
Was it a talisman against death, this call of his earliest years, which
usurped with signs of strength the temptation to make an end of things,
the desire for annihilation? His youth helped him, and he recovered
gradually some energy, lifting his feet one after the other as if
he pulled them out of clinging soil that held them fast. He dragged
himself, rather than walked, for a few yards further. He was afraid
now, and hardened himself against the danger that he felt present at
his side, coming with him step by step in the solitude, like an enemy
watching for him to falter. He knew that there were board shelters at
intervals through the pass to protect travellers from tempests or the
cold. To find one of these was the limit of his ambition. And then
suddenly he perceived at the base of Monte Leone a feeble ray that
hardly glowed in the too clear night. Quite small and crowded against
the enormous mass of the mountain, it was the hospice at last, its door
always wide open; there was even a lamp to designate it. The moment he
saw the light he was saved. He never took his eyes from its encouraging
beacon. Soon the building took on its real proportions, high and large,
built of great blocks of freestone. At last he climbed the steps and
went in. Some dogs, from the bottom of a distant kennel, sounded his
arrival, but in the hall, where the moonlight filtered in, he came
across no one. Would they leave him in distress at their very door? He
would have lain down there on the stones in his weariness had not the
instructions of the man from Piedmont recurred to his memory:
“At night you go in and find a room on the first floor without saying
anything to anybody.”
He climbed the staircase, tried a first door, which was closed,
then a second, which opened to him. He found himself in a plain but
comfortable chamber, furnished with a bed with clean sheets and a
generous supply of blankets, a dressing-table, a commode, two or
three chairs and a carpet. At the sight of this outfit he smiled with
pleasure. They had even carried foresight as far as to place on the
commode, in such a way as to attract the traveller’s attention, a flask
of rum, a glass and a bowl of sugar. The liquor warmed his blood. At
twenty-five danger is easily forgotten.
“I’m quite at home here, like a burglar,” he said pleasantly, quite
disposed to take life at its new value. But the reflection made him
start. Like a thief, indeed. Had he not been convicted of theft? The
recollection of this shame spoiled his pleasure, and he got into bed
hastily. The thick blankets communicated a comforting warmth to him,
and his fatigue was so great that he went to sleep at once, without
stopping to think that it was the first night he had passed away from
Edith, and outside of Italy, since he had left his father’s house.
The next day he awakened too late for making the descent to Brieg. The
monks, learning of his voyage on foot, kept him for a day, and regaled
him with the best they had. He declined to take the stage-coach,
though his pride prevented him from revealing his reasons. He was
making a journey of rest, distraction, almost of forgetfulness, he
said. In his Thebaid, lost at an altitude of two thousand yards, he
exhibited the gaiety of a child, interrupted from time to time, though
rather rarely, by sudden fits of sadness. He ate like an ogre, took
walks round the approaches of the hospice to stretch his stiffened
legs, petted the long-coated, shaggy dogs in their kennels, admired
the effects of the sunlight on the glaciers and the variety of the
little snow crystals, expressed more than once his desire to stay a
longer time in the mountains, and went to bed early. No one would have
guessed that he had just left the most beloved of mistresses, and was
going back to France to give himself up as a prisoner. In the midst of
the greatest sorrows there are unexpected oases like these, to keep
our feeble nature from dwelling upon the idea of sorrow, even if there
were not that brute instinct of self-preservation to keep us up despite
ourselves.
Tuesday, at four in the morning, after having breakfasted on a little
bread and cheese, which the father whose duty it was to look out for
travellers had insisted upon his taking away from the table the evening
before, he set out from the hospice. He saved half the food, and took
it with him in case he should need it on his journey; for he was not
sure that he should have more than the price of his ticket after the
additional meal that he must take in the village of Simplon. No one
was up yet in the hospice. He left as he had come, in secret. The door
was wide open, as it had been on the night of his arrival. Outside he
stepped into complete darkness, instead of the moonlight for whose
friendly company he had hoped. He could feel snow even before he had
descended the steps.
He must make haste, for the descent would be less easy if it snowed.
In the road he turned to take a farewell look at the dark building
in the shadow. He stepped fearlessly forth now toward the future,
and with more strength. The peace of the mountain, the quiet of the
monks, had soothed his heart without his being conscious of it. He was
going forth deliberately to recapture that place in his home which
the accident of his great passion had lost for him. The stroke of luck to
which he owed his safety had at the same time restored him to himself.
He was going back to normal life as boldly and romantically as one
usually leaves it, and he savoured his sacrifice with an almost amorous
warmth of appreciation.
The snow must have been falling for several hours, for it was already
deep in the path. He went on in constant fear of losing his way along
the precipices. The path led through two or three tunnels cut out of
the rock a little beyond the summit of the pass. The obscurity of these
tunnels was so intense that he was blinded as in the depths of some
cavern. He held his cane forward in his right hand, his left arm, with
the satchel, stretched out, and went along tapping. He plunged at each
step into the puddles of water that dripped through the rocks, and
could feel the rush of the outer air at the other end long before he
got his sight again.
Such obstacles as these along the road only hardened his courage. Young
people must have tests; they seek out love more from the eager desire
of living than from voluptuous fancy. Maurice did not suffer from his
losses, though he had lost everything, and was leaving his happiness
behind him, reduced to the status of a beggar. He struggled bravely
against the cold and snow, the night and fear, but the combat kept him
warm.
Day spread round him gradually, but he profited little by it, for the
white mist of falling snow-flakes flowed round him like the sea around
an island. This route he travelled, so picturesque on clear days,
with its view of the Bernese Alps, the Aletsch glacier, the magnificent
and varied spurs of the Rhone valley, seemed to him like a road cut
through hills of cotton-wool. Sometimes a pine tree, laden with
hoar-frost, would loom up at the path’s edge, ten steps away from him,
having passed which he would search for some other landmark and go on.
Tediously and monotonously he came at last to Brieg. It was the end of
the heroic period of his journey.
The day in the railway carriage was long and uncomfortable, in spite of
the nearer and nearer approach to his native countryside. He left the
train about six in the evening at Viviers, which is the station next
to Chambéry. A foolish fear of being recognised and arrested when he
should arrive at Chambéry suggested this plan to him. He set out for
home on foot, therefore, from Viviers by the Aix road. It passed the
Calvary of Lemenc, which rose above him at one point, and he stopped
near it, thinking of his love.
“Edith,” he sighed.
It came over him how far these days had separated him from her already,
and, as he still loved her, he grieved within himself for his cruelty
to her. He moved nearer to the railing that protected the rock-hewn
road along the hillside. The lights of Chambéry shone out, and he took
his bearings.
His impulse was to go to his mother first, but he found
the graveyard closed, and could not get in. From there by
various back routes he reached his father’s house. A clock struck
eight. He was chilled and hungry: where should he go if not home? With
beating heart he pressed the bell. A new maid opened the door for him,
and instead of entering freely, he had to ask admittance formally, like
a stranger.
“Miss Roquevillard?” he asked, his voice sounding indistinctly in his
own ears.
He was left waiting in the vestibule, and felt crushed, tempted to
flee away, no matter where. What strange force had taken him by the
shoulders and thrust him forward even to his father’s door?
In a moment Margaret appeared and threw herself into his arms.
“You, Maurice! Is it really you?”
He stiffened rigidly to keep back his tears, as she added softly:
“I have been expecting you since yesterday.”
She led him to the dining-room, and he gave himself over to her care,
cast down and helpless. The table had not yet been cleared away.
“Is father well?” he asked at last, a little fearfully.
“He shut himself up in his study after dinner,” answered Margaret, “to
work, while I was undressing little Julian. I’ll go and tell him.”
“No, Margaret, please don’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then--has he changed much?” he murmured, after a heavy silence.
“Yes.”
He was hungry, but he dared not eat the things which she went and got
for him herself in the kitchen. She understood, and when she saw he did
not notice, she hurried away to her father in his study.
“Father, he’s here!” she cried.
Mr. Roquevillard, bent over a brief, raised his head. abruptly, with an
involuntary movement; but in a moment he had got possession of himself
again.
“He’s been very late about coming back.”
“Won’t you see him, father?” she begged. “He’s so unhappy.”
Mr. Roquevillard reflected a moment.
“I’ll go to see him to-morrow, in the gaol,” he answered, with an
effort, “to arrange about his defence. Not this evening.”
And as Margaret looked disappointed, he drew her to his breast.
“You attend to him,” he said. “If he’s tired, see that he gets some
rest. To-morrow’s time enough for him to go and give himself up.”
“Father, forgive him. For mamma----”
“Some day, Margaret, I hope that he’ll deserve my forgiveness.
Just now, so soon, I can’t forget the wrong he did to us in going
away. I want him to understand this and realise it fully. He must,
for the sake of our past and for his own future. But don’t cry,
Margaret. I have not ceased to love him. I’m glad he’s come back.”
Later, quite a little while later, in the silence of the night, Mr.
Roquevillard left his room, and crept with stealthy steps to Maurice’s
door. His hand shading the flame of his candle, he listened for a
moment to the light and regular breathing that he could scarcely hear.
A thin smile lit up his forceful features that had been so ravaged by
his sorrow.
“He’s here. That’s the essential thing. I’ll save
him, and with him all our race----”
PART III
I
THE COMPANION IN ARMS
WHEN Margaret Roquevillard came into her father’s study, as she did
each day, to light the lamp and draw the curtains, and take up if she
could some special share of his burdens for him, she found him gazing
out of the window, watching the rapidly declining daylight.
“Is that you, Margaret?” he said. “There’s no light any more for
working.”
He made excuses for his reverie as if it were a weakness in him, but
Margaret knew the cause of this preoccupation, though he would not
confess it.
“Those gentlemen have not come yet?” she asked.
“I expect them any moment now,” he said. “They were to see Maurice in
prison this afternoon.”
“Who is going to make the main argument? Will it be Mr. Hamel?”
“No. Mr. Hamel is the president of the benchers in our order. Maurice
being a member of the bar, I begged the president to conduct his case.
It’s a tradition of the bar. Mr. Hamel will give us the prestige
of his half a century of professional honour, but he thinks he is too
old, and too much of a specialist in questions of civil law, to make
the argument. He wants Battard to do that. Battard has the highest
reputation of any member of our bar in jury trials.”
The young woman made a little face at the mention of Mr. Battard’s name.
“I’ve heard him, father. You speak much better than he does.”
But the old lawyer replied almost crossly: “I don’t speak well, little
girl. I simply say what I have to say.”
“Why don’t you defend him yourself, father?”
“That wouldn’t do at all. Don’t you see it wouldn’t, Margaret?”
She came to him, and, putting a hand on his shoulder, leant her head
against his breast.
“Father, have you forgiven Maurice?”
“He hasn’t asked me.”
“That’s because he feels so badly.”
“Yes, no doubt. Fate can give us cruel blows. He at least has been
responsible for his own ill-luck.”
“Remember mamma.”
He bent down and kissed her on the forehead.
“Don’t ask me to be weak, Margaret. I have been to see him twice at
the gaol. I found him walled up in his pride. He gave me no sign
of regret for what he’d done, and all the woe he’s caused us. I
am waiting only for one word from him to be ready to forgive him,
yet we exchanged only a few insignificant remarks.”
“When I go to see him he cries about mother with me. He doesn’t dare
with you.”
“It’s his place to speak first. I shall wait.”
Margaret could not see, with her head bent, the sweetly sad look that
spread over his old face, and softened the severity of his words. She
repeated:
“He feels very badly. He’s unhappy.”
“And aren’t we?” asked Mr. Roquevillard.
He raised the girl’s head gently.
“What have you been doing this afternoon, Margaret?” he asked in his
turn, changing the subject.
“I took little Julian for a walk. Then I wrote a long letter to Hubert.”
“Ah, so did I.”
The fate of Hubert was still a source of some anxiety to them. The last
letter from the Soudan had brought news that the young officer was
down with fever, ill in an isolated cabin, without a doctor. He made
light himself of this unlucky piece of work, not taking it seriously,
but a certain note of detachment in his letter, contrasted with a more
than ordinarily affectionate way of putting his good-byes, struck both
father and sister, and deeply affected them. They were silent, their
hearts shaken. Margaret lighted the lamp, to chase away the darkness
that was so full of evil omens. As she drew the curtains together some
one knocked at the door.
“It’s they,” said Mr. Roquevillard.
And the girl had just time to disappear through the door
that led into the apartment as her father went forward to
receive his visitors. Mr. Hamel came in first, followed by Mr. Battard.
The president of the benchers enjoyed a respect and esteem at the
bar in Chambéry which were the natural deserts of great age, great
knowledge of the law and a dignified private life. He was a man
of seventy-five, so thin that he rattled round in his threadbare
frock-coat, a garment which he used to declare obstinately would last
as long as he did. In winter time he draped himself in an antiquated
overcoat, never bothering to put his arms through the sleeves. Above
his shaven face a crown of white hair stood out in disorder, and his
colourless cheeks were almost transparently thin. His tall figure was
bent like those too slender poplars that are twisted by the wind, but
his character was upright and unbroken. Nothing could ever have swerved
him from the lines of conduct which the traditions of his family, in
the best sense of the word, and his firm convictions had laid down
for him at an early age. Cold and distant in bearing, a man of few
words, he showed as much rigidity in his principles as proud courtesy
in the relations of his daily life, displaying his high-mindedness as
much in the ordinary circumstances as in the more important matters of
existence. Good fortune and bad he had met with an even temper. Yet he
had known more of bad fortune than of good in his later years, at the
end of his life’s journey, when a man deserves repose. The unfortunate
speculations of a son had ruined him, but he had set himself again
quite simply to the task of gaining his daily bread. Rarely appearing in
court, he was the counsellor most sought for in delicate matters by
those who expected what was equitable and right. One seldom saw him
outside of his office, a poor and shabby room, where one went with
special cases for arbitrage and settlement as to a sovereign judge.
When he left his office it was always in the evening, to walk rapidly
to church, his air chilly and hurried, indifferent to the world about
him, listening only to the voice of God, whose summons he waited for
with patience and resignation.
One of those ancient friendships, by which people sharing the same
kind of life and trials are united as strongly as by the ties of
blood, united the old lawyer and Mr. Roquevillard, despite the great
disparity in their ages. He had watched over the professional début
of Mr. Roquevillard, who in turn had looked out for him in the wreck
that later overwhelmed his material fortunes, holding out against his
creditors, obtaining delays, organising sales and payments to the best
advantage. When the younger man was laid low in his turn the elder came
out of his retreat, conscious though he was of the chill and feebleness
of his years.
Mr. Battard, by his reputation, was a natural second. This young
man--for thus the old man called him in spite of his forty-five
years--always caused him some anxiety, by reason of a certain
cynicism in his conversation, and a tendency to take up cases for
the fees he could get from them; but at the bar he was as formidable
as a host, by turns ironical and flowery, mocking and eloquent. He
would modulate his voice like a tenor, posturing like a favourite
actor, and took at once the chief rôle, showing off his fine beard,
his regular features, his finely polished bald head as if they
were insignia of rank, stirring things up, flinging himself about,
dominating the whole stage, and finally, with the cleverness of a
conjurer, sweeping up jury and opposing counsel at once in the folds
of his robe, which he flourished round him like a battle standard.
This incontestable superiority in the court-room must be taken
account of, and Mr. Hamel, a humble follower of truth, who detested
all the trappings of eloquence and declamation, stilled his personal
preferences to make the acquittal of his friend’s son more sure.
Even though Mr. Roquevillard had always kept Mr. Battard at a distance,
and in the court-room would pitilessly turn inside out all this
cleverness and seductiveness, by simple tactics that consisted in going
straight to the point of things with the swiftness of a charge of
cavalry, such was the force of professional loyalty that Mr. Battard
had eagerly accepted the defence of Maurice, and had already shown
himself active and resolute in his plans for it.
After they had shaken hands the president summed up the situation in a
few words:
“You see, my dear friend, that I have begged our learned
brother Battard to come to our assistance. I am old,
and I don’t know how to move people. He will make the
argument and I shall assist him. We have studied the brief together and
seen your son in prison. One difficulty presents itself.”
“What is that?” asked the anxious father.
“Battard can explain it to you better than I.”
This latter gentleman stirred his fine head importantly, but contented
himself with a short and simple explanation, sensible enough to know
that fine effects were useless outside the court-room.
“Yes, I’ve studied the brief. The material fact of abuse of confidence
is shown by the notary’s declaration, and by the report of the
commissioner of police. I have found no proofs against your son, but
grave presumptions. He was aware of the deposit of the money, he was
the last of them all to leave the office, and had got possession of
the keys. He might have got the secret of the combination from the
memorandum book, in which the head clerk had written it; he had not
much in the way of personal resources, and he was bent on eloping with
his chief’s wife. With this they have cooked up a regular accusation.
Add his departure to a foreign country, his silence, his tardy return.
The deposition of the said Philippeaux especially is full of malice.
This boy must have been jealous of his more favoured colleague. I
suspect him of an unfortunate passion for Mrs. Frasne. A dangerous
woman, that. A little thin, but fine eyes. Not my type at all.”
A coarse strain in his make-up prevented him from realising
that this reflection was misplaced, that the presence of
the father of the accused should have made him more reserved in his
remarks. He began again after a pause:
“It’s not enough to protest that he is innocent. The theft being
admitted, the jury will look for a culprit. We must point one out
to them. The offensive, I have often noticed, is more certain in
results than the defensive. It distracts the jury’s mind, and fixes it
somewhere else. I have tried it often with success. Now, in this kind
of case, the true culprit is plainly designated.”
He spread out a code on the table, and turned over the leaves. His two
hearers listened to him without interruption.
“Observe that Mrs. Frasne runs no risk. She is covered by Article 880:
_Abstractions committed by husbands at the expense of their wives, by
wives at the expense of their husbands ... can give rise only to civil
actions for damages_.”
“We know that,” observed Mr. Hamel.
“Within the family there is no theft. To fix suspicion on Mrs. Frasne
at the trial is not denouncing her. But there is something better
still. My instinct rarely deceives me. I have seen the Frasnes’
marriage contract. I had a shrewd idea I should discover something
there. Through the enterprise of an attorney at Grenoble, I arranged
a little investigation, and I discovered there proof that Mrs.
Frasne, in taking one hundred thousand francs from her husband’s
safe, believed she was only taking what belonged to her.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Roquevillard, interrupting.
“You’ll see what I mean. It’s so clear it blinds you. Her husband, in
this marriage contract, agreed to a settlement of one hundred thousand
francs.”
“In case of her survival?”
“No, immediate. But naturally it was revocable in case of divorce, and
the husband retained control of it. The arrangement was for a separate
maintenance account. Nevertheless, Mrs. Frasne, ignorant of the law,
might have supposed that this money was actually hers, and that in
leaving her husband’s household she had the right to take it away with
her. It was an absurd way of looking at it, but for that very reason
just the way a woman would have worked it out: in this way I explain
to myself why the thief took particular pains to appropriate only one
hundred thousand francs out of an envelope enclosing a deposit of one
hundred and twenty thousand. That was not theft, it was reimbursement.
Mrs. Frasne believed she was availing herself of her just rights.”
“Yes,” concluded Mr. Roquevillard, interested in so solid an argument,
“the contract explains all.”
“And it is acquittal, certain and incontestable,” declared Mr. Battard,
growing animated, and beginning to wave his long arms. “What jury would
hold out against such a demonstration? I’ve very rarely held so many
trump cards in my hand.”
“You don’t always defend the innocent,” insinuated the president.
“Innocent or guilty, it’s the proof which counts. Here we have it.”
The father of the accused, who wanted a complete rehabilitation, next
took up the subject.
“The discovery of the contract is indeed a good point for the defence.
Your eloquence, Battard, will make the best use of it, and we can
count on ultimate success. But there is one thing I must ask you at
once to bring out in your argument. Maurice did not go away with Mrs.
Frasne without resources of his own. He had more than five thousand
francs with him, borrowed for the most part from his two sisters,
his great-uncle Stephen and his aunt Camille Roquevillard, who will
testify to it if necessary. In the village of Orta, where they stayed,
he received, further, a cheque for eight thousand francs remitted by
the Society of Credit, from the Chambéry branch, who will produce the
cancelled voucher for us. These explanations are indispensable from
two points of view. In the first place, they anticipate a possible
new accusation, which the plaintiff, abandoning Article 408 on the
abuse of confidence, may base on Article 380 _in fine_. Theft
between married persons doesn’t come within the scope of the law,
that’s understood; but the penal code adds: ‘With respect to all
other individuals who shall have received or applied to their own
use all or any part of the things stolen, they shall be punished as
if guilty of theft.’ There must be nothing equivocal on this head.
And this paragraph will not apply at all if my son is cleared from all
suspicion of having lived with this woman at her expense. I hold this
absolutely essential to the preservation of his honour.”
“Very good,” approved Mr. Hamel.
“Very good,” repeated Mr. Battard indifferently.
And Mr. Roquevillard, whose face had been glowing with excitement, grew
serene again with the hope of passing safely through the test, and
concluded in two words:
“Now we are armed, and victory is certain.”
The president’s eyes, pale blue and dim with age, were lifted sadly.
“My friend, haven’t you forgotten the difficulty I spoke of at the
beginning of our interview?”
It was the old agony coming back again.
“What difficulty?”
Mr. Battard at once assumed the first place again, never having
willingly given it up.
“There you are. Our fine plan, and I have not a single doubt of its
success, collapses on account of your son’s obstinacy.”
“My son’s obstinacy?”
“Exactly. We have just explained to him in prison our plan to save him.
Do you know what he said to us?”
“I’m afraid I can guess.”
“He said he formally objected to having Mrs. Frasne’s name mentioned in
his defence, and that if it is, he will assume all the blame himself at
once.”
“I was afraid of it,” muttered Mr. Roquevillard beneath his breath.
“I tried in vain to make him see the absurdity of this chivalry, to
explain that he was not accusing anybody, since Mrs. Frasne was not
punishable under the law. I told him that what his mistress had done
could even be explained by her inexperience of business, her erroneous
interpretation of her marriage contract. It was all useless. I ran
against an invincible obstinacy.”
“Did he give you any reasons?”
“Just one--his honour.”
“Honour is one reason.”
“No, it’s only a sentiment. In courts of justice we must not take the
point of view of honour, but of the law.”
The president, who did not approve this theory, presented the question
in another form.
“It’s Mrs. Frasne’s honour especially that he takes into account. To
save his own honour he must establish the fact that he has neither
stolen a sum of money nor profited by the theft of some one else. He
can prove the first by argument from Mrs. Frasne’s marriage contract,
and the second by an affidavit from the International Bank of Milan,
where Mrs. Frasne’s funds were deposited. But he objects categorically
to this line of proof.”
“Did you speak of it to him yourself?”
“I did, and I told him that he was running a great
danger to go before a jury thus unarmed.”
“What did he say to you?”
“That he would not let Mrs. Frasne be accused of anything whatsoever,
and that he forbade his defender even to utter her name. We found him
immovable. ‘Well, then,’ Mr. Battard objected to him, ‘how do you
wish us to defend you?’ ‘How can any one think me guilty?’ he replied
proudly. ‘Let them consider where I come from, and who I am. That ought
to be enough.’”
“What a child!” began Mr. Battard, stroking his fine beard contentedly.
“Undoubtedly an honourable family is a potent argument, and I count
on making good use of it at the trial. But it is accessory to the
main argument, as it were. It doesn’t go to the bottom of the matter.
One doesn’t use parents for arguments. You might as well use dead
ancestors.”
“They bear witness for our characters,” replied Mr. Hamel, not without
some solemnity.
“There is a guilty party,” continued Mr. Battard. “Don’t let us
forget that. Willingly or unwillingly, the jury will look for one.
If it isn’t the lover it’s the mistress. If it isn’t the mistress
it’s the lover. We have proofs that it is the mistress. Shall we
refuse to produce them? There’s no sense in it. I warned your son,
my good brother, that I could not consent to defend him on these
conditions, and I have come to say the same to you. You know how
warmly I should have undertaken it, that I should have brought to bear
my utmost pains upon it. Tried on these lines, what can be done? As you
see, I am deeply affected by this decision, but it is impossible for me
to present myself in court thus bound.”
The unfortunate father of the accused held out his hand.
“I lose very valuable assistance,” he said; “perhaps even the boy’s
safety. But the defence must not be fettered.”
Both lawyers were equally moved, despite the lack of mutual sympathy
between them. One cannot share the same professional life, the same
conflicts, the same mental preoccupations, without some trace of
sympathy remaining.
“See him yourself,” said Mr. Battard again, rising. “Perhaps you can
get him to consent where we have failed.”
“No, I am afraid not.”
“If you succeed in persuading him, I am at your service still, and
you can count on my finest efforts. It’s nearly six now, so I must be
excused. I’ve a business engagement that I must keep.”
Mr. Roquevillard went with him to the door, and thanked him again on
the threshold.
“We have been on opposite sides sometimes, brother Battard, but I
shan’t forget that in this most important matter of my life you
unhesitatingly put your devotion and talent at my disposal.”
“No, no, not at all,” replied the great trial lawyer,
astonished at his own good will; “I thought to come out of
it better than this. It was a fine case. See if you can persuade
your son. I’ll take it up again for you.”
When Mr. Roquevillard returned to his office Mr. Hamel had gone up to
the fire and was poking the coals absent-mindedly. He sat down opposite
to him, and both stayed there a long time thinking, saying nothing.
“My voice has never carried very far,” said the president, pursuing his
inward reasonings, “and age has broken it. I’ve never known how to do
anything but make things clear, not move people. However, I shall be on
hand. I’ll say a few words about the family of the accused, and dwell
on his own good character. But there must be some one else to make the
argument. I can only be your assistant, my friend.”
He did not offer any opinion on Maurice’s attitude, perhaps did
not explain it to himself. He maintained that defiant, not to say
disdainful, attitude toward women which you find often in the latter
days of an austere and well-disciplined life. The honour of a Mrs.
Frasne did not seem to him worthy of so much consideration. There was
a story told of him as illustrating the excess of this trait in him,
namely, that he had bowed once to a lady of doubtful reputation on
the street, and she had taken great credit to herself for it, since
his respect carried such great weight everywhere; and that when he
heard about it afterwards he never again saluted anybody in the city’s
streets for fear of repeating his mistake.
“Will the jury guess the generous reason of his silence, do you
think?” Mr. Roquevillard asked himself aloud, knowing his son better.
“It isn’t likely.”
“It’s impossible,” declared Mr. Hamel plainly. “Your son will be lost,
though there’s no reason for shielding this person. But haven’t we the
right to defend him in spite of himself?”
“How do you mean?”
“A defence is obligatory at trials, as you know, as well as I. In
default of a lawyer of the accused’s own choosing, the president
appoints an official one for him. If Mr. Battard is officially
appointed, and it will be enough if I, as president, mention him to the
presiding judge, he will be completely at liberty again to make his
argument. Yet he would run the risk of being repudiated by his client.”
“But such a repudiation would influence the jury unfavourably.”
“I don’t see any other way. At least----”
And the fine old man stopped talking, deaf to the repeated questions
put to him by Mr. Roquevillard.
“The case is lost,” the latter murmured at last.
Then Mr. Hamel rose: “You believe in God, my friend, like me. Ask help
from Him. He will give you inspiration. Your son is innocent. He must
be acquitted. His real fault is not one that calls for man’s justice.
It touches only himself, and unhappily his family.”
As he prepared to go, his face already toward the door,
he turned back again, and all of a sudden held put his
hands to his professional brother, an unusual gesture showing
the tenderness that had lain concealed beneath this stiff energy of
his for so many years. It was surprising and sweet, like an expression
of freshness and purity on an old woman’s face, or flowers that go on
blooming even after the snow has come. The two men embraced each other
with emotion.
“You at least won’t abandon us,” said Mr. Roquevillard. “Thank you.”
“I don’t forget,” replied the old man.
And flinging his overcoat round his shoulders, its empty sleeves
flapping, he went away hastily down the corridor, his host scarcely
able to keep up with him and show him to the door.
Left alone, Mr. Roquevillard seated himself at his work-table, where
so many difficulties, material and moral, had been worked out before,
his head in his hands, seeking for some way in which to save his son,
without whose safety the whole line of Roquevillards would be lost as
well. He was less arbitrary, more indulgent, and more apt than Mr.
Hamel to understand men and life, shut up as the latter had been with
his transcendental prejudices as in a tower; and he recognised in
Maurice’s resolution that tenacity and sense of responsibility which
from generation to generation had created and maintained the strength
of the Roquevillard family. That the boy was using this same force
to destroy it was the pity of the thing. To create his individual
happiness he had compromised the past and future of his people, though
their distinctive traits, nevertheless, showed even in his faults. His
father acquitted him of cowardliness and baseness, reflecting that the
young man might maintain the family traditions at their right level,
and use for their normal ends the faculties that he had so perverted,
if he could only take again his proper place in his home and in
society. At all costs he must be rescued and completely freed from this
love that he would not repudiate.
“At least----” repeated Mr. Roquevillard, who had been struck by this
mysterious phrase of Mr. Hamel. What had he meant by this reservation?
He raised his bent head, and, leaning back in his easy-chair, gazed
straight in front of him. His eyes rested on the map of La Vigie
hanging on the wall, outside the circle of the lamplight, and barely
distinguishable in the shadow. It brought his land before him in the
guise of ancestor and counsellor. And yet at the same time the cruel
syllogisms of Mr. Battard echoed persistently in his mind.
“There has been a theft. Therefore, there is a guilty person. Who is
it? If it isn’t the lover it’s the mistress. He won’t have the mistress
accused, therefore it will be the lover. How could he reply to this
argument in a way to convince the jury’s rustic brains?”
And suddenly, as he traced the blurred outlines of the map, he thought
an idea broke forth in it, like a light in the darkness.
“If we suppress the fact of theft, then no one will be guilty. The
jury will have to acquit him. How can we do away with the theft?”
And La Vigie spoke to him.
Some moments later Margaret knocked discreetly at his door.
“Come in,” he said. “I’m alone.”
“Well, father, what have you decided?”
He explained the new danger which arose from Maurice’s obstinacy. “Mr
Battard gives us up. He declines to plead,” he said finally.
“Then who will defend him?” she asked, quite confused, “and how?”
“Don’t distress yourself yet, little girl,” he said. “I think I know a
way.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll tell you later. Let me stay here now and think it over. It will
involve making a great sacrifice.”
“Make it quickly, father.”
The girl’s eyes burned with such a light that all her pure and generous
soul shone through it.
“Dear little girl,” he murmured proudly.
She smiled at him, with the rare smile of those who have lived long
with sorrow.
“Father,” she said, “I have always thought you
would be the one to defend him.”
II
THE FAMILY COUNCIL
“AM I in the way?” asked Margaret.
She stopped on the threshold of her father’s office, seeing such a
numerous company gathered there.
“I was going to look for you,” said her father. “You belong here with
us.”
A tall, withered old man, with his coat closely buttoned up, who was
leaning on the mantelpiece, beneath which a bright fire was burning,
threw out in a high head voice:
“In my time they didn’t admit women to the family councils.”
“It isn’t a woman that’s compromised the family, however,” came
the brisk reply from the depths of an armchair, where sat a rather
vigorous, well-matured lady dressed in black.
But it was purely a discussion of principles with both of them,
for they promptly made truce and welcomed the girl with a good
grace. Margaret greeted each member of the family circle in
turn. First came her great-uncle Stephen Roquevillard, who,
though older than Mr. Hamel, carried the burden of his eighty
years quite lightly; then her aunt by marriage, Mrs. Camille
Roquevillard; then her cousin Leo, the latter’s son, a young
manufacturer at Pontcharra in Dauphiné; and finally Charles Marcellaz,
who had arrived that morning from Lyons.
Outside the windows a heavy sky, charged with snow, seemed to hang
low above the castle, almost crushing it. Already the clouds swung
round the turret, and the leafless trees stretched their supplicating
branches upward. Only the ivy on the tower of the archives preserved
its tint of eternal spring. The room, in spite of its four windows,
seemed filled with the bitterness of the day. The book-cases, the
portraits, the landscape by Hugard, seemed to wear a look of sadness.
The latest law reports, piled on a stand, had not been bound, like
those of the preceding years. The big table, covered with briefs, one
of them still open, displaying its citations and extracts from the
statutes, showed a continuity of work which even the gravest cares had
not interrupted; while a fresh bunch of chrysanthemums, placed before
a photograph of Mrs. Valentine Roquevillard, revealed the daily care
given it by a woman’s hand.
The lawyer begged his guests to be seated. He seemed to reflect a
moment, his head bent. He had aged greatly in the past year. The hair
of his head and his short, stiff moustache were turning grey. Two lines
appeared around his mouth; his neck beneath his collar was thin and
hollow. His cheeks were more dull in tint and the flesh less firm. All
these signs of physical failing Margaret never saw without an aching at her
heart. What a difference there was between the man who sat there now at
his table, lost in his thoughts, and that other form robustly erect and
joyful outlined against the sky on the hilltop at last summer’s vintage.
When he stood up, with a single gesture he was himself again. Beneath
the deep arch of his eyebrows his gaze shone out imperiously as of
old, difficult to withstand, fixing itself on the faces of his hearers
with an embarrassing precision. The moment he began to speak his new
attitude showed that he was the head and front of the family, not
easily put down or overborne by many trials.
“I have called you together,” he began, “because our family is in
danger. Now, we all bear the same name, excepting Charles Marcellaz,
who stands in the place of a son to me because he represents my
daughter Germaine. Felicie and Hubert are too far away to be consulted,
but their lives testify to such self-sacrifice that their opinions need
not be asked. I know they are disinterested.”
“You have good news of the captain?” inquired Mrs. Camille
Roquevillard. Her nephew’s uniform had always impressed her favourably,
and she was incapable of thinking of more than one person at a time.
Margaret answered her.
“No news for some time, and the last was not very good. He had come
down with fever.”
“Court opens December 6th,” began Mr. Roquevillard again, “about
three weeks from now. Maurice’s case comes up at the beginning of the
session.”
“It’s only a formality,” said Leo, who was proud of managing a rather
large factory at twenty-eight, and affected a practical and positive
turn of mind that reduced everything to its net results. “An acquittal
is certain.”
The old lawyer closed the young man’s mouth with a categorical “No!”
His daughter shivered. The men looked at each other, surprised and
anxious.
“How do you mean? Why is it ‘No’?”
“Since he’s not guilty.”
“Since it was Mrs. Frasne who took the money.”
The last remark came from Charles Marcellaz, mentioning the common foe
by name.
“The wretch!” added the widow, raising her eyes to the ceiling, and
inwardly regretting that Mrs. Frasne’s name had been uttered in
Margaret’s presence. She divided women simply into two categories, the
virtuous and the wanton, though she did not investigate the origin
of the children that she rescued. Unlike so many intellectual and
emancipated women of to-day, her horizon was limited, but not her
charity or devotion.
“Acquittal is not certain,” resumed the head of the family, “on account
of the conditions which my son imposes as to his defence. I have seen
him several times in the gaol. His will is unshakable. He will not
consent to any defence unless the name of Mrs. Frasne is kept out of
it.”
With one accord the manufacturer and the old attorney rebelled against
this:
“It’s impossible. He’s mad.”
“It’s treachery.”
“He ought not to be listened to.”
“So much the worse. Leave him to his fate.”
This last cowardly advice came from his cousin Leo. Mr. Roquevillard
shut him up with a hurt and angry look, which melted promptly into one
of sorrow. The family was in disaccord if one member of it repudiated
the joint claims upon it. But in the silence which followed old Uncle
Stephen remarked softly:
“Myself, I think Maurice is right.”
Mr. Roquevillard, upon this unexpected interjection, continued his
explanations.
“This generosity might be understood by a jury selected from the ranks
of the well-to-do. It won’t go down with simple farmers. The main
point with them will be the disappearance of the money. It’s a sum the
very figure of which will dazzle them. They are more alive to outrages
against property than to those against persons. This sum, they will
argue, could have been stolen only by _him_ or _her_. If by
her, he would say so, and they should acquit him. In case of doubt,
they would still acquit him. He doesn’t dare accuse her, therefore he
himself is the thief. They have not the same conception of honour as
ourselves.”
“Honour, honour!” repeated Leo twice over, the too evident
disdain of his uncle at his remarks having irritated him. “It’s
important, above all things, to avoid a verdict that will dishonour
us, his family. I don’t admit any honour but that, myself, honour as
recognised by the law.”
The oldest member of the family stared insolently at the young man from
Lyons.
“I beg of you to say no more,” he murmured in a voice that whistled
through his scanty row of teeth.
“Why?” objected the manufacturer, who showed no deference for age.
“Why,” said Uncle Stephen, “because you no longer understand the
meaning of certain words.”
“Exactly. Words. Big words, when it’s you who are using them,” retorted
Leo.
By way of conciliation, Charles Marcellaz contributed a legal
explanation:
“Mrs. Frasne is guilty, but her act doesn’t come within the scope of
the law. Theft committed by a wife to the injury of her husband doesn’t
permit of any action. In accusing Mrs. Frasne, Maurice doesn’t expose
her to any risk, and his testimony is strictly in accordance with the
truth.”
But Uncle Stephen, whose far-away youth had been a stormy one,
pronounced as a court of last resort:
“You don’t accuse a woman under any pretext, if you’ve been her lover.
I recognise your son, Francis.”
The widow Roquevillard, since the beginning of the
conference, had been chiding her son below her breath
for the views he took. He got his downright intelligence from
her, but not her kindness. She made up her mind now to support him
openly against this old man who preached such a strange morality.
“Would you have us respect such creatures?” she asked.
The head of the family silenced the futile quarrel with a wave of his
hand.
“Let me finish,” he said. “When the time comes I’ll ask you for your
opinions. Maurice is opposed to any accusation against Mrs. Frasne.
It does not concern us now whether he is right or wrong, because
his mind is made up, and we can do nothing with him. If the defence
goes beyond the limit he has set for it, he will take the blame upon
himself, he says, rather than sanction her being named. He would rather
charge himself with the crime than that. What will happen in these
circumstances? That is the question, and nothing else. The jury, forced
to accept the material fact of theft, which cannot be denied, impressed
by the loss of so considerable an amount of money, will seek, I foresee
it, a guilty party. Disarmed in the case of Mrs. Frasne, they will turn
upon my son. Whether they admit extenuating circumstances for him or
not, it’s disgrace.”
“Oh, father!” exclaimed Margaret involuntarily.
“The danger is very great. Do you take it all in? Now, I have thought
perhaps of a way to avert this danger.”
The girl, whom her father had not instructed as to his plans before
the family gathering, took heart again.
“Cost what it may, father, it must be done.”
“Here it is. In cases where abuse of confidence is involved, I have
always found that restitution brings acquittal. A jury is especially
sensitive to the loss of money. Suppress this loss and it’s scarcely
necessary to indicate a guilty party. No prejudice, no sanction: no
conviction, no sentence. It’s an association of ideas that’s habitual
with a jury.”
His son-in-law summed things up:
“You want to restore to Mr. Frasne the money that his wife took away
from him?”
“That’s it.”
“One hundred thousand francs!” cried Leo. “It’s quite a figure.”
And Charles Marcellaz protested at once:
“But it’s as much as to admit that Maurice did wrong. He pays the money
back, therefore he was guilty of taking it.”
“No, not that. The man who goes bail for a debtor isn’t that debtor.
Through his lawyer Maurice will explain to the jurors that, although
he isn’t willing to accuse anybody, he intends to be beyond suspicion
himself. If Mr. Frasne is reimbursed, there is no more theft. To leave
Mr. Frasne uncovered is, I suspect, to free my son.”
“Good, Francis,” approved Uncle Stephen, shaking
his head like a great bald bird.
This mark of esteem decided the widow upon a friendly demonstration.
“I don’t understand all these tricks very well,” she said, “but good
repute is worth more than golden girdles, and my heart is with you,
Francis.”
Her son was only reassured by the word “heart,” which committed one
to nothing. He exchanged a look with young Charles Marcellaz which
signified, “These old people treat money with a high hand; as if there
were anything else that gives a family importance or a chance to grow.”
Feeling that he was supported on this question, Charles inquired softly:
“One hundred thousand francs--can you pay back that much, father?”
“That’s another question,” replied Mr. Roquevillard, a little dryly,
beginning to grow a bit weary of these preliminaries. “I shall come to
that presently. First the principles, then the means of applying them.”
But of his own accord, being already decided, he reversed this order,
by adding:
“If necessary I shall sell La Vigie.”
It was the last sacrifice of all. Margaret knew the heroism of it, and
grew quite pale. Charles, divided between respect and self-interest,
admiration and indignation, hesitated, hunted for a way out through
this flood of contrary sentiments, and receiving an ironical glance of
the eye from Leo, began to argue:
“Sell La Vigie! You haven’t time before December 6th. Or
at best you’ll sell for a wretched price. La Vigie is worth
one hundred and sixty thousand at the very lowest, without the woods
that you bought four years ago in Saint Cassin.”
These objections the lawyer had doubtless put to himself already, for
he was prepared with his answer:
“It’s possible,” he said simply. “And if not, then it can be mortgaged.”
“Yes, at five or four and one-half per cent. Five probably, if you
want it immediately. Business men won’t fail to take advantage of
you. And the land yields scarcely three, whereas you only need one
frost or hail-storm to ruin your crops. You have too much experience,
father, not to know that mortgaging is an incurable disease for land, a
fatal one. Country property is a great risk nowadays for one who does
not live off the land, or hasn’t a good income to insure him against
loss from bad seasons or competition. It’s compromising the future
irrevocably. And La Vigie is the family’s patrimony, sacred to the
future, and ought not to be touched.”
Mr. Roquevillard let Charles finish his speech, though he had grown
impatient under it.
“No one loves and understands the land better than I,” he replied,
raising his tone a little. “No one has listened to its counsels, put
his ear to its breast when it has been sick, more truly than I have.
And yet I am the one to be reproached with having forgotten it. Let me
tell you then, if you don’t know it already, that in the human plan of
things there is a divine order that must be respected. Over and above
material legacies I place, for my part, the heritage of morality.
It is not the patrimony that makes a family, but the long line of
generations that have created and maintained the patrimony. If a family
is dispossessed, it can found a new estate elsewhere. If it has lost
its traditions, its faith, its joint responsibility, its honour, if it
is reduced to an assemblage of individuals ruled by contrary interests
and following their own destinies rather than the family’s, then it
is a body emptied of its soul, a corpse that reeks of death, and the
finest estates can never make it live again. A piece of land can be
regained by purchase; the virtue of a race is not for sale. That is
why the loss of La Vigie affects me less than the danger to my son and
my name. But because La Vigie has been from one century to another
the portion of the Roquevillards I was not willing to interrupt so
continuous a transmission without warning, and consulting all of you.
I have given you my own opinion first: I was wrong. Give me yours now
as I call your names, honestly. I don’t say I shall follow your advice
if it is opposed to mine. I am the head of the family and must take the
responsibility myself. But a decision that with one blow shatters the
work of so many generations is a grave one, and it will be a comfort to
me to have the approval of our family council.”
By the silence that followed these words he realised that
the group around him had seized the importance of the
occasion. He glanced toward the map of La Vigie on the
wall, with its notations of the new lands successively added to it, and
the dates of the contracts under which they had been made. So often
during the preparation of his cases his gaze had dwelt on this map,
not to trace its lines and figures, but to summon up the vision of its
woods and fields and vines, with their tillage and vintages. A bit
of the land, with all its agricultural work and the movement of the
seasons over it, lived in its narrow frame, the mere black lines of
which were potent over his imagination.
He turned his eyes from it, and through the windows, under the
lowering sky, could see the castle of the old dukes, built gradually
through the various epochs of its history, half dismantled now, but
still imposing in its guerdon of the past. Better than any documents
or archives, than any manuals or chronologies, it made one stop and
think, because of the very fact that it remained standing like a
witness in the flesh. Of itself it called up memories of ancient
Savoy, and the times of his ancestors and rude wars, while the
pointed arches of the Sainte-Chapelle symbolised the pious impulses
of their hearts. What is left of the dead, with all their acts and
sentiments, if these material signs, through which they realise and
recall themselves, do not exist for us? Did La Vigie, its lands
cleared, subdued, added to and restored, count for nothing in the
destiny of the Roquevillards? And when it should be abandoned, would
not its mainstay, the visible scene of its continuity, be lacking to his
race? In landed properties one generation hands on the spade to another
as ancient couriers used to pass the torch. And here was the last chief
letting it fall.
But the lawyer turned his head away, spurning all hesitation. The
patrimony was not all the family any more than prayer was the church,
or courage a prison cell. Hubert and Felicie carried far away from
their native soil, to the Soudan or to China, the vital energy that
tradition had handed down to them. Maurice, restored again to his
normal life, would root out his fault with toil. And as for Margaret,
the flame of a devoted life burned steadily in her.
He addressed himself first to his daughter, as the youngest of the
company, thinking to hear his thoughts echoed in her reply.
“You, Margaret,” he said, “speak first.”
“I, father? Everything that you do will be all right. Save Maurice,
I implore you. If you think the sale of La Vigie is necessary, don’t
hesitate. We don’t need a fortune. In any case, take my share. Don’t
worry about me. I need very little to live on, and I’ll pull through
somehow.”
“I knew it,” said Mr. Roquevillard approvingly.
He caressed Margaret’s hand softly, while he questioned his nephew next.
“And you, Leo. Remember your father,” he added, mistrusting him a
little.
The young man assumed the important manner of one who
has arrived, a man who has accomplished things, but who
will give you his receipt for success just the same. He would tell
these ignorant old men something about the ways of modern life, and the
new conditions that make it so swift and real and egotistical.
“My dear uncle,” he began, “you are one of those old-timers who start
up crusades everywhere and tilt at windmills. You don’t accomplish
anything by ruining yourself. You ought to look at things in a more
practical light. This very moment Maurice is blackmailing you with his
‘honour.’ Mrs. Frasne’s honour isn’t worth one hundred thousand francs.
My nice cousin is blustering in his prison. When he comes into court
he’ll sing smaller. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve often read the accounts
of criminal trials in the newspapers, as every one does now. Even the
most obstinate prisoners will turn on their victim or accomplices
at the last moment to save themselves. The fear of an unfavourable
verdict is the beginning of wisdom for them. Maurice is an intelligent
boy, with everything to live for: he’ll understand. If by any chance
he doesn’t, well, so much the worse for him, after all. It’s a sad
thing to say before you, uncle, and I’m very sorry for it; but he
would have it so, and I know you like frankness. His danger is all his
own. A family isn’t jointly and severally responsible for the faults
of one member. That’s one of those absurd theories that have been
definitely relegated to the past in our day. ‘Each one for himself,’
is the new motto. No account’s taken of another’s debts, whether it’s your
father or your brother or your son. If I earn money, it’s mine, and my
good and bad acts are mine. There’s plenty of work looking out for your
own happiness, without adding the terrible weight of twenty generations
to it. Advance Maurice’s share to him if you insist on it, but hold
back his brothers’ and sisters’, and something for yourself in your old
age. As for La Vigie, I’d sell it as a matter of fact, if you can get a
good price for it, not to buy the jury’s sympathy with it, but because
land’s no good any more except to some peasant who worries it like a
rat. Industry, machines--that’s the future, for individuals and for
society, too.”
Old Uncle Stephen, upon this harangue, let out a little sharp laugh,
and mumbled:
“He talks well. A little long-winded, but he talks well.”
The widow, for her part, much agitated, put her hands together and
implored the Lord’s assistance.
“You have finished?” asked Mr. Roquevillard, not without a hint of
rudeness.
“I’m through.”
“If I’ve understood you correctly then, you’d be perfectly willing to
throw Maurice overboard.”
“Excuse me, uncle; he jumps overboard. If he were reasonable,
he could easily enough get out of the law’s clutches,
safe and sound. But he doesn’t want to be reasonable.
I’m always for being reasonable, myself.”
The head of the family turned toward his son-in-law.
“And you, Charles, are you also reasonable?”
Marcellaz hesitated before beginning his reply. He had always chafed
a little at his father-in-law’s superiority; the superiority of his
wife’s family over his own struck him on each comparison, and irritated
him, especially since he had gone back again to the country of his
origin. He was an industrious and economical young lawyer, building up
his children’s future obstinately, and appeared jealous and watchful
of his painfully acquired and moderate fortune. Business had absorbed
him, making him limited and hard. But he loved Germaine, and if he
mistrusted agitations and did not like to have his sensibilities
stirred up, it was not because he did not have any. He hesitated,
deploring the past, and hating this situation that did not solve itself.
“Why does Maurice prefer Mrs. Frasne to us even in gaol?” he began.
“It’s absurd, since she doesn’t run any risk of punishment. He betrays
his family for a false point of honour. One hundred thousand francs! To
raise all that money, isn’t it beyond your power? You mustn’t attempt
the impossible.”
“But suppose you must attempt the impossible to save him?” put in
Margaret.
“Well, then,” concluded Mr. Roquevillard, who wanted a positive
answer, “you also, Charles, advise me to desert my son?”
Marcellaz lowered his head, to avoid the ironical eyes of young Leo,
and murmured shamefacedly:
“No, just the same.”
When he raised his head again he was surprised by the look in his
father-in-law’s eyes. Their habitually masterful expression was veiled
and tender, with an unaccustomed sweetness, as of one surprised by the
flow of a stream whose humble source he has discovered beneath some bit
of verdure.
“Your turn, Thérèse,” he said next.
The widow, since her son’s speech, had not heard a single word of
what was said, and the question did not have to be repeated. She
was governed by a sure instinct, and did not confuse herself with
principles, which she applied better than she could define them. Like
most women, she promptly substituted personalities for questions of
theory, a method which at least had the merit of keeping abstract
solutions at safe distance and scattering metaphysical mists.
Throughout the debate she had retained but one word, but that one was a
good one. She couldn’t speak to more than one person at a time, and so
she laid hold on Leo, regardless of the other members of the assembly.
“Each one for himself, did you say?” she began. “If your uncle here had
practised that fine maxim, my boy, you would not this moment be at the
head of a factory that brings you in hundreds and hundreds of francs.”
“Mother, you’re laughing at me,” interrupted Leo,
his self-esteem wounded by this sally.
But the good lady was off, and nothing could stop her.
“No, no, you know what I mean to say. I’ve already told you the story,
and if you’ve forgotten it I’ll refresh your memory. Fifteen years ago
your father invested all his savings in the factory he was starting,
and then the orders stopped coming in and there came a day when he had
to suspend payments. The industry was a new one in the district, and
no one had any confidence in it. He went to see your Uncle Francis,
here, and explained his danger to him. Francis lent him at once without
interest the twenty thousand francs he needed, and needed so badly that
we were threatened with being closed out. That’s how we were saved, my
boy. From that evil hour I’ve had a great horror of poverty. May God
forgive me, if that’s what has made you selfish and mistrustful.”
“Well, well, I didn’t remember,” admitted Leo, with an ill grace.
His mother was filled full of her subject, and was not to be wheedled
by this concession, though ordinarily she always yielded to her son’s
arguments after a little fussing. When two people live much with each
other they don’t pay much attention to themselves, and are quite
surprised sometimes, when some grave matter supplies occasion, to find
themselves at variance. Nowadays it is a difference which is more
and more frequent between one generation and the next, on account of
the loosening of family ties and the rapid transformation of ideas.
The gist of her next remarks was ostensibly intended for her
brother-in-law.
“I’m only related to you by marriage, Francis, but I bear the same
name, and am mindful of it. I’ll put twenty thousand francs at your
disposal if you need it in your turn. I don’t understand a bit of your
histories, but I know you’re in misfortune. As for Mrs. Frasne, she’s a
hussy!”
“Dear aunty, I love you,” said Margaret.
And Mr. Roquevillard added:
“Thank you, Thérèse. I shall probably not need it. I’m happy to think I
can count on you if necessary.”
Last of all, old Uncle Stephen outlined his opinion in a slow but firm
voice, which cracked like an old bell every now and then as he tried to
force it.
“The father is the arbiter of his family and property, Francis. You
have all the responsibility, you needn’t ask leave from any one. I
was younger than your father. We were orphans at an early age, and
he brought us children up and helped us in every way, for he was the
heir and head of the family. In those days--it was under the Sardinian
rule, before the annexation--daughters received only their legal share,
and they were not married for their money. The patrimony went all to
one member of the family, and its obligations could not be neglected
by the one who inherited it. He had to look out for the younger ones,
endowing and establishing them in life, besides seeing to the infirm and
needy and the old folk. These young people to-day don’t know what the
patrimony meant then, when it was the material force of the family, the
whole family grouped about one head, assured of living and enduring
because it held together. To-day what use is there in keeping an estate
together? If you don’t sell it, the law will take a hand and scatter
it when you die. With a forced division of estates there is no more
patrimony. What with each one being for himself on the one hand, and
the continuous prying and meddling of the state, on the other hand, in
all the doings of one’s life, there is no more family. We shall see
what this society of individuals subject to the state will make of
things.”
He gave a circumspect and scornful little laugh, and ended up with less
general considerations.
“However, you’re right to set our honour above money. You’re right,
too, to give us warning. We were with you in your prosperity. Fate
strikes you down, and we must be with you there, too. I haven’t very
much for my part. Outside my legal pension I’ve scarcely more than
twenty-five or thirty thousand francs in securities, the income of
which helps me to get along. I’m already very old. After I’m gone it’s
yours--it’s yours now if you want it.”
Mr. Roquevillard, much moved, replied simply:
“I’m proud of your approval, uncle, and touched by your support. My
work will now be easier to carry through. This sacrifice of money will
mean Maurice’s acquittal: my experience makes me believe that firmly.
I don’t see how I can save La Vigie. Counting up everything, I am
worth----”
“This doesn’t concern us further,” said Uncle Stephen, rising.
“I ought to tell you, on the contrary. I want you all to know in case
La Vigie goes out of the Roquevillards’ hands one day that it hasn’t
been without sorrow, or because there was no necessity. You are my
witnesses. La Vigie is worth at least one hundred and sixty thousand
francs. My Saint Cassinwoods are appraised at twenty thousand. Germaine
had a dot of sixty thousand francs.”
“Ought I to return it all to you or only part of it?” inquired Charles
Marcellaz timidly, his generosity the more to be commended because
regrets, remorse and hesitation went with it. “It is invested at a
certain figure in a share of the law practice I bought at Lyons.”
“By no means, my dear Charles. It belongs to you and Germaine outright,
and you have three children to look out for. When Felicie went into the
convent we bought annuities for her with twenty thousand francs, and we
had reserved a like sum for Margaret’s dot. Of this she has already had
eight thousand francs, which she sent to her brother.”
“One hundred and eight thousand,” counted up Leo, who had been
sulking, beneath his breath. “He comes high.”
He was not aware as yet of the little loans from their sinking funds
of which his own mother and the old magistrate had been guilty the
preceding year.
“Father,” said Margaret, “dispose of my dot. I shall never marry.”
“Women are meant to be married,” declared the widow.
But Margaret added resolutely: “I have my diploma. I shall work. I’ll
start a school.”
“Women oughtn’t to inherit, according to my ideas,” put in Uncle
Stephen, “but I’ll moderate my principles in Margaret’s favour. She
shall have my forty thousand francs when I die.”
“Thirty thousand,” corrected Leo, appraising his loss.
“No, forty,” replied the old man, suppressing his avarice definitely
but painfully in the common crisis. “I put it lower just now
inadvertently. It’s as much as forty-five, to be done with it. I’ll
make a new will. I had made you my heir, Francis.”
“I thank you for Margaret, uncle. But I shall not touch her dot,
which isn’t enough anyway, unless it’s impossible to realise on La
Vigie promptly and at good terms. It will be better to sell the
estate, if possible, than to mortgage it. I’ve thought it all out. The
returns from land nowadays are precarious. With modern transportation
facilities there is competition from such a distance that we can’t any
longer count on profits. I prefer to make Margaret’s future sure, and let my
sons arrange their own schemes of life. If I can’t find any one to buy,
then the land can always be given as security for a loan.”
“We can give you good security, too,” the widow assured him.
“Exactly,” acquiesced Uncle Stephen.
The family council was over. Friendly farewells were exchanged by all
excepting Leo, who still showed a little coldness to his uncle.
“It’s always the security that is lost,” he observed to his mother on
the staircase.
“I’d pay it gladly,” said the latter flatly.
“Oh, you. You’re too good,” retorted her son.
“And you’re too ungrateful,” said his mother.
“It was my father that was helped out of a hole. Not I.”
“You or your father. Doesn’t it come to the same thing?”
“No.”
Charles escorted Mr. Stephen Roquevillard home, and Maurice’s father
was left alone with his daughter. Outside the house the light was
growing dim. Mist was cloaking the turret and the tower of the
archives, as with an evening mantle. The office was filled with the
special sadness that comes with the end of a winter’s day. Margaret put
another log on the fire.
“I’m glad it’s over,” said her father. “It passed off well, I thought.”
But Margaret thought indignantly of her cousin Leo.
“That Leo is bad,” she said. “I detest him.”
“His mother is a fine woman,” was her father’s comment.
They were silent. Then both of them glanced at the map of La Vigie
on the wall. Instead of a faded sheet of paper, they saw a vision of
the place again under the beautiful sunlight of the vintage time,
with all its golden vines, the harvested fields, the pastures ready
to be tilled, the great comfortable house. The estate which they had
sentenced to be sold was making its last appeal to them.
Like Maurice on the Calvary of Lemenc, before he had gone away from
them, but with a different sort of love, a love from which all selfish
thought of happiness was purged, they said good-bye to La Vigie.
III
MR. FRASNE’S CLEVER TRANSACTION
NOTHING was being talked about in all Chambéry but the clever
transaction of Mr. Frasne. It was especially the favourite topic of
conversation at the reception given by Mr. and Mrs. Sassenay one
evening in celebration of the eighteenth birthday of their daughter
Jeanne. One of the characteristics of provincial society seems to be
that the men take the occupations and preoccupations of the city into
company with them, clinging to the excitements of their business in the
midst of social pleasures. At the Sassenays’ they one and all abandoned
the ladies to the rivalries of clothes, and between the waltzes made
off hastily into corners to take up the burden of their financial
slanders and professional cares. On this special occasion, the family
drama which had shaken the Roquevillards’ long standing social
status, with its climax due to come off the day after to-morrow--it
was the evening of December 4th--at the sitting of the court of
assizes, was stirring public comment to its depths. Public opinion
in Chambéry was tired, no doubt, of the well-founded and continuous
ascendancy of the Roquevillards. It was worked up with the desire for
levelling down, which is one of the modern zeals, as well as irritation
at the persistent pride that refused to plead for itself or beg for
sympathy even in misfortune. People, in short, were on the watch for
the final collapse of a race which at other times had been considered
an ornament to the city.
In the smoking-room were gathered men of law, doctors, manufacturers,
capitalists; a few of them now and then, as the first strains of a
waltz sounded, made for the group of girls and younger women seated
in the drawing-room, like an assaulting party issuing in victorious
sallies from a place besieged, to return again shortly to their
masculine circle. Only one of them all knew nothing of this lucky
speculation of the notary, which some found fault with and others
praised, namely, the Viscount de la Mortellerie. His excuse was
that he had tarried too long in the fourteenth century, with the
history of the ducal castle that he was writing. In vain he tried
to interest his neighbours in the ingenuity of Amedeus V, who in
1328 had wooden conduits arranged to bring water from the fountain
of Saint Martri to his vast kitchens, where it gushed out in an
enormous stone basin, which served also as a pool for the salmon
that were destined for the ducal table. People would not listen to
this babbler who was almost six hundred years behind the times.
Mr. Latache, president of the Chamber of Notaries, sententious,
ceremonious, bored, upholding the dignity of his life and business
reputation, bore the brunt of the attack made by the little lawyer
Coulanges. This latter, a scented, curled and powdered little
individual, had assumed the defense of Mr. Frasne on behalf of the
younger school.
“No, no,” declared Mr. Latache solemnly, “the criminal action follows
the civil in such matters. Frasne should have waited for the jury’s
verdict before accepting reparation for material damage. Or rather,
since he has been fully indemnified, he should withdraw his complaint
altogether. He ought not to mix up money matters with his vengeance.”
“Pardon me, pardon me,” parried the bubbling lawyer, fencing promptly.
“Let us reason the thing out, I beg of you. Mr. Frasne made a complaint
against Maurice Roquevillard of embezzlement in the sum of one hundred
thousand francs, and instituted a civil suit against him. The elder
Roquevillard offered to restore this sum to him before the arrest, and
you blame him now for accepting it?”
“I don’t blame him for accepting it, but as he has taken it, I blame
him for keeping up his suit. And I don’t understand Mr. Roquevillard.”
“Oh, he knows his son is guilty, and he buys the jury’s indulgence in
this way. As for Mr. Frasne, since conviction is always uncertain at
trials, he prefers a bird in the hand to two in the bush. Besides, at
the hearing, he will make capital out of this payment, as if it were an
admission of guilt. It’s a very strong presumption.”
“It’s a great advantage to Frasne certainly. I can’t explain
Roquevillard’s motives, but just the same he’s too experienced to leave
such a weapon in his adversary’s hands without having taken precaution
on his own part. The receipt which he must have demanded surely
provides that if he discharges the obligation of a third party, it’s
irrelevant whether that third party is his son or not.”
“As a matter of fact, the receipt does make this reservation, and in
the most formal terms,” announced another lawyer, Mr. Paillet, coming
up at this moment and entering into the discussion without loss of time.
“I supposed as much,” said Mr. Latache triumphantly. “And rather than
affix his signature to a paper containing such a restriction, Mr.
Frasne would have been better advised to leave it to the decision of
the court.”
But Mr. Coulanges was not ready to surrender yet.
“What does such a receipt prove?” he objected. “Would you give up one
hundred thousand francs for some one you didn’t know?”
The lookers-on agreed that he was right, and testified to their opinion
by a flattering murmur of approval, as much as to say that indeed such
a piece of generosity must have come from some imperious necessity.
Nevertheless, his success was short-lived. Mr. Paillet swept it
away for him like a conjurer making a nutmeg disappear before their
eyes. He was a gay, round, fat man, who knew everything, poking in
everywhere and telling everything he knew.
“I see,” he said, “that you don’t, any of you, know of Mr. Frasne’s
finest stroke.”
“Tell us about it.”
“Well, well.”
He held his company by the importance of the news he brought. But the
orchestra tuned up for an everlasting set of landers, and he abandoned
his scandalised hearers in a craven manner, rolling off like a ball
to the feet of the lady whom he had asked to be his partner. From
the recess of the window the gentlemen who remained behind, for lack
of anything better, watched the evolutions of the various couples,
assuming a detached and judicial air as the dancers of both sexes
advanced and retreated, saluted or turned according to the rhythm
of the music and the various figures. Among the dancers was Jeanne
Sassenay, her cheeks like roses, her hair rebelling against its neat
and careful dressing. Quite graceful and childlike in a pale blue dress
cut slightly low in the neck and showing a bit of white flesh caressed
by the crystal lights, she was putting her whole mind on keeping the
figures straight. Her whole being glowed with her pleasure and the
importance of the evening.
She excited a variety of comments from the lookers-on:
“Not bad looking, that little girl,” said one.
“Very thin: look at her shoulder blades,” said another.
“Only eighteen,” remarked a third.
“Oh, she’ll marry soon.”
“Why?”
“She has a large dot.”
“Yes, but her brother has piled up debts.”
“Whom will she marry?”
“No one knows yet. They talk of Raymond Bercy.”
“Who was engaged to Miss Roquevillard?”
“He’s just beginning his doctor’s practice.”
“Exactly; he hasn’t killed any one yet.”
After the final galop the lawyer Paillet, finding himself thirsty,
conducted his companion to the refreshment-room, where he drank some
champagne and ate a _pâté de foie gras_ sandwich; and thus
restored, condescended to reappear before the circle, where his
desertion was severely appreciated. But he held out against them
laughingly.
“If you scold me you shan’t learn anything.”
“Well, then, we’re listening.”
“You were still at the point where Mr. Roquevillard had restored one
hundred thousand francs to Mr. Frasne.”
“It was interesting, wasn’t it?”
“Not very, compared with what you’re going to hear next.”
The first notes of a polka sounded, and he turned his head. His
hearers trembled lest he should have the heart to leave them a
second time with their mouths watering. Quite a group decided to
mass themselves near the door and bar his passage.
“You’re warm. It wouldn’t be wise,” observed Mr. Latache.
And the lawyer Coulanges, adopting a different method, began to cast
doubts upon the famous piece of news that had been promised them.
Thereupon the news gatherer opened his mouth to let loose his prey.
“Very well, then. You don’t know that Mr. Frasne acquires for nothing
the fine estate of La Vigie, worth about two hundred thousand francs.”
Exclamations of incredulity met him on all sides.
“You don’t say so!”
“You’re laughing at us.”
Mr. Battard and Mr. Vallerois, the district attorney, who had been
chatting at a distance, came up at this moment, their ears alert for
news.
“Exactly,” said the orator. “For nothing.”
“But how?”
“Like this: Mr. Roquevillard, in order to secure the money he wanted,
advertised La Vigie for sale. Mr. Doudan, the notary, offered him one
hundred thousand francs for it, payable immediately, but reserving the
right to keep the name of the true purchaser secret for a fortnight.
A fortnight--bear this in mind. Mr. Roquevillard, who hadn’t much
time or choice before the trial, accepted. He could not hope for
anything better in so brief an interval. Now, through the indiscretion
of a clerk, it has leaked out--I learned it just now--that the real
purchaser was Mr. Frasne. Mr. Frasne, if you please, spends one
hundred thousand francs with one hand and receives it back with the
other, and finds himself to boot, by a simple trick the proprietor of a
magnificent estate for nothing.”
This machiavellian ruse was too far beyond the common run of bourgeois
artifice not to provoke astonishment. They did not hunt for the moral
point of it, neither did they sound the depths of the Roquevillards’
sacrifice of the family patrimony. Mr. Frasne had gone through a sorry
crisis; his home, if not his fortune, had been ruined, and he had
devoted his energies to the only thing that was still susceptible of
diverting him--business--as an artist finds his consolation in art or
a rich woman hers in charity. Interesting combinations of contracts
or figures established an alibi for his sad thoughts. He forgot
his own weariness for the moment in unravelling the affairs of his
clients, with a satisfaction like that of a skilful fighter in the
battle of interests. The case of La Vigie had inspired him to a bit of
audaciously clever tactics that he could not resist. He had hoped the
secret of it would be guarded until after the assizes. But what secret
can be kept in a town of less than twenty thousand inhabitants, where
it is regarded as pretentious and original to lead one’s personal life
as one likes?
Mr. Latache was the first to give his views on the transaction,
in two words, which, coming from the President of the
Chamber of Discipline, were worth a speech.
“It’s not just.”
“Why do you say that?” retorted Mr. Coulanges. “An estate was for sale.
Some one bought it. It’s the law.”
Nevertheless, the sagacious manœuvre of Mr. Frasne won, after all, only
a small measure of approbation, and this from the youthful camp, which
plays its enthusiasm to-day, like its funds, on solid wickets. He had
succeeded too well in his material enterprise, and the gallery, severe
in manners and practical in its good sense, was more sorry about his
conduct now than it had been diverted by his wife’s flight with Maurice.
Besides, he came from Dauphiné, and in the eyes of a community
accustomed to particularise, that made a stranger of him, whom such
gains enriched at the expense of their own province. People had not
been vexed, to be sure, by the humiliation of the Roquevillards,
because the high esteem in which the family was generally held
irritated the mediocrities, but they were surprised to find the
Roquevillards making the disaster worse, astonished to think they
consummated their ruin with their own hands. Why this disinterestedness
if Maurice was not guilty, and if he was, why this admission? For they
were not aware of the resolution the young man had taken. Mr. Hamel was
very secretive, and as for Mr. Battard, his silence was calculated: an
epicure of cases that made talk, he still hoped that his support would
be called for.
At the same time he was excited by these revelations, and could not
refrain from talking in his turn. The special circle where the affair
had been under discussion was now disturbed, the dance being finished,
by new arrivals. Conversation began again here and there, breaking
out in little separate groups, like smothered fire that sparkles and
scatters. The district attorney, Mr. Vallerois, rejoined Mr. Battard in
the embrasure of a window.
“You will hold the cards when you plead now,” he said. “You can riddle
Mrs. Frasne’s husband with sarcasm.”
“It isn’t certain yet that I shall make the argument,” replied the
lawyer.
“What! You are not to make the argument?”
Mr. Battard had to explain his confidences, which had escaped him
without thinking, by going further into the thing.
“That young duffer Maurice doesn’t wish to be seriously defended. He
prefers to look out for his mistress’s honour.”
He pronounced these last words with disdainful irony, explaining to the
attentive magistrate that the accused man threatened to contradict in
advance any reference to Mrs. Frasne as the guilty party.
“If you don’t argue, then who will?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Hamel doubtless.”
His tone showed hardly any more respect for the aged lawyer than for
the guilty woman. The former’s age and feebleness were thrown into
high relief by the single mocking mention of his name.
After some moments of silence Mr. Vallerois concluded:
“I understand what Roquevillard’s driving at now. He’s suppressing the
theft to save his son. It’s his last chance. He doesn’t hesitate to
sacrifice his fortune. It’s very fine.”
Not very much interested in this praise, Mr. Battard sketched a vague
gesture that was susceptible of various interpretations.
“All this is between you and me,” he said, to recapture his
professional secret.
And with his beard carefully displayed against his shirt front, he made
his way up to a group of ladies, stepping slowly and majestically, like
a peacock preparing himself for a promenade with his mates.
Left alone, the magistrate made no haste to search out another guest to
talk with. He still thought admiringly of Mr. Roquevillard, recalling
the man’s sorrowful and valiant life since that day in the office when
he had been told of Mr. Frasne’s complaint. Even then he had shown
himself unselfish and proudly prepared for sacrifices.
“Why am I the only one here,” Mr. Vallerois asked himself, “to
appreciate this great force of character? There isn’t a man here can
hold a candle to him, yet these gentlemen just now treated him so
loftily, as if misfortune had made him small and insignificant. The
provinces are vindictive and envious.”
Along these simple lines that were being laid down, he reflected,
the drama would be a moving one, very entertaining for the spectators.
Young Maurice, appearing disarmed before the jury, betrayed his
family, and his father was sacrificing the old estate for a song to
save the prodigal son. But if the counsel for the accused had his
lips sealed, another voice, more powerful than his, could make itself
heard instead. After the prosecutor’s speech for the plaintiff, was it
not the duty of the public minister to present the case in his turn?
Instead of relying upon “justice,” according to the formula sacred to
this sort of business, more private than public, was it not his duty to
intervene with some effect and set forth once and for all the luckless
preponderating rôle, the unique rôle, of Mrs. Frasne, the only one who
had been guilty of any abuse of confidence, even though she could not
be condemned for it? What a fine opportunity to serve truth, to render
unto each according to his works, to carry a little joy into this so
sorely tried household of the Roquevillards.
All these reflections crowded through Mr. Vallerois’s brain, but he
himself was disposed of by the circumstances of the thing: a general
advocate would occupy the place of the public minister at the assizes,
and not he. The case of Maurice Roquevillard did not properly concern
him further. Besides, he had been blamed for the unusual measure
he had taken with the notary last year, for it had not been kept
a secret very long. What was the use of mixing in an affair that did
not concern him, from which nothing but unpleasantness could arise? For
the sake of peace his sympathy was well enough trained to be content
with doing nothing.
Rather than sound the whole depth of his egotism, or pass harsh
judgment on it, he hastily rejoined the throng of guests, happy to feel
that there were people round him. The presence of our fellow creatures
is a comfort to us when we have been tempted to take the measure of our
pettiness. That is a kind of temptation which is always reserved for
the best of us to yield to.
The movement toward the refreshment tables had now begun, and there
was a coming and going through the two drawing-rooms, the ante-chamber
and the dining-room, prolonging itself, with frequent delays as the
young people found opportunities for flirtation. Some of them, all for
dancing, called noisily for the orchestra again. Some of the young
girls showed already that they were clever and happy in the tricks and
coquetry that land a husband some day. Some of them, though only a few,
so far as a cursory glance could tell, did not bother to see whether
a man wore an engagement ring or not before they trained their artful
batteries on him. The eyes of youth flashed under the chandeliers,
as sparkling as the jewels which shone in hair or corsage, on wrists
or fingers. Among the men’s black coats the clear bits of colour and
mellow outlines of the women’s frocks stood out like water-colours.
In which category did Miss Jeanne Sassenay belong, determinedly making
off with Raymond Bercy, the fiancé last year of Miss Roquevillard,
while her mother’s vigilant eye followed her with solicitude and some
surprise? Her little head was like a Greek statue’s, borne so elegantly
and easily above its stone shoulders: was it so scatter-brained it
could not even cherish the memory of her abandoned friend? Were her
cool blue eyes, with their clear glances, only indifferent and not
sincere? Her cheeks glowed with the exercise of dancing, but she was
not smiling, she was wrinkling her eyebrows, and shut her lips tight,
as if she were making some important decision. It was an air that
contrasted quaintly with her pretty, childlike manner.
“I haven’t danced with you yet,” the young man was saying. “Won’t you
give me a waltz?”
“No,” she replied emphatically, first looking round to see that they
were quite alone.
“Why not? Are all your waltzes taken?”
“No, not all.”
He did not think her serious, and was not chilled by her coolness.
“I’m warned, then. Many thanks,” he laughed.
She gave one of those tired “ughs,” like workmen lifting a heavy
weight, and then began to talk all at once, full of her subject:
“Indeed I must warn you, sir. Your mother has talked to mamma. And
mamma has no secrets from me. If she ever has any, I guess them. Very
well, then, I’ll never, do you hear, never consent to marry you.”
“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, I have not asked for your hand,” the
young man retorted in astonishment.
“Your mother has been over the ground, as they say so prettily,” she
resumed.
“Mothers make a great many plans for their sons. This one, however
flattering it is, doesn’t correspond with my intentions.”
“Oh, so much the worse,” said Jeanne.
“I’m not thinking of marrying,” he said.
“You’re wrong there,” said the girl, the reproach sounding queer and
almost funny from her childish mouth.
“When one has the luck in life to meet a young girl like Margaret
Roquevillard,” she added, “one oughtn’t to wreck such happiness one’s
self.”
So this was what she had been driving at. He understood. She should
have known from the change in his face that she had struck home, but at
her tender age vision is not clear enough to read the inner feelings
through the features. She was accordingly hardly moderate in heaping up
her boarding-school disdain upon him.
“It’s always shabby, my dear sir, to desert a fiancée. And when she is
in trouble it’s perfectly abominable.”
What right had she to scold him so violently? Raymond
Bercy was irritated by it all, and yet, at the bottom of his
heart, was conscious of a bitter-sweet pleasure in hearing Margaret
spoken of. His anger and bitterness crept into his retort.
“I didn’t appoint you to judge me, mademoiselle,” he said, “but if you
talk to me in the name of another, my reply is that----”
“I’m not speaking in any one’s name----”
“That you are misinformed. It wasn’t I who broke our engagement. I
would gladly have kept it.”
“You would have kept it? Oh, when the sun is shining, you men, all of
you, are always on hand; and when it rains, there isn’t a soul of you
about.”
“But you are too unjust, after all. I shall lose my patience with you.”
She was as far as ever from keeping still, going on to worry him, like
a wasp that hovers round you and tries to sting.
“It’s a great mistake for a man to get cross,” she said.
“I don’t have to report to you, Miss Sassenay. Let me tell you,
however, that Miss Roquevillard broke our engagement of her own free
will.”
“Out of generosity.”
“Without any consideration for my feelings or the pain it gave me.”
“In such circumstances you shouldn’t have let her break it,”
declared Jeanne. Her cheeks had grown quite red, and her
self-possession was gone. She was contradicting herself furiously,
and he, too, was scarcely more calm than she was.
“And if her brother is convicted?” he demanded.
“’Tis a fine case, isn’t it?”
“Oh, really, do you think so, Miss Sassenay?”
“Yes, really. As for me, if I were in love it would be all the same to
me if my fiancé were sent to the galleys. I’d follow him, do you hear,
sir. And if I had to commit some crime to be sent after him, I’d commit
it. Biff, boom! Just like that!”
“You’re a child,” he commented; then brusquely he changed his tone, and
whispered in a heavy voice:
“Do you think I have no regrets for her?”
She changed as quickly as he had, triumphantly, and was almost on the
point of falling on his neck. Mrs. Sassenay, surprising this by-play
from a distance, was distressed by what she saw, and blamed herself for
her neglect.
“Oh, I knew quite well, sir,” said Jeanne, “that you couldn’t want to
marry me. Good, then, be off with you. Run and tell Margaret. Beg her
for my sake to forgive you. Take your place again quickly in the family
before the trial comes on. Afterwards it will be too late. It will do
more good than prescribing all sorts of nasty medicines for your sick
people.”
“Thanks.”
“Be off then, at once.”
“But it’s half-past eleven,” argued Raymond.
“To-morrow, then.”
Mrs. Sassenay, meanwhile, making her way toward her
daughter, was stopped by a group of people in animated
conversation. The group was growing larger every minute.
“Are you sure?” asked Mr. Vallerois of a young officer whose uniform
bore the epaulettes of the general staff.
“Quite sure,” said the officer. “The news reached our division at six
o’clock. The general went in person to call on Mr. Roquevillard.”
“In person,” corroborated Mr. Coulanges, who had been astonished and
impressed by this official step toward one who was down and out like
Mr. Roquevillard.
Mrs. Sassenay turned to her neighbour, Mr. Latache, for information.
“What news are they talking about?” she inquired.
“Of the death of Lieutenant Roquevillard,” was the reply. “He died of
yellow fever in the Soudan.”
“How unfortunate that family is!” murmured Mrs. Sassenay, moved with
pity.
“Are they not, indeed!” said Mr. Latache.
So cruel a grief centred all the women’s sympathy on the Roquevillards,
and removed the hostility of the men, though people had been complacent
witnesses of the family’s material and moral decadence. They had
merely wanted to take the Roquevillards down a peg or two, but fate
was crushing them with no compassion or reprieve. The partisans of Mr.
Frasne and his clever operation were silent, the district attorney
expressing the sentiment of them all in the phrase:
“Poor things!”
Shortly after this colloquy Jeanne Sassenay disappeared. In vain
her mother searched for her through the rooms. In the vestibule she
perceived Raymond Bercy hastily getting into his overcoat.
“Are you going already?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Sassenay,” he replied, with no further explanation of his
precipitate departure.
She thought she guessed the young man’s trouble, and connected the
circumstances with her daughter’s disappearance, beginning to be
seriously worried.
“Have you seen Jeanne?” she asked of her husband, whom she met at the
entrance to the drawing-room.
“No. Are you looking for her?”
Mr. Sassenay was a frankly active and loyal man, but quite destitute
of psychology; he could overcome the greatest material obstacles, but
was incapable of stopping to analyse sentiments. His wife judged it
useless to tell him of her fears, and contented herself with enjoining
him to look after their guests. For her own part she went straight to
her daughter’s room. She entered, and the moment she turned the switch
of the electric light she discovered Jeanne there--all crumpled up and
shrunken in an armchair, weeping regardless of her rumpled frock.
“Jeanne, what’s the matter?” she asked at once, beginning to pet her.
“Oh, mamma,” wailed the girl.
It was the cry of a little child that is soon quieted.
“Why are you crying, Jeanne?” asked her mother.
“I keep thinking of Margaret’s troubles while I’m dancing,” she
explained.
Mrs. Sassenay breathed more freely. She knew how fond her daughter was
of Margaret Roquevillard. But as the sobs did not stop she asked gently:
“Are you thinking of Lieutenant Hubert?”
“Yes. He was nice ... we used to play tennis together. He was always
the best player.”
The cause of the girl’s grief did not lie in that quarter.
“Poor Margaret!” she added, changing her subject half unconsciously.
“I liked Maurice, who is in prison, better than Hubert. He’ll be
acquitted, won’t he?”
“I hope so, dear.”
“An innocent man who is acquitted, or even one who is
condemned--there’s something fine about it, isn’t there, mamma?”
“Are you sure he’s innocent?”
“Margaret’s brother? How can you ask it?”
Mrs. Sassenay smiled at this assurance and indignation, which she had
provoked on purpose. All the time she was petting and soothing her
daughter, her memory was recalling a long-ago talk she had had with
Mrs. Roquevillard on the subject of their children. “One day perhaps,”
the saintly woman had said to her, “if Maurice is worthy of it, I will
ask your child’s hand for him. She will be near you.”
Maurice had not been worthy, but his prestige of other days was still
potent over this too generous little girl. That was the danger.
It must be looked out for. And while she promised herself to be
careful, Jeanne’s mother thought in spite of herself of those other
Roquevillards, the dead and the living; so deserving, and so sorely
tried.
The noise of the orchestra came up to the room half muffled.
“Dry your eyes, Jeanne. Gently, so. A little powder. There. You’re
looking very well this evening. Now let’s go back quickly to the
drawing-room. People will notice our absence.”
“That’s true, mamma, and I promised this waltz.”
And growing suddenly serene again, the girl preceded her mother down
the hall.
At that very hour Raymond Bercy, completely upset by the death of his
friend Hubert, was pacing the hundred steps opposite the Roquevillards’
house, to and fro. The roof of the castle, covered with snow, showed
vaguely in the starlight. The tower of the archives and the turret
seemed to watch like sentinels over the sleeping town. Through the
four windows of the study which he knew so well a thin light filtered
between the blinds. In there Margaret and her father were suffering
together, struck once more to their very hearts.
He longed to go in and join them, but he dared not. His
broken engagement, his parents’ objections, what the
world would think, all sorts of obscure and selfish motives,
had held him back. But in the cold night, in the course of this walk
which he kept up so late, he came to know his heart better, knew
that sorrow and pity, more than joy, make love increase.
IV
THE COUNSEL OF THE SOIL
SOME decision must be made. Mr. Roquevillard had been stunned
since last evening by his son’s loss, of which he had heard in a
laconic official note, saying that Hubert had died in his country’s
service, far from any help, in an advanced post. His father had
not even the supreme consolation of giving way to his sorrow.
Hubert had gone away to the colonies to seek out danger and win
some glory that should brighten the family’s tarnished name, and
so he was the last victim of Maurice’s heedless wrongs against
them all. Maurice, himself, to-morrow, was to appear in court, and
there was still the struggling with the wilful difficulties of his
defence. No doubt the sacrifice of the family estate would have its
effect. No doubt the reparation made to the plaintiff would render
acquittal certain, or at any rate probable, and turn the tables in
favour of the accused. But even acquittal must not be wrung from
the jury through pity or through favour. To come back again to his
own fireside, to deserve honour again in the city or at the bar, to
continue a tradition and hand it down in his turn, the young man must
leave the court-house stripped of every injurious suspicion, discharged
from every fault against the law and honour. And how was this to be
accomplished without mentioning the name of Mrs. Frasne?
It was true that Mr. Battard, after the sale of La Vigie, had gone back
on his refusal to plead.
“It has cost you more than it’s worth,” he had said, with professional
cynicism. “But your generosity will soften the jury’s minds. They’re
the sort who will split hairs about an egg and hang an orchard thief,
but weep like calves when they learn you’ve sold your land to indemnify
the plaintiff. They may even be capable, if they stop to think, of
convicting your son just the same, on account of the bad example that
you give them, if Mr. Frasne’s clever transaction, when it is made
known in court in the final argument, doesn’t probably precipitate a
furious envy in them that will be in your favour.”
For Mr. Battard thought very ill of justice and humanity, but knew the
case, and offered his services. His reputation made him a coadjutor
that could not be refused. At five o’clock he was to come and have a
last talk in Mr. Roquevillard’s office, with Mr. Hamel, on the main
lines of his argument. Nevertheless, Maurice’s father had no confidence
in the power of Mr. Battard’s showy and sceptical art to sustain the
cause of a whole race.
After luncheon, at which he and Margaret hardly touched their
food, he rose and went out for a walk. His too heavy sorrow smothered
him within doors. Outside he should be able to think more clearly. The
air would revive his thoughts, restore his spent forces and beaten
energy. As he reached the door Margaret called him.
“Father.”
He turned quickly. Margaret, since his wife’s death, and even before
it, had been his confidante and counsellor, his supreme comforter in
life. Since the departure of little Julian, whose father had taken him
back to Lyons the morning after the family council, Margaret and her
father had been left to face each other all alone in the gradually
emptied house. All that night again, almost till morning, they had
talked of Hubert, weeping for him and praying. When Margaret came up to
him now he put his hand on her beautiful hair and let it linger there.
She understood that he was saying a blessing for her, quite low, and
her eyes, so easily misted now, so used to tears, grew moist once more.
“Father,” she asked, “what have you decided on for Maurice?”
“Battard is ready to defend him. He’s coming at five o’clock with
Hamel. I’m going out to think over my last instructions to them in the
open air.”
“You don’t want me to go with you?”
“No, little girl. Don’t worry about me. I’ll work while I’m walking.
We haven’t time for burying our dead. The living need us.”
“Well, then, I’ll go to the gaol and do my part there.”
“Yes, you can tell the sad news to _him_.”
“Poor Maurice, how he will suffer!”
“Less than we do.”
“Oh, no, father. As much as we do, and more than we do. He will
reproach himself.”
“He may well do so. Hubert is gone because of him.”
“Exactly, father. We cry, you and I, without self-reproach. Shall I say
nothing to him for you?”
“No, nothing.”
“Father----”
“Tell him--tell him to remember that he is the last of the
Roquevillards.”
He went out, passing by the castle and on into the country. It was
a fine winter’s day, with the sun shining on the snow. Mechanically
he took the Lyons road that led to La Vigie, his customary walk. It
led through the village of Cognin, and, beyond the sawmills near the
Saint Charles bridge, settled into a long defile between the Vimines
and Saint Cassin hills, spurs of the mountains of Lepine and Corbelet,
coming out at last by the pass of the Echelles. From this place on,
lost in his meditations, Mr. Roquevillard followed the rural path on
the left which was the way to La Vigie. He crossed the old bridge
thrown over the Hyères, now a thin stream of water between too icy
borders, the leafless poplars and willow trees no longer hiding it.
After a brief circuit he found himself in a fold of the deserted valley,
shut in by the slopes of Montagnole, whose bell-tower he could see
outlined against the sky. But he took no note of the solitude. On the
contrary, he walked more lightly, and was conscious of some lightening
of his sorrow, too. Was he not at home here, at home on either side?
And did not the good earth bring him the comfort of its old safe
friendship, of his childhood memories whose grace it cherished, of
all the human past which had remade it after nature finished? In this
vineyard on the left, with its shrouded vines--he could distinguish
the stakes and the wires that ran between them--he had always gathered
the grapes at autumn. On the right, beyond the stream which served as
common boundary between him and his neighbour, this dismantled hill,
with a single tree standing over it, had borne the woods of beeches
red and white, and the oaks, which he had bought with his savings to
enlarge his holdings and had ordered cut not long ago. At the top of
the ascent he would reach the old house that he had restored, its
very age testifying to the hardiness of his race and its taste for
solid things. He would enter by the farm, pat the children’s heads,
drink a little glass of brandy of his own distilling, with the farmer,
who did not object to alcohol; above all, his gaze would sweep the
whole horizon, where the storm-tossed mountain forms and fertile
plains, with a lake in the distance, made a composition of motionless and
inspiring lines; then the nearer horizon of La Vigie with its divers
tillages.
He walked briskly, lost thus in his thoughts. On this familiar soil
his steps had again their old brisk ring, as in the days when he had
felt like a young man despite his years, happily surrounded by those he
loved and confident in their love and life.
Suddenly he stopped.
“But I am no longer at home here,” he thought abruptly. “La Vigie is
sold. The Roquevillards are no longer masters there. What am I doing? I
must get out of this.”
And he turned in his path, his head bent low, like a tramp caught in an
orchard.
He stopped at the stream which separated Cognin from Saint Cassin. He
cleared it at a bound, and found himself this time on a piece of land
which had been outside the straight line of cultivation on the estate,
and had not been included in the bill of sale. It remained henceforth
his only landed property. At the foot of the slope he stopped a moment
to get his breath, like a company that comes upon some shelter in
retreat. Then he began to clamber up the slope, not without difficulty,
for he slipped and had to thrust his cane in the ground to hold his
balance. The path, faintly marked at best, ended by losing itself
altogether, and he made his way as well as he could in the direction of
the solitary tree that stood out clear against the sky on the summit.
It was an old oak, which had been spared, not for its age nor the fine
effect of its height and branches, but on account of a beginning of dry
rot that impaired its saleability. Its clinging leaves, all tightened
and shrivelled up after the manner of oaks, the better to defend
themselves against the wind, were loath even now to fall, their rusty
tints appearing here and there beneath the rime. Along the hillside the
tree trunks cut by the woodsmen, but not carted away before winter came
on, lay like corpses in the snow, some still clothed in their bark,
others already stripped.
Finally Mr. Roquevillard reached the point he had been making for. He
touched with his hand, as if it had been a friend, the tree that had
drawn him this far, admiring its grandeur and pride.
“You are like me,” he reflected, mopping his brow. “You have seen your
companions struck down, and are left alone. But we are condemned. Time
is the axe that will soon fell us.”
He had been a little retarded in climbing up the hill, and though the
afternoon was not far advanced, the sun was already declining toward
the Lepine chain. December days are so short, and the nearness of the
mountains cut them shorter still. From the hill he could see the same
view almost as from La Vigie: the Signal facing him, and below it the
receding valley of the Echelles; on the right, in the background,
beyond the plain, the lake of Bourget, the Revard range, and the
Nivolet with its regular gradations. The snow made the outlines less
distinct, blurring the foreground till the landscape was all soft and
uniform. Threats of evening tinted it a delicate rose, spreading over
all things the hue of living flesh.
In spite of the clear air, Mr. Roquevillard felt the cold, and buttoned
up his overcoat. Now that he was no longer warm from walking he
was again conscious of his age and sorrow. Why had he climbed this
hill? Its slope seemed to him like a cemetery, with its felled trees
scattered over the white ground. Did he come here, opposite the old
place abandoned now after the care of so many centuries, to gaze upon
its ruin and mourn the death of its hopes? Across the valley he could
distinguish the lands and buildings that had been his heritage. The
house, which only a year ago had sheltered all the reassembled, joyful
family, was closed now: never again should he pass its doors.
Silence and solitude were all round him on this funereal, leafless
hillock where he stood. About him, within him, it was Death. And
as a vanquished chief calls the roll of his soldiers after battle,
he summoned up his sorrows one by one: his wife’s life had been
crushed out, borne down by her troubles; his daughter Felicie given
up to God, far away over the seas and lost to him; Hubert, his
firstborn, his best boy, struck down in full youth, far from France
and all that were dear to him; Germaine, leaving her native country;
Margaret, vowed to celibacy by her poverty; and finally Maurice, the
last of the Roquevillards, on whom the future of the race depended,
thrown into prison upon an infamous charge; threatened with conviction
even though the paternal lands had been sacrificed to save him. In vain
had sixty years been given to the nurture of this family. Decimated,
crushed by the fault of a single member, it lay prone now at the foot
of La Vigie, like the trunks of these trees half bedded in the snow.
To him whose robust force and faith had looked for victory, defeat and
shame had been dealt out.
In his discouragement he leant against the oak, his brother in
misfortune. He gave a long, despairing groan, the groan of a tree which
totters beneath the raining blows of the axe before it falls. The
unheeding earth and sky were immobile in their quiet colours; he felt
himself abandoned.
Two tears rolled down his cheeks--a man’s tears, the more rare and
moving because they are a confession of humility and weakness, falling
slowly in the cold air, half frozen on his unwarmed cheeks. He did
not dream that he wept. He only realised it upon perceiving a human
form slowly climbing the hillside toward him. He dried his eyes, lest
he should be surprised in his sorrow. It was the figure of a woman
gathering dead wood and faggots. Bending over the white earth, she
could not see him; only when she got near the oak she straightened up a
little and recognised him.
“Master Francis!” she murmured.
“Mother Fauchois!” he exclaimed.
She came nearer, and put down her burden; searched for the
right thing to say, and finding nothing, began to weep, not silently,
but with loud sobs.
“Why do you cry?” asked Mr. Roquevillard.
“For you, Master Francis.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
He had never confided his grief to any one; his pride and reserve kept
pity at a distance; but he accepted it from this poor old woman, and
gave her his hand. “You’ve heard of all my troubles?”
“Yes, Master Francis.”
“The last of them?”
“Yes--through a man from Saint Cassin, who came back from town this
morning.”
“Ah, I see.”
They were silent; then Mother Fauchois began her lamentations again in
a loud voice. It is not the way of the primitive to be silent in sorrow.
“Master Hubert, so gallant, so nice and young, so good to everybody! He
used to come into the kitchen and watch the dishes and laugh with us.
And madame--madame was one of the good God’s saints. They are the sort
you find in Paradise, Master Francis.”
Mr. Roquevillard stood motionless and silent, envying the dead who were
at rest. Mother Fauchois went prattling on again:
“And Master Maurice, they’ll give him back to you?
It’s to-morrow the trial comes off,” she added, quite
low, with her peasant’s dread of justice.
He saw her cross herself, praying for the Lord’s help for him, and
involuntarily he recalled her daughter who had been condemned for
theft. He inquired about her gently, for his tried soul was cleansed
now of all contempt or pride.
“And your daughter, have you good news from her?”
“She’s come back to me, Master Francis.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“Oh, she doesn’t deserve any credit for it. She had to. She came back
from Lyons quite sick. She doesn’t want to get well.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“She was very sick after her baby was born.”
“A baby? Is she married?”
“No, Master Francis. But she has a baby. A little darling, very lively;
plays all day long. I wouldn’t look at the little angel at first, on
account of the disgrace, you understand. But when I saw it it gave one
little laugh and made my heart leap. Now it’s all the pleasure I have
left.”
“Is it a girl?”
“A girl? You’d say it was a boy, sure enough, a big boy, very plump.”
“It’s quite an expense for you.”
“For sure. But when I come home and see this urchin with his
bottle it makes me feel as good as a glass of your wine.
It makes life feel warm and pleasant again.”
“You’re pretty old to work now,” said Mr. Roquevillard.
“Exactly. I’m no good for anything else any more.”
Even from her wretchedness she could draw comfort, and misfortune
brought her a supreme interest for her last days. His mind was
distracted from his own trouble by her story, and he marvelled at the
courage of the poor woman, who, without knowing it, set him an example
of bravery and forgiveness. She stooped down to lift her bundle again
to her shoulders.
“Good-bye, Master Francis.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Cognin, to take my wood to the baker’s.”
“Wait a moment.”
He took out a five-franc piece, wanting to help her in her misfortunes,
but she would not accept it.
“Take it, I want you to,” he said.
“Master Francis,” she answered, “La Vigie doesn’t belong to you any
more, if what they say is true.”
The lawyer’s brow clouded over.
“No, La Vigie isn’t mine any more. Take the money just the same. It
will bring me luck.”
She saw that she was humiliating him by her refusal, and held out
her hand. Then she went on down the hillside, bending her knees
at each step to keep from slipping. He watched her figure growing
smaller in the distance, until it was no more than a dark spot against
the background of the valley. Her going left him alone again, but
changed. This poor old woman here had returned to him a hundredfold the
succour and strength that he had given her a year ago at the vintage
time.
While they had been talking together evening had come on. All nature,
motionless and as if congealed beneath the snow, submitted to the
solemn and mysterious calm that precedes the flight of day. The
outlines of the mountains melted more and more into the borders of the
pale sky. Not a sound broke the silence, more impressive in its aloof
stillness than the roaring of a storm.
At the foot of the hill the little stream slipped slyly by under a thin
bed of ice, where it had broken and reformed again. The earth, all of
an even hue, seemed shrouded in its whiteness, like a jewel wrapped in
cotton-wool.
Mr. Roquevillard fixed his gaze upon La Vigie, that closed and
deserted relic of the race that had possessed it. The prospect held
and fascinated him. Mother Fauchois had reawakened the instincts of
battle in him, had turned away despair from him. The head of the family
thrust sorrow from him, to think of the child that was now his charge
in life. He must seek some means of saving Maurice. But his yearning
gaze fell back blankly before this cruelly cold, clear emptiness of
space that was all around him: it gave back no message to him, no word
such as the spring or summer or even the autumn of life’s seasons might
have uttered to him. How should he defend his son with no weapons but
memories of the past? What help could he expect from this deserted
soil, this race that had gone down into the tomb? “One doesn’t argue
through the dead,” Mr. Battard had said to him on learning of Maurice’s
determination.
The sun, touching the line of the mountain ridge, shed its last glory.
On the mountain slopes the piledup snow seemed to kindle beneath its
fire and grow crimson, as if awakened from its lethargy. Last of all,
the still horizon line stirred beneath the light. Silent and immaculate
it yielded to the touch of life and gave it forth. The trembling earth
separated itself distinctly from the sky, whose pale blue spread into
a thousand tints under its dominant gold. Nearer by, the rime that
covered the trees and shrubs reflected the rays of the setting sun like
crystals that gather up in their tiny space the myriad lights of a
chandelier.
Mr. Roquevillard, his eye fixed on La Vigie, beheld this phenomenon
of the resurrection. For a few minutes nature lived again beneath the
caresses of the evening. Once more the blood coursed through its marble
face. Along the vines, on the summit of the hill, where the almost
horizontal beams of the sun struck more directly, the dispossessed
proprietor could make out now, instead of a piece of land uniform in
its whiteness, the distinguishing marks of the different places he had put
under cultivation; and behold, here and there were trees, tall poplars
standing calm and proud like palms, lindens with tapering branches,
thin birches, massive chestnuts, delicate fruit trees puny of limb yet
so expert in bearing their branches; trees, but just now nameless and
lost in mist, which seemed to him to surge forth again like living
beings.
And he was no longer conscious of being alone there, for he knew
names for these phantoms. With swelling breast he summoned up all the
successive generations that had cleared these lands, the hands that
built this mansion and these farm buildings, this rustic work, that
had laid the foundation of this domain, from the first shirt-sleeves
of the oldest peasant to the lawyer’s robes and the togas of the
senate of Savoy. The high plateau which spread before him was invested
like a fortress by the hosts of ancestors that had planted with their
wheat and rye and oats and orchards and vines in this corner of the
earth traditions of uprightness and honour, examples of courage and
nobility. And as the products of these their lands had scattered their
good repute abroad, so this tradition lighted up the city down there
within the circle of the mountains where the shadows were beginning to
fall upon it, and the province which it had served and protected and
even in certain moments of its history made illustrious; shed lustre
even upon their native land, whose power was made of the continuity and
hardihood of such breeds of men as they were. “One doesn’t argue
through the dead,” he repeated a second time. “With the dead, no; but
with the living, yes. They are there, all of them. Not one but will
answer to his name. The earth has opened up to let them pass. I will
overleap this valley that lies between us. I am going to join them.”
And he measured the already darkened hollow of the vale, as if these
phantoms all were massed there before him.
The shadows were laying hold of nature. Already all the plain belonged
to them. They rose. Only the mountains were still defiant, especially
the storeyed Nivolet that faced the setting sun and received all its
flame, glowing with the purple and violet snow like heated metal.
Stooping toward the foot of the hill, Mr. Roquevillard followed this
struggle. And all at once his whole being started. With the darkness
the shades were mounting, all the shades. They had left La Vigie,
they were coming. Just now he had seen them gathered there in the
valley’s depths. They were bringing him their presences, their help and
testimony. There were some of them on all the hillsides. It was as if
an army were rallying round their chief as he stood there at the foot
of the old oak. And when all the army was assembled, he could hear it
heralding a victory for him.
“We who have loved and laboured, fought and suffered, strove not for
our own selfish ends, not for a personal result achieved or missed by
any one of us, but for an end more permanent than that, an end beyond
ourselves, encompassing all the family. What we have saved thus for the
common fund we have given into your care to be handed on. It is not
La Vigie. Land can be gained by the sweat of one’s brow, bought with
money. The soul of our race you bear within you. We are confident that
you will defend it. What are you saying, in your despair, of solitude
and death? Will you render us your account and tell us whence you came?
From Death? But the family is the very negation of death. While you
live we all live. And when you shall join us in your turn, you will
live again, you must live again, in those that have been born of you.
See: at this deciding moment, we are all here. Put off your sorrow as
we have lifted up the stones from above our graves. For you, do you
hear, is reserved the honour of defending and saving the last of the
Roquevillards. You will speak in our name. Afterwards, when your tasks
are done, you can rejoin us here in the peace of God.”
Mr. Roquevillard put out his hand and supported himself against
the oak. The darkness was storming Le Nivolet, its last terrace,
with a cross upon it, flaming once more before it should go
out. A great calm settled on his soul, and he accepted in good
faith this mission laid upon him by the past.
“Maurice, your defender shall be no one but myself.... And I’ll not
mention the name of Mrs. Frasne.”
He moved away from the spot where the tree stood, noting the situation
as he left the place.
“I’ll rebuild here,” he thought, “I, or my son.”
V
MARGARET’S BETROTHAL
HUBERT’S death had completely upset Maurice, breaking at last the
pride that separated him from his family. Margaret, on her way home
from bearing the sad news to him in prison, walked through the streets
seeing nothing, shut up in her grief. At her own door she asked the
servant:
“Has Mr. Roquevillard come in yet?”
She was hastening to her father’s comfort now as she had gone to
Maurice’s, with that power of bearing up in moral sorrow which is
less exceptional in a woman than in a man, and permitted her to be of
comfort instead of breaking down.
“Not yet, Miss Margaret,” was the answer.
She was surprised, and began to be a little anxious.
“Not yet?”
And yet she had stayed a long time at the gaol, and evening was
coming on. Mr. Roquevillard had gone out only for a short walk. He
expected Mr. Hamel and Mr. Battard at five o’clock, to make the
last arrangements with them for to-morrow’s trial. His prolonged
absence under such circumstances was strange.
“But there is a gentleman in the drawing-room who asked to see you,”
the servant now added.
“To see me?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Who is it?”
“He told me his name, but I don’t remember it. A doctor.”
She was a girl from the country, not yet quite used to her new ways,
and unfamiliar with the names and faces of the town’s people.
“You ought not to have let him in, Melanie,” said Margaret
reproachfully. “To-day of all days.”
“That’s right, miss, I thought so, too. But he would not go away. He
brought a message for you.”
Margaret went into the drawing-room against her will, keeping on her
hat and mourning veil as a hint to the importunate visitor to depart.
She found herself face to face with Raymond Bercy.
“Miss Roquevillard,” he murmured, as much overcome as she was.
She recoiled from him instinctively, and he espied the movement, and
with an entreating voice he tried to make her stay.
“Miss Margaret, forgive me for having come. I learned last night of
your sorrow. Then----”
“Mr. Bercy,” she said, coming forward.
This one formal phrase, firmly uttered, kept him at a
distance, seemed to deny him the right to plead. Like her father,
she deprecated pity. The man who had been betrothed to her bent his
head, disconcerted, and kept silent.
“Why did you insist upon seeing me, sir, to-day?” she said again more
gently.
He raised his eyes to her, with an imploring and humble look.
“Because to-morrow it would have been too late,” he sighed.
“Too late? To-morrow? You’ve something to tell me? Is it about Maurice?”
She forgot herself, in an instant, never dreaming that the matter
could concern her. Had not all ties between herself and Raymond
Bercy been broken off for more than a year? Were they not broken
that day when he had not hesitated, in his mother’s house, to break
his engagement to her and save the honour of his name? The young man
had made no attempt to recapture her affection or her promise to
him. Developments had broken on them like a tempest: the accusation
by Mr. Frasne, Mrs. Roquevillard’s death, Maurice’s sentence for
contempt, the shame and ruin of the family that resulted from it,
and, last cruelty of all, the loss of the firstborn son, their future
hope and stay. It was more than enough to justify one’s giving up,
keeping away from people, forgetting. Was it not the privilege
of unhappiness to hide itself? She had enjoyed her tears and her
affliction by herself. She had jealously extracted the very essence
of her grief, not sharing it with any one. By what right did this
man come here again to impose his useless presence and his futile
sympathy upon her? But no doubt something else had determined him
upon this measure. Perhaps he knew something that would be of value
in the defence of her accused brother. On such a pretext, and on this
only, she could excuse him for having forced the guards and introduced
himself into the house.
He made, no haste to explain himself. He was visibly under the dominion
of some great inner trouble.
“Tell me your business, please,” she said.
“It’s nothing to do with Maurice,” he replied blankly.
“What is it then?”
She made a step toward him, and threw back the veil, which had
embarrassed her movements and half concealed her. Coming to him thus,
straight and rigid, she seemed to him more distant still. Her face,
between the black of her dress and her bonnet, stood out so pale, with
bruised eyes and lips like a single red line, that he felt her far away
from him and sorrowful. He feared lest he should not move her, yet he
was greedy to bring her the comfort of his passionate tenderness. He
kept back his tears, and summoning all his courage, began to speak,
stammering at first, then going on in a voice which little by little
grew more firm:
“Miss Roquevillard, listen to me. You must listen. Then
you can understand and forgive me. I must speak to you,
and speak to-day. I respect your grief. I feel it with you. I have
suffered, too, myself, ever since the day.... And my suffering has
made me understand others better. I loved you. Oh, don’t stop me! Let
me finish. Yes, I loved you. I could not see any future for myself
except with you. But I encountered so much opposition at home, so many
obstacles, on account--on account of your brother. My mother, who is
so good at heart, gives in to every prejudice. My father was set on my
career. He is a man of science only. He lives in his office, or rather
with his sick people. He’s not the ruler of his house. And I--oh, no, I
don’t want to go on accusing other people to excuse my fault. I’ve been
a coward, an abominable coward. But I have been well punished for it. I
haven’t stood up for you--I haven’t known how to defend you.”
She had attempted at several points to interrupt him with a gesture.
Erect again and unconsciously disdainful, she looked him in the face.
In her action she showed the haughty air that came naturally to the
Roquevillards and had won them so many enemies. But it was mitigated by
the veiled melancholy in her eyes, and the mystic expression that came
to her from her mother.
“I have not asked you to defend me,” she replied, simply.
“That’s true, Margaret....”
He gave up formality in his emotion, speaking to her as he had
used to do in the time when they had been betrothed.
“I even wanted you to despise me,” he added.
“I don’t despise any one, sir.”
“You wounded me so, just in looking at me, that day when you gave me
back my promise. You have been so hard....”
“I, hard?”
She pronounced the two words almost in a whisper, deeming all reply
useless, inwardly revolted by such injustice.
“Yes,” he replied. “I never understood before that it was right to be
proud in misfortune. And I cursed you, but my heart was broken. And I
accused you, instead of avowing the wretchedness of my doubts and my
mean caring for what people thought. I have changed greatly, I swear
to you. And now I admire you, I revere you, adore you. Yes. Don’t say
anything. Let me finish. I have tried to forget you. My parents would
have had me marry some one else, to have me settle down, as they said.
I couldn’t. I love only you, and always shall.”
“I beg of you, sir.”
“What little good I can do, you are the cause of. Little by little
I shall raise myself to your level. Men like me, all men, hover
between good and evil, between devotion and selfishness. They don’t
reflect, they are carried away by all the mediocrity of life.
But sometimes one impulse is enough to lift them out of themselves.
Your love has given me that impulse, Margaret.”
He stopped, waiting for a word of hope. She lowered her eyes, and
the veil, which she no longer held back, fell down to her shoulder,
throwing a little shadow on one side of her face. He murmured like a
prayer:
“Margaret, take back what you’ve said. Consent to be my wife. I love
you. For all your sorrow I love you all the more.”
He saw a shudder run all through her.
“It’s impossible. Don’t ask me that,” she replied unhesitatingly.
Dismayed by this refusal, when a remnant of vanity in him still
persuaded him that the course he took was generous, he cried out in
distress:
“My life’s happiness, and I’m not to ask you for it?”
She moved nearer to him, and her voice took on a new sweetness as she
said to him:
“Another wife will give you this happiness. I’m sure of it. I want it
for you.”
“There’s no other woman but you in my eyes.”
“No, no, it’s impossible. Don’t torment me.”
“Impossible? Why, Margaret? Why discourage me? You don’t love me?
One day perhaps I shall know how to make you love me. You shake your
head? Good God, Margaret, will you send me away without a reason?”
She seemed to search for an answer, and hesitated; then found a way
round the difficulty. He watched anxiously for what she should say.
“I’m not the same girl I was last year,” she began.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve no dot any more.”
“Is that it? Margaret, I don’t deserve to have you treat me like this.
There’s something in you, in your eyes, like a radiant flame of life.
When I look at you I feel courage in me, a desire for good, and a
disdain for all the petty satisfactions that material things can give.
Beside this, this faith that you give me, which will be my strength,
what is money?”
“And if to-morrow----”
As she did not go on with the phrase he repeated:
“If to-morrow?”
“If a still greater misfortune awaits us to-morrow, if to-morrow my
brother Maurice is declared guilty?”
“I came to-day on account of that danger. I wanted to claim the honour
of supporting your father to-morrow at the trial like a son. I had to
see you to-day.”
“Ah!” she murmured, thunderstruck.
He could see from the tone of this simple exclamation that all the
indifference she had shown him was falling away at last. On her
pale face, whose every expression he had followed, he distinguished
suddenly sympathy and gratitude, perhaps something further still.
Happiness was there--uncertain, clouded, but still there. And its
presence stirred his heart.
Margaret fortified him in this hope by holding out her hand to him.
“I thank you, Raymond,” she said, not afraid to call him by his name as
she used to do. “I am touched, deeply touched.”
They were not quite the words he had expected from her. He watched her
in an anxious ecstasy, entreatingly. As she kept silent, he murmured
timidly:
“Why thank me, when I love you? It seems to me that loving you is worth
more than---- Margaret, will you really be my wife?” he added, like a
sigh.
There were compassion and sorrow in her beautiful pale face as she
answered:
“Raymond, I can’t.”
“You can’t? Then--then you are in love with some one else?”
“Ah, my friend!”
“Yes, you are in love with some one else. Some one who has not been
a coward like me, who has known how to divine your thoughts, to
understand you, to be worthy of you, while I--well, I have lost my
happiness by my own fault. It’s just, but it means unhappiness to one
who loves you.”
He stopped and gave a heavy sob.
“Raymond,” she said, trembling, “I beg of you. Don’t talk like this.”
“I don’t accuse you. I’m the guilty one. And your happiness is dearer
to me than my own.”
“Raymond, listen to me.”
He was beaten, and with sinking heart he let himself fall heavily
into an armchair, hiding his head in his hands, heedless of the show
of weakness he made with his tears. She took off her hat with a rapid
movement, as a sick-nurse puts off unnecessary garments the better
to do her work, and taking hold of his hands, she pulled them aside
masterfully.
“Look at me, Raymond.”
She gave her commands, not imperiously, after the fashion of her
father, but with persuasive sweetness. She was not constrained
any more, no longer assumed the defensive, but came to him in all
simplicity. Mechanically he submitted to her ascendancy, and obeyed
her. The moment he looked at her, indeed, he ceased to weep. The girl
appeared as if transfigured. A look of ecstasy lighted up her pallor.
Her eyes glowed with an expression more than human, the expression of
those who find peace beyond the agitations and passions that are the
moving testimony of our life. She bore in her living features the same
serenity that one sees on the faces of the dead that are asleep with
God. There was no further trace of sorrow on her bloodless cheeks, or
in her bruised eyes, only a deep calm, unalterable, almost frightening.
“Margaret, what is it?” he implored in anguish, like one who
cries out to a comrade upon the brink of an abyss.
“Raymond, listen to me,” she repeated. “Yes, I love some one else.”
“Ah, I knew it!”
“Another, of whom you cannot be jealous. I shall never marry. I shall
never be the wife of any one. I shall take another path. And yet I am
so imperfect that just now when you were speaking to me, I was guilty
of a feeling of pride. I am proud still. It is a fault of my people.
But we have been so tried, we truly have had to grow a little stiff.”
A frail smile outlined itself at the corner of her mouth, then
disappeared, as if to leave the purity of her motionless features
undisturbed. She went on, while he said nothing, subdued by the
mysterious potency that spread around her:
“No, I shall not forget that you have chosen the hour of my greatest
distress to come to me.”
He mourned over her like a child. “I love you.”
“I must not love any more, Raymond. I have heard another call than
yours. I’m going to tell you a secret that no one knows, not even my
father. I don’t hesitate to tell it to you. Keep it for me. When I lost
my mother I promised God to take her place in our home that has been so
ravaged by misfortune.”
“Haven’t you done that?”
“I’m not through yet.”
“Will marriage prevent your filling that rôle?
We shall not leave Chambéry.”
“You can’t give only half of yourself, Raymond. I have renounced my
personal happiness. And from the day I renounced it I have felt a great
force in me.”
He gave a violent start, in protest.
“But there’s no sense in it, Margaret. You have no right to deny
yourself like this. You will live after your father’s gone. Your
brother when he’s acquitted to-morrow will lead his own life, apart
from you. And you, what will become of you all alone? What’s the use of
sacrificing yourself for needless scruples?”
“My father has been smitten to the heart. My brother is always in
danger. Don’t take away any of my courage by telling me I shall not be
useful to them.”
Raymond gave in and ceased to struggle. He felt warned intuitively of
his defeat, from the look in Margaret’s eyes still more than from her
words, yet he tried to put off the moment of defeat. With a timid and
softened voice he begged her for a delay.
“And if I wait for you, will you marry me?” he said. “If I remain
faithful to you until the time when you have fulfilled your task for
your family, will you come to me? I love you so much that rather than
lose you I shall know how to be patient. It will be cruel and sweet
together. Won’t you, Margaret?”
The girl’s eyes clouded a moment at this romantic and
heroic proposal. He saw she was more human, and he believed
she was yielding to him. He conceived a new hope from it, which her
reply dissipated with its first words.
“No, Raymond, I shan’t consent to build my future on your sorrow. It’s
impossible. You have not understood me entirely. I have given myself to
God. Don’t try to take me back.”
“Ah, Margaret!”
“To give myself to God is to give myself to all those that suffer.”
“I understand now. You want to join some religious order.”
“I don’t know yet. There are very many ways of serving God. Don’t tell
any one yet what I’ve told you. You’re crying. Don’t cry, Raymond. God
will console you, as he has consoled me.”
“No, not me.”
And between two sobs he asked her:
“What are you going to do?”
“As long as my father lives I shall help him. As long as Maurice needs
me I shall stand by him. At my mother’s death-bed I promised that.
Afterwards I’ll devote my strength to the unfortunate, to the old, or
maybe to children that have lost their parents. Perhaps I’ll keep a
school here for little poor children. I don’t know. I can’t tell now.
I mustn’t try to hurry up the future. It will come of itself. You see,
now you know all my secrets.”
“And I,” he murmured, “what will become of me? You’re thinking
of comforting all wretchedness and you forget mine.”
“Raymond!”
“I am more unhappy than the poorest people there are. They at least
have had no glimpse of happiness, but I have, and am cast down after
having known joy.”
“No, Raymond, you must have no regrets for me. I was not meant for
marriage. God has warned me of it, though it’s been a little hard. For
you he has another wife in store, no doubt, who will make you happier
than I could.”
“You’re like no other woman, Margaret. You’re not the kind one forgets.
You’re not the kind one can replace.”
Darkness was coming into the drawing-room with the waning day, and in
the shadow, where the outlines of her black dress were dimmed, the
girl’s face shone forth like a last remnant of the light, a light which
scarcely animated her pale features. It was as if in touching her cheek
one should fear to feel, instead of living warmth, the chill of marble
in them.
‘Yes,“ she said, ”you will forget me. You must, and besides, I wish
it.”
He looked at her in dismay, like a traveller who beholds from afar the
summit that he cannot reach.
“You can’t control my memories,” he said.
“Then remember me without bitter thoughts, as if
I were a sister that you had lost.”
“No, Margaret, not without bitterness. You lifted up my thoughts,
elevated my heart. They will only fall back now.”
She was moved by this speech, and it was with a grave and almost solemn
tone that she responded:
“If you loved me, if you truly loved me, you would give me the supreme
joy of thinking that my vocation was not to be useless, for you no
less than for others. You can’t be cast down forever over my refusal:
it doesn’t really touch you. It can neither wound you nor take from
you. My memory ought to be sweet to you, and not spoil your life. For
I have loved you, Raymond, my friend. I looked forward contentedly
to our wedding-day, and content is the confidence of the soul, our
security for the future. An unexpected upheaval has separated us. I’ve
seen God’s summons in it. If it is not His will that I should bring you
happiness, if He has tested you in your turn, let me believe that this
very trial will make you strong, make you grow, and ennoble you. If I,
imperfect as I am, have served to elevate you, don’t tell me that you
are going to slip back. I shall pray so hard for you.”
She was absorbed in her entreaty, and did not notice that he had slowly
bent his knee before her, till suddenly she felt the young man’s lips
pressed to her hand.
“What are you doing, Raymond? Get up, I beg of you,” she cried.
She saw him there at her feet and was surprised by this new
resolution that he revealed to her. His face seemed no longer tortured
and sorrowful, only serious and sad. He had succumbed in spite of
himself to the stern and peaceful influence of her faith--that faith
which is more potent even over others than ourselves.
“I was not worthy of you,” he murmured. “But I loved you so. No man is
worthy of you. That is my consolation,” he added, as he rose, paying
her this last homage.
She turned her head as if to put away such praise.
“No, dear friend, you mustn’t talk any more to me like this.”
The completion of the sacrifice was attained. They felt its poignancy
with an almost physical sensation, and were hushed. An oppressive
stillness followed, charged with melancholy. In the midst of it the
maid came into the room, which had now grown quite dark. She had some
trouble to see where her mistress was, her shadow was so merged in the
darkness.
“Miss Margaret,” she said.
“What is it, Melanie?”
“Those gentlemen have come.”
“Oh! Did you show them into the office?”
“Yes, miss.”
“And Mr. Roquevillard has not come in yet?”
“No, miss.”
“Ask them to wait a few minutes. Mr. Roquevillard will be back soon.”
The delay was becoming disquieting, however, to Margaret. Raymond
Bercy was conscious of the fact that the girl’s thoughts were far from
him.
“Already!” he thought.
Just now, at least, when she had gently put away his love, he had had
a place in her thoughts and heart. Even the sorrow that she caused him
brought him nearer to her, was dear because it came from her. He looked
at her a last time, with despairing eyes, as if to measure the whole
extent of his loss, and leave its impress on his memory. And realising
that this was the end, he murmured:
“Good-bye, Margaret.”
She held out her hand to him.
“Good-bye, dear friend. Go in peace. In my prayers each day I’ll join
your name with my family’s. Do you want me to?”
“I am grateful, Margaret. I had conceived a great hope, and I have
shattered it myself.”
“God willed it, and not you. May God guard you,” she answered gravely.
He bent his head and went out. When she found herself alone she leaned
her forehead on her hands a moment, then straightened up again. Then
she went to her father’s office, and begged Mr. Hamel and Mr. Battard
to be patient a few minutes longer. Finally, as anxiety swayed her more
and more, and she was even getting ready to go out and search, she
heard the key grating in the outer lock. She hurried toward the door.
“Father, it’s you at last,” she cried.
Mr. Roquevillard, who had walked fast, wiped away the perspiration that
gathered on his forehead despite the cold.
“Margaret, have those gentlemen come?” he asked.
“Yes. They’re waiting for you.”
“Good. I’ll go and see them.”
In the lighted hall father and daughter found themselves face to
face and were surprised at the change each noted in the other.
From having left each other morally discouraged and fagged out,
they were surprised now, each of them, to find on the other’s face
a sort of victorious serenity over fear and sorrow, a spiritual
illumination that made them firm and confident. The father had heard
the call of the past rising to him from the depths of the eternal
generations. The daughter had heard the voice of God.
VI
THE DEFENDER
MR. ROQUEVILLARD burst into his office like a whirlwind, and
his two colleagues rose from their discussion immediately and came
forward to meet him. They could not conceal their surprise on finding,
instead of a man struck down by despair over the death of his oldest
son, the Roquevillard of other times, the man so redoubtable at the
bar, to whom one went with difficult and stirring cases, on whose clear
judgment and firm conclusions one could always depend. Here again was
the man whose dominating character one chafed under sometimes as one
quailed before his piercing glance.
“I have made you wait,” he said easily, dispensing with excuses.
In his presence, Mr. Hamel, with his crown of white hair, his
delicate features, and the slightly affected and distinguished
air that composed his venerable whole, and Mr. Battard, with his
spreading beard, his air of assuming everywhere the first rank,
seemed, nevertheless, both to recognise their leader; one with
good will, the other grudgingly. All assumptions of superiority
fell away before these other and more incontestable tokens.
“My good friend,” murmured the elder man, his hand stretched out.
“My dear colleague,” was the formula of the younger.
They conveyed their condolences to him, one cordially and with emotion,
the other in trite phrases.
“Yes,” replied their host, stopping them with a motion of his hand, “I
have only one son left. That one I am going to save. I must save him;
and here’s the plan I have decided on.”
This last consultation had been called by the three lawyers to check up
some definite plan of defence together, and lo, the opinion of a single
one was prevailing in advance, without other consultation.
“Ah!” exclaimed the president, subdued by so much confidence and
firmness.
“Decided?” repeated Mr. Battard with an air of doubt, divided between
respect for his friend’s mourning and a sense of his own importance.
Mr. Roquevillard disclosed his idea promptly, in few words; he was very
quiet, and his voice had grown young again.
“You two will assist me, both of you. But I shall make the argument
myself,” he said.
“You!”
“You!”
Astonishment and irritation were reflected in the two
exclamations. Mr. Hamel looked at his old companion in arms with
his colourless eyes, the flame of life now no more than a trembling
light in them, though it was still so pure; while the jury lawyer,
unpleasantly affected by his dismissal from a case that would have
given him a sensational chance for resounding argument, forgot the
circumstances of the trial, and the misfortunes of the temporarily
beaten family, and could think only of the opportunity for personal
success that was ruthlessly snatched from him.
“Yes, I,” said Mr. Roquevillard. “I shall reclaim my son so
energetically that they’ll give him back to me. They can’t refuse to
give a father back his son.”
Having thus dictated his orders for the combat, he exerted himself next
to bring round his allies to his way of thinking, for he could, if he
liked, modify his imperious manner, and was not without skill in the
art of leading men. He was certain of the assistance of the president,
and so he turned his attention specially to Mr. Battard, who might
escape him.
“You will be there, both of you, please. I count on you. If I ask to
take your place, Battard, it isn’t because I rank my skill above yours.
But there are certain things which it is my sad privilege alone to
explain to the jury.”
“What things?”
“That’s my secret. You’ll hear it all to-morrow. I believe I can
convince the jury of my son’s innocence without mentioning the name of
Mrs. Frasne.”
“By making reparation for the injury?”
“No, by direct argument.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ll see to-morrow. However, if you detect any weakening in my voice
or argument, if my speech makes you fear a failure, you must tell me.
I submit myself entirely to your great experience in jury trials. You
have wonderful presence of mind. These judges’ faces are an open book
to you. You know the brief as well as I, or better than I do. You were
ready with it. You can supplement my efforts. I shall feel myself
strong, thus supported. Will you be so kind?”
The dismissed lawyer stroked his beard carefully, and hid his vexation
beneath an air of indifference.
“My dear brother, what is the use?” he said. “My cooperation would
be useless to you. You don’t really need anybody but yourself.
You’re assuming without hesitation the highest and most difficult
responsibilities. Permit me to consider my mission terminated.”
The two lawyers, during this interchange, had remained standing. Mr.
Hamel, seated by the chimney corner, followed them with somewhat
troubled eyes, taking no part in their discussion. Mr. Roquevillard
moved a step nearer to his younger colleague, and put his hand
affectionately on his shoulder.
“I know that I’m asking a great favour of you, Battard. In claiming
the honour of defending my son myself, I want you to understand that
it’s my name I count upon defending. I don’t undervalue the help your
worth and competence and eloquence would have been to me. But in my
place you would do the same as I. Give me this token of your friendship
and disinterestedness, as well as your esteem. In that way you’ll show
me that you take what I’m saying in good faith, I beg you.”
Mr. Battard kept running his nervous fingers through his fine beard.
He was weighing the pros and cons, swayed in turn by fraternal and
professional traditions, and by a wounded vanity that ill accommodated
itself to second place. He had almost imposed his assistance and
services on the defence. He counted, if not on his client’s being
saved, at least on a personal triumph for himself: the court-room
would be filled to overflowing, chiefly with ladies, who would be
keen to hear him, no doubt. Instead of beholding him in his glory,
holding forth as a leader, this select public would find him seated
like a secretary at Roquevillard’s side, subservient to that dangerous
rival who had dealt him so many hard legal knocks in the past. Was it
becoming in him to accept so humiliating a position? On the other hand,
his presence would not be useless in the trial. The prisoner’s father
had probably been seized by some fine sudden zeal, had deluded himself
probably with some sudden turn of argument that fascinated him. He
dared not tell the secret of it, and perhaps he had conceived it under
the influence of a grief that was beginning to affect his moral and
intellectual vigour. This fictitious ardour that animated him might
fall flat at any moment, without any warning, and be followed by the most
lamentable depression. How could this man, crushed as he was by
ruinous ill luck, deprived so tragically of his eldest son only last
night, bear all the burden of defending his last child from disgrace
and conviction? How could he expect or hope to make the vigorous, the
violent effort demanded by such an argument, and after so short a
preparation? It wasn’t probable that he could. This new decision must
be explained as coming from some mystic excitement arising from his
sorrow. He, Battard, must hold himself in readiness to take up the
case at the last moment. Wisdom counselled it. The interests of the
defence, which, with a lawyer, must supersede all others, especially
all thoughts of self, showed what conduct he must follow, beyond any
question.
But the strange confidence which Roquevillard showed in his face halted
these generous fancies.
“No,” explained Mr. Battard, “I can’t oblige you in this way. I’m sorry
for it. Either I assume and keep the entire responsibility of the
argument, or I retire from the case altogether.”
“It’s my son’s case. It’s right that I should not give up his defence.”
Mr. Hamel rose from his armchair, and intervened opportunely.
“In my capacity as president of the benchers, my dear
brother, I hasten to request your assistance. I understand
your hesitations. In any other circumstances I should
understand your refusal. Mr. Roquevillard may have particular reasons
for desiring to make the argument for his son, even though generally
the case of defending one’s own is confided to others. But he is tried
and tired with the weight of his misfortunes, and he runs the risk of
presuming too much upon his force of will. You must be on hand, too.
This is the way things look to me, and I insist upon it.”
The moment duty instead of flattery was invoked, authority instead of
persuasion, the jury lawyer definitely threw aside his scruples. All
his self-assurance came back to him, and he thrust the old man aside
almost rudely.
“No, no; it’s impossible. I offered my complete assistance. It must be
that or nothing. The plans of the defence have been changed without
my being consulted. A line of argument that seems to be decisive is
being hidden from me. In these conditions the only thing I can do is to
retire from the case, and I retire.”
His hardened face showed only wounded pride. He turned toward Mr.
Roquevillard, and added with laborious condescension:
“Do you want the notes to my argument? They will save you some trouble.
They are at your service.”
“My dear colleague and friend, think it over further.
Don’t leave us in the midst of battle.”
“My resolution is taken,” repeated Mr. Battard.
“Absolutely?”
“Absolutely.”
Throughout this last attempt on Mr. Hamel’s part, Mr. Roquevillard had
maintained that same air of pride and tranquillity which just now had
so disconcerted his two visitors. The president, more concerned than he
over the consequences of this defection, still sought, in spite of his
natural antipathy for Mr. Battard, to retain his help.
“I beg you not to deprive us of your aid,” he said.
“I am very sorry, indeed, to disappoint you, believe me,” answered
Battard.
“Then,” said the father of the accused, deliberately and without any
show of emotion, “I’ll ask you for the papers in the case. I want
especially the written report of the police commissioner, the abstract
of the deposition, the terms of the arrest for defalcation.”
This disinvestiture completed the offence to Mr. Battard’s pride.
He did not know how to yield to entreaties, but by a very human
contradiction neither did he resign himself gracefully to having
people supersede him. He took leave of his two colleagues with
badly disguised irritation. Outside the office, on the steps
of the entrance door, his host got hold of his hand almost by
force, and shook it, thanking him warmly for having consented to
efface himself. But in this friendly demonstration Mr. Battard
only saw the last affront of all, and he ran about town injuring
the Roquevillards’ cause in the public mind by telling people of the
father’s mental aberration, and the probable conviction of the son
to-morrow.
Mr. Hamel could not dissemble his sadness at the departure; his doubts
and anxiety, which his age made more grievous, appeared plainly. Was it
not very imprudent to dismiss wilfully this pastmaster of the assizes?
Were they not only too likely to pay for this imprudence? Why make this
eleventh-hour change, and stir up trouble and disorganisation in their
camp? He formulated these criticisms in a firm and courteous vein, but
plainly they were superfluous. He put an end to them, and added on a
melancholy note:
“My friend, you came in just now with your face illuminated, as if with
some inner inspiration. I knew by looking at you that you would not
listen to any one. Where had you been?”
“To La Vigie,” replied Mr. Roquevillard, who had borne the old man’s
reproaches respectfully. “The dead spoke to me there. They did not
want a charlatan to weigh their reputation against the faults of one
descendant.”
“The dead?”
“Yes, my dead. The dead who founded my race, the dead who
have maintained it. They shall be the guerdon of our house
in to-morrow’s trial. From the first of my name, down to my
firstborn Hubert, they have sacrificed so much in the common
good; would you have their sacrifices not counted?”
Mr. Hamel reflected, then rose. “I believe in the law of reversion, and
I understand. But will the jurors?”
“Indeed they must,” replied his host, with such assurance that the old
man’s doubts were stilled by it.
“Something is working out in you,” he said, “and it acts on those
you talk with and convinces them. Yes, your defence of your son will
be better than that of any other advocate. You have the will and
the authority. It will be an honour for me to assist you to-morrow.
Good-bye. I will go now and let you work.”
He draped his shabby overcoat over his thin shoulders, and with a
suddenly furtive air made for the door, his host following him.
“Margaret!” called Mr. Roquevillard, after having let the president out.
The girl was waiting in the next room for the moment when her father
should be ready for her, and appeared at once.
“Here I am.”
“Come in. I want to talk with you.”
He led her into his study and questioned her rapidly.
“You went to see Maurice in prison?”
“Yes, father; we cried together.”
“Cried? Yes, my heart is broken, too. Yet I don’t cry. To-morrow night
I shall be free to weep my fill; till then I shall not shed a tear.”
Margaret was a little frightened by the uplifted look that
lightened and rejuvenated the dear face, on which she had seen so many
disasters leave their mark; but she profited by it promptly to complete
her work of reconciliation.
“Father, Maurice longs for his place again in your heart.”
“He has never lost it.”
“I knew it. Do you forgive him?”
“I forgave him a long time ago.”
“Ah!”
“The evening he came back, little girl. Did you doubt your father?”
“Oh, no, father. But why not say so to him?”
“He hasn’t asked me to.”
“He does ask you, though. He wants you to handle his defence on your
own lines, without restrictions. He knows you will be careful of his
honour.”
“Without restriction? It’s too late now.”
“Why too late?”
“Because I have dismissed Mr. Battard, his advocate.”
“Who will defend him?”
“I.”
“Ah,” said Margaret, throwing herself into his arms, “I had given up
hope of that. I have always wanted it.”
And her father, already preoccupied as he was with his
new and pressing task, folded her to his breast. “You
have always had faith in me, little girl. Go fetch me all the
family record books now, even the oldest ones.”
While she was gone there was delivered to him the brief sent back by
Mr. Battard, according to his promise. He opened it and turned over the
leaves, glancing at the clock as he did so.
“Almost six. Shall I have the time?”
And he reflected sadly on the long task ahead of him with the
commonplace books. There were so many that Margaret had to make several
journeys to get them all.
“Here they all are,” said the girl. “There are a great many of them,
and some quite old ones.”
Five hundred years of labour and good repute were shut up within their
leaves. Last of all she handed her father a memorandum book less
voluminous than the others.
“In this one,” she explained, blushing a little, “I have summed up
myself the principal features of our history, especially the services
that have been rendered to our country. It’s a kind of abridgment in
less intimate terms.”
“You guessed that we should need it some day?”
“No, father, I wrote it last winter, in revolt against the harsh
judgments that were made on us. I read bits of it to mamma, while she
was in bed, and she approved of it.”
“And all the time you were preparing a defence for Maurice.”
“With that, father?”
“Yes. Now, let me get to work.”
Then as she was going away he called her back.
“Margaret, I’ve something else to tell you.”
She came back to him quickly. He said nothing at first, but looked her
all over with that father’s look that gives love instead of taking
it, protects instead of being covetous; he was noticing not only her
pallor, but the calmness of her features and the new sweet serenity of
their expression.
“I passed Raymond Bercy as I came in, little girl. He was down there
by the carriage entrance, standing perfectly still, and I could see
that he was much moved and preoccupied. He bowed to me, and made a step
toward me, as if to speak to me, but it was too late. I had already
passed him.”
Margaret did not seem at all impressed by this news, and answered:
“He had been here, and was just going away, father.”
“I see. And what did he want?”
“He wanted to be with you to-morrow at the trial, and help you.”
“What an idea! In what way could he help?”
“As a son.”
“As a son? Then he had made a proposal to you?”
“Yes, father.”
“And you were not going to tell me about it? God has
taken pity on us. Our excess of misfortune has touched
Him. Raymond’s conduct is very fine. He hasn’t waited for
us to be publicly cleared of all disgrace before he came to us. And
what did you say to him?”
“I refused him.”
Mr. Roquevillard gave an astonished movement and drew the girl nearer
to him, looking deep into her great clear eyes.
“Refused him? Why? But I can guess: you were thinking of me. You
are sacrificing yourself for your father. Your father won’t accept
the sacrifice, sweetheart. I have told you often that parents must
subordinate their lives to their children’s: that’s the natural order,
not the contrary.”
“Father,” she murmured, “I love you so well. You know it. However, you
deceive yourself, I assure you.”
“It was not for me you refused him?”
“No, father.”
A pure flame radiated from her eyes over all her colourless face, and
he understood his daughter’s soul. Had he not once already had to
read these signs? God was taking his children from him one by one.
What a fever of renunciation and self-immolation stirred and burned
in them! Must there not be in these successive sacrifices enough to
furnish the redemption of the culprit, Maurice? He recalled one summer
morning, in the glaring light on the docks at Marseilles, when he
had watched the steamer sail away for China with Felicie on board.
And he pressed Margaret closer to his trembling heart.
“You, too,” he murmured simply.
She clasped her arms around his neck, and whispered to him, quite low,
with a kiss:
“Not yet, father.”
“After I am gone?”
“Yes.”
He held her a moment closer against him, as he had done when she was a
little girl in the old days and he had put protecting arms about her.
He loved the feeling that she was his yet, but hesitated to accept
the delay his daughter’s love imposed on her. Facing the glass in his
cabinet, he could see the image of the group they formed. With one
stroke it showed the changes that had been wrought in him within one
year’s time.
“To-morrow,” he reflected, “I shall have saved Maurice, and my task
will be finished. It won’t be long after that. I shan’t make old bones.”
Bending over the clear face, he pressed his lips there, as a sign of
his acceptance. Then, coming back again to what was uppermost in his
mind, he banished tenderness, and made his arrangements for the battle.
“Have dinner at eight,” he ordered. “I’ve almost two hours ahead
of me, time to refresh myself on the details of this brief,
which I know pretty well already. I’ll go to bed at nine, and
get up at three in the morning. From three to nine, before the
opening of court, I’ll get my argument in hand.”
“Very well, father. There’s a letter from Lyons from Germaine. Her
heart is with us.”
“You can read it to me at dinner,” he said.
“Charles will be here to-morrow on the one-o’clock train. He can’t come
sooner.”
“I expected him.”
“I’ll leave you now, father.”
As the door shut upon her, he seized eagerly a photograph of Hubert
that stood on the table, and gazed long at the features of his
firstborn.
“Forgive me, Hubert,” he said deep down in his heart, “I’m thinking
only of your brother now. You must not think that I’ve forgotten you.
You see, I am not free. To-morrow I’ll call to you and speak to you and
weep for you. To-morrow I shall be yours. This evening I belong to all
our race.”
Gently he set the picture down again. And putting aside his sorrow
for the immediate necessities of the present, he began his work.
VII
JEANNE SASSENAY
AT the trial, in obedience to her father’s instructions, Margaret
Roquevillard gave evidence, under the head of information, as to the
money from her trousseau funds which she had lent to Maurice the
evening of his departure for Italy, as well as what she had sent to
him at Orta. Her testimony over, she had gone home in all haste, as if
the fuss made about her generosity filled her with shame. In a feeble
way she was to have been of use in the defence of Maurice, and she
reproached herself with having shown so much weakness, with having
replied so timidly to the interrogations of the presiding judge. Her
courage was of the inner kind, and ill adjusted itself to public show.
She deplored her modesty now, for to herself it seemed like cowardice,
and she was afraid of having impaired the force of her statements by
the hesitating way in which she made them.
What had taken place in the court-room before she was led
in and after her flight? She could not have told anything
about it; she was only conscious of an invincible fear
from her first brief contact with justice. She had been
shut up in a room with the other witnesses, and had heard the
bailiff’s voice calling them one by one, and had seen them go out, her
great-uncle Stephen and her Aunt Thérèse just before her. Her turn
came last, and she had been conducted to the bar trembling like a new
recruit pushed out before the footlights. She had seen a great crowd
facing her as she came in, upstairs and down on the floor and in the
balcony, a multitude of eyes staring at her, wounding and overwhelming
her. All Chambéry was there, spying pitilessly on a young girl’s fear,
as they had spied eagerly of late on her family’s death agony. She
found herself at last before three magistrates in their red robes,
with the rows of jurors on their right. She had thought she should
faint when she gave her name, but her father’s voice had caught her
ears, that firm, warm voice which she knew so well. It had fortified
her instantly, like a cordial. The old advocate was standing erect in
front of Maurice, whom he seemed to be protecting, and his presence was
so calm that she was at once surprised and quieted by the contagion of
it. He put in quite simple terms the questions to be put to her. She
had made barely audible replies, and then had fled like a poor bird
fluttering off into the brushwood.
“Father will be displeased with me,” she thought in self-reproach.
“What a command he has over himself! How he controls himself, and
how they all fear him! He stood up twice, and each time I felt a
deeper silence in the room. His eyes flashed fire. He seemed young
again. He is our whole strength and will.”
At half-past twelve Mr. Roquevillard came home for lunch.
“Serve us quickly, Melanie,” he called out from the doorway. “I’ve not
much time.”
The look of battle was in his eyes, a frown on his brow, his gaze
direct and piercing. The muscles of his face were taut, and his recent
sorrow and anxiety had made him look much older; but his commanding
will checked for the time being the ravages of age and fatigue and
trouble.
“Well, father?” inquired Margaret piteously.
He reassured her in a few words.
“The hearing reopens in two hours.”
“It’s not over yet?”
“No, no.”
“What’s happened?”
“Didn’t you see anything of it, little girl?”
“Oh, no, father. I came away. Tell me every thing. See, I’m still
trembling.”
“You mustn’t tremble, Margaret. Be brave.”
At table, while he ate his lunch rapidly, but with no appetite, he went
over the arguments for her.
“You didn’t understand very much, no doubt,” he said, “about the
selection of the jury, the administering of the oath to them, the
challenging, and the calling of the witnesses.”
“I was near you in the hall, father. When I heard my name I rose,
and they led me into a room, where I found Uncle Stephen and Aunt
Thérèse.”
“The room where the witnesses wait,” said her father. “Then the
depositions began, after the reading of the bill of accusations and
the written report made by the police commissioner, stating the theft
of one hundred thousand francs. Then came the examination of Maurice.
He declared his innocence, but all the time refused to accuse any one
else, in spite of the president’s insistence. Of the witnesses for
the prosecution, the chief clerk at the Frasne office was the most
obstinate against us. He’s the one named Philippeaux, who must hate us,
I don’t know why. He testified with a perfect mania for denouncing and
compromising Maurice. He tried to make incontrovertible proofs out of
presumptions which he inverted and perverted wickedly.”
“What presumptions, father?”
“Knowledge of the deposit of money in the safe, the possible,
though not proven, discovery of the combination in a note-book,
Maurice’s staying late in the office with the keys the evening
of the theft, his lack of personal resources, his departure for
foreign territory, the impossibility of imagining any other
criminal, et cetera. The other clerks repeated his testimony like
well-learned lessons, though with less details and certainty.
Finally Mrs. Frasne’s former maid, whom they must have cajoled in
some way, pretended that, in her master’s absence, her mistress
never went into the offices. What does that prove? Would Mrs. Frasne
have called in her maids to help her embezzle? But I mustn’t accuse her
myself, either.”
“And yet Maurice is no longer opposed to your doing so, father.”
“I won’t do it, though. We have paid her ransom. Let her keep it and
never come back again. I had called as witnesses for the defence,
besides yourself, your great-uncle Stephen and my sister-in-law Thérèse
to establish the fact that Maurice had not gone away without funds;
also the employee of the Society of Credit, the one who made out for
you, some time last October, the draft for eight thousand francs on the
International Bank of Milan to Maurice’s order; finally Mr. Doudain,
the notary.”
“Why was he called?”
“To corroborate the payment of one hundred thousand francs that I
turned over to him for Mr. Frasne. He told also the name of the real
purchaser of La Vigie. The president, after having conferred with Mr.
Latache, president of the chamber of notaries, released him from his
professional secret, and he had to tell the truth to the jurors about
Mr. Frasne’s fruitful speculations.”
“Was it Mr. Frasne, then, who bought La Vigie?” asked the girl; “for
himself, to go and live there instead of us?”
“Didn’t you know it?”
“I couldn’t believe it. There are so many things that I
don’t understand. Even last year at the vintage he appeared to be
going round making an inspection. He ferreted round everywhere.”
“Yes, little girl, he’s the one who takes the Roquevillards’ place
there now, and carries on our traditions. The whole place is his,
gratis.”
His voice sounded bitter for a moment, then he continued again with his
story.
“His lawyer began speaking at eleven.”
“Who was his lawyer, father?”
“A Mr. Porterieux, from Lyons. There was no one of the bar in Chambéry
who would take the case.”
“On your account, father?”
“No doubt.”
“And what did he dare to say about Maurice?”
“He’s a clever man, though, with a very insinuating manner and a
kind of cold and calculated violence. He began by tracing a very
unflattering portrait of Maurice--a modern young man whom nothing
could check, very much imbued with the idea of individual rights;
keen to develop his personality and achieve happiness in his own way,
whether it trampled down other people’s or not; a young man who would
not be bound by the rules of organised society; in short, one of
those intellectual anarchists who pass so easily from words and ideas
to deeds. ‘Ask his comrades,’ he went on, ‘his friends. They cannot
deny that in his daily talk he disparages and tears to pieces the
established order of things, and that his special admiration is the
pernicious theories of a German philosopher for whom a superior type
of humanity, the superman, builds his fortune on the ruin and sorrow of
the common lot, the humble and the feeble. And it was not a secret from
any one in Chambéry that he was not on good terms with his father, and
chafed under his authority.’”
“He said that?” murmured Margaret, in a shocked voice.
“Yes; I’m giving you the tone of his address. Even from myself he
drew an adverse argument. From our family he got another; the accused
could not, he said, invoke the excuse of a bad education, a lack of
instruction, a bad example, or the extenuating circumstances of an
unhappy childhood, which might have spoiled his character forever.
I pass over his premeditated and self-interested seduction of Mrs.
Frasne.”
“Self-interested?”
“Yes, in his moral nihilism Maurice coveted at the same time both
the wife and the money, unscrupulously. Having thus made the abuse
of Mr. Frasne’s confidence seem probable, or believing he had, Mr.
Porterieux took up the accusation, and what he did not hesitate to call
its material proofs. Mrs. Frasne consented to run away, he said. Her
husband was absent, the day propitious, the opportunity unique. Her
lover, unprovided with any personal fortune, sought, and had to seek,
for some way to defray the expenses of their voyage. He knew that a
deposit had been made from the proceeds of the sale of Belvade; he
discovered in a memorandum book the secret of the safe; he had the keys
given to him, and arranged to be left alone in the office. He took the
money and fled to foreign parts with his mistress. Not only was he
guilty, but the only one guilty.”
“And Mrs. Frasne?”
“Mrs. Frasne? Let him accuse her, let him just dare to accuse her. He
had nothing to say at the examination, he says nothing at the trial.
‘I defy him to incriminate her,’ concluded the advocate, perhaps
imprudently informed by Mr. Battard of Maurice’s generous obstinacy:
and this silence, too, which is virtually an admission, condemns him.”
From the dining-room they had passed into the study. Margaret, in this
bitter and yet impartial review of the plaintiff’s argument which her
father made, heard the rumble of her father’s fury and despair, and was
upset by it completely.
“Father,” she murmured, “aren’t we lost? Have you still hope?”
“As if I hadn’t!”
“When will it be over?”
“At two o’clock, in forty minutes more, Mr. Porterieux will resume his
argument.”
“Hasn’t he done enough harm to us?”
“It appears not. He has one more argument to enlarge on.”
“What is it?”
“The new admission that comes, according to him, from my making
restitution of the one hundred thousand francs. By three o’clock I
suppose my turn comes. At four or four-thirty I shall be done.”
And he added, in an easy tone, to reassure her:
“Charles’s train gets in at one. Your brother-in-law ought to be here
now.”
A little later, in fact, Charles rang the bell.
“What news, my dear father?” he asked as he came in. “Germaine cried
this morning when she said good-bye to me, and the three children
imitated her. Your telegram last night caused us so much sorrow. Poor
Hubert!”
“I was waiting for you, Charles. Your place is by my side. Margaret
will talk to you about things while she gets your lunch. Let me be by
myself a few minutes. Be ready at five minutes to two.”
“I’ll be ready. And oh, I must warn you that I’ve made my arrangements
for restoring half of Germaine’s dot to you. Later you shall have it
all.”
The young lawyer made this announcement with rather an ill grace, being
a man little accustomed to benevolence, and trying to disguise it. He,
too, had been overborne by sympathy for the common cause; but as his
mind followed his heart protestingly, he did not like to advertise his
defeat.
“I won’t accept it, my dear Charles,” replied Mr. Roquevillard. He was
more moved by this cooperation than the opposition that he had been
prepared to combat, and he added:
“Embrace me, Charles.”
Thus family ties were stronger than ever in misfortune.
The advocate shut himself up for a quarter of an hour to gather up the
threads of his arguments. The review he had made for Margaret, under
the influence of high nervous excitement, had served as an outlet for
the anger and shame that had been accumulating in him all morning as
he listened to the infamous accusations made against his son. Now his
nerves relaxed, and the pounding of his heart grew calm, like the
sea when the wind falls. When the moment came for going back to the
court-house Margaret saw that his face was less stormy, and that his
glance had again the serenity which his visit last evening to La Vigie
had given him.
“Until to-night, father,” she said. “May God help you.”
On the doorstep he replied briskly: “Until to-night, little girl--with
Maurice.”
The girl had just shut herself in her room to pray when Jeanne Sassenay
called at the house.
“Miss Margaret, if you please,” she demanded of the servant who opened
the door.
The maid, more rigid and circumspect since Raymony Bercy’s invasion,
dismissed this inopportune question in a peremptory tone.
“Miss Margaret is tired. She is seeing no one.”
“So much the worse. I’ll come in, nevertheless.”
And passing by the frightened servant before she had time to bar the
way, Jeanne went through the hall on a run, as far as her friend’s
room, which she knew of old. She knocked smartly, entered and threw
herself into Margaret’s arms.
“It’s I, Margaret,” she said. “Don’t send me away. It’s not Melanie’s
fault.”
“You, Jeanne? Why are you here?”
“Because you are alone and tired. Such a lot of people have gone to the
hearing, just as if it were a party. And so I--well, I thought my place
was here with you. I love you so much.”
Margaret patted her friend’s cheek.
“You are good, Jeanne.”
“Oh, no. It’s just that I’ve so much friendship for you. When I was
quite little even, I admired you. And I should like so much to be like
you.”
Then in a mysterious tone she changed the subject abruptly.
“Just imagine,” she said, “those ladies all dressed themselves up so
for the court-house. As carefully as if they were going to a matinée.”
“Who?”
“Oh, all of them.”
“Yes,” said Miss Roquevillard bitterly. “It’s a question of our
honour--quite a spectacle.”
Jeanne Sassenay took her hand.
“I’m not anxious, myself,” she said; and in a learned
tone she cut the whole debate short: “On the whole, what
do they reproach your brother with that’s so serious? That he ran away
with some one? That’s nothing.”
In spite of her sadness Margaret could not keep back a smile, and
Jeanne took this for encouragement to go on.
“You know quite well a woman doesn’t let herself be removed as if she
were a spot on your clothes. If any one tried to carry me off I’d
scratch and bite and hurt him frightfully.... Unless I was going away
with him anyway.”
“Keep still, Jeanne.”
“Oh, you never can tell. When you’re in love you’ll do anything. To be
in love--it’s something terrible.”
“Jeanne, what do you know about being in love?”
“Why shouldn’t I know? I’m not a little girl any more.”
Thereupon Miss Sassenay gave a poke to her hat, which was losing its
balance on her blonde hair, verified the curls that fell over her
forehead, and assumed an air of great detachment, to hide her blushing,
as she asked:
“He doesn’t love that bad woman any more, does he?”
“Maurice? I don’t believe so.”
“Are you sure?”
“He never speaks of her.”
“She’s never seen him again?”
“No.”
“So much the better. I detest her. In the first place, she wasn’t
so good-looking as all that. Fine eyes, yes, but she used them a little
too much. And her smiles, and her sly looks, and her grimaces! She
was always balancing her head, and craning her neck, and heaving her
shoulders and wriggling her hips.”
She got out of her chair quickly and walked across the room in
imitation of Mrs. Frasne, caricaturing the gestures and the constant
play of movement by which the woman’s inner restlessness was betrayed.
“Jeanne, please stop,” cried Margaret.
“No, no,” continued the girl, fairly launched now. “I tell you
brunettes can’t be compared with blondes, for colouring or for grace
either. You, Margaret, with your chestnut hair, have the beauty of them
all, but you don’t do anything to help yourself.... And then, I detest
her anyway....”
“Detest whom, Jeanne?”
“Mrs. Frasne, of course. She’s a fatal woman, and brings bad luck. Your
brother has been well punished. She has made him unhappy. She didn’t
love him. She’s the one they should have put in jail. As for your
brother, they’ll acquit him. You know papa and mamma are for him. Papa
looked glum about it at first, but I scolded him. I should have liked
to go and see the acquittal. You must congratulate him for me. It must
be fine to be acquitted.”
She was babbling on without stopping. Margaret gently interrupted her.
“Will you pray with me, Jeanne?” she asked.
“If you wish.”
The two girls knelt side by side. But scarcely had they begun their
orisons before some one knocked at the door.
“It’s the postman,” said the maid, handing some letters to Margaret.
“Will you permit me?” the latter asked of her companion. “It was
Hubert’s day.... Oh, a letter from him.... I half expected one.”
With trembling hands she unsealed the envelope, which was postmarked
from the Soudan. From the other side of the gates of Death the young
officer was taking his part in the family drama. There are few
sensations so poignant as that of receiving tidings from those who are
no more. Margaret, whose shy patience had hitherto been like calm, let
a long moan escape her as she read. Jeanne, discreet and much moved
herself, did not dare console her. By her own force of will the girl
controlled herself. This was not the time to be weak or give way. Had
not her father shown her the proper way to act?
“Hubert!” she murmured.
She seemed to hesitate a moment what to do.
“I must--I think I must go to the court-house, at once,” she said.
“Why?” asked Jeanne.
“Oh, because Hubert, too, has thought of us.”
“Hubert?”
“Yes. He knew he was going to die. In the first part
of his letter he tries to deceive us, to cheer us up.
And then--and then he writes--there, wait a moment. God help
me! I can’t see any more. He writes: ‘If, however, I must stay here
always, I offer my life in sacrifice for the honour of our name, for
Maurice’s salvation....’ You see, he gives me my orders. I must go.”
Jeanne burst into tears. Already Margaret, in an uplifted mood, was
putting on her hat and veil. “I am sure father needs this letter. I
can’t hesitate about it.”
Some mysterious connivance seemed at work in the family, between
the living and the dead, something that mysteriously made them work
together and united them across space and time.
“I’ll go with you,” said her friend, as resolute as she.
“Yes, come,” said Margaret. “I shall be braver if you come with me.”
And the two girls hurried out, passing along by the castle, its glowing
walls warm in the winter sunshine; they took a short route through
little streets, and beyond the market reached the court-house in a few
minutes.
“The court-room, sir?” asked Margaret humbly of the doorkeeper.
“There, madame, on the ground floor. But the hall is full. You can’t
get in.”
“But we must go in,” Jeanne Sassenay interrupted, with great
assurance. “We have a letter, a very important one, to give to the
lawyer for the defence, A very important document.”
“Impossible, ladies. The argument is going on. It’s too late. Who are
you?”
The sister of the accused raised her veil.
“Miss Roquevillard.”
“Oh, very good. Follow me.”
Impressed by this name, he led them as far as the door reserved for the
use of witnesses.
“You can just open the door, miss. The lawyer’s bench will be before
you, a little to the left. Afterwards you can go out that way, or maybe
you can find a seat.”
And being a prudent and timid functionary, he added, as he left the two
girls:
“But be sure and don’t say it was me who let you in.”
Margaret, who went first, put her hand on the latch. She could hear the
voice of some one speaking on the other side. It was not her father’s
voice. Behind this door, the destiny of her brother, Maurice, the fate
of all the Roquevillards, was running its course at this hour. On
behalf of Hubert she was bringing up the last reserves.
VIII
THE VOICE OF THE DEAD
THE girls entered. It was a little more than half-past two o’clock: Mr.
Porterieux, venomous and insolent, was finishing his argument. In the
galleries and on the floor the public was crowded; people of fashion
and from the lower ranks confused together, eager to seize upon the
warm quarry of which this lawyer, like an expert and cruel hunter, was
laying bare for them the palpitating heart. People noticed the presence
of the young girls, who hesitated to come further forward, once inside
the door.
“They are on the lookout for husbands,” explained the lawyer Coulanges,
who, assisted by Mr. Paillet in the first row of the balcony, did the
honours of the trial to several ladies of society. It was an occasion
on which he believed that a certain show of wit was expected of him.
“Dear me!” cried one of the ladies, choking with indignation. “Just
look at that brazen girl.”
While Margaret was approaching her father and handing him Hubert’s
letter, her companion, Jeanne, with a quiet boldness, had the
satisfaction of defying the whole town by turning ostentatiously toward
Maurice Roquevillard, in his seat of shame, and waving her hand to him
with the most gracious smile.
She was immediately rewarded for her courage by the look of gratitude
that lighted up the young man’s face, a face that had grown thin and
drawn and as if contracted by the impassiveness which he had forced
himself to wear under his injuries and calumnies. The little incident
was over in a moment, but already excited the commentaries of the
entire room. Margaret, with her head bent, had no suspicion of it. She,
too, had saluted her brother, but more discreetly, and now murmured in
her friend’s ear:
“Let’s go.”
“Oh, no, I’m going to stay,” replied the latter, only too eager to be
present and hear the speeches.
Mr. Roquevillard, with a brief gesture, indicated some empty places
on the witness bench for them. The sun came in through the windows,
leaving the jurors, who were seated facing the light, in shadow, but
it lit up especially the court, the advocate-general, the lawyers and
the prisoner, as if it were a light thrown on the stage during some
performance in a theatre. Mr. Porterieux appeared in a full blaze as he
was summing up and condensing in a final charge the various items of
his argument. He repeated and reaffirmed the list of his accumulated
presumptions, and still another time paraded as indisputable avowals
the silence of the accused as to Mrs. Frasne and the payment of the
one hundred thousand francs. Finally he called loudly, as if it were
some right due him, for a severe and withering sentence on this young man
who practised such a utilitarian love, who, like a new Cherubino in
a practical epoch, did not hesitate to make off at one and the same
time with the husband’s funds and the wife’s honour. His peroration,
delivered with a complete semblance of anger and indignation, provoked
a numerous and mysterious murmur in the room as he sat down, coming
from the lips of all the crowd, without anything to show where it had
begun, like the sound of waves. His argument had been a perfect volley
of poisoned arrows, following each other directly and incessantly.
One would even have said that across the son he aimed at the father,
too, whom he represented as driven by shame to make his restitution;
that through the son and father he sought to attaint the whole race
and sink it in the mire with the unhappy Maurice. He had shown himself
more incensed against his victims than was necessary, a too implacable
enemy, ready to trample their dead bodies under foot. Of a verity
the notary had chosen his spokesman well. He could not have desired
more gall and venom in a single mouth. Mr. Roquevillard, now and then
during this speech, when the worst thrusts were delivered, turned
quietly toward his son or son-in-law, reassuring them by his calm and
even countenance, and showing that his soul was not distressed by this
tempest that waged about him.
“I call upon the advocate-general to speak,” articulated
the presiding judge, in a mournful voice, as much as to say,
What use is there in a second charge?
Mr. Vallerois, attracted by curiosity, had come into court and seated
himself behind the advocate-general, Mr. Barré, who was in the section
reserved for the public minister. He bent forward to address some
words to his colleague on the floor. But the latter seemed to scorn
his advice as importunate, and confined his remarks to saying that he
relied upon the good sense of the jurors to find for the plaintiff, the
case being already adjudged against the defendant by default.
“I call upon the defence,” began the president more briskly, evidently
pleased to have escaped a long harangue.
“Are you ready?” asked Mr. Hamel of Mr. Roquevillard, who was seated by
his side.
“Yes, of course. Why?”
“Then you speak first. If necessary, I’ll supplement you.”
Mr. Roquevillard saw that the old gentleman was still reeling beneath
an attack whose methods, according to his old-time traditions, were
inadmissible, and proposed to reserve his efforts in case his colleague
should be overcome by emotion in his speech or his argument be inferior
or incomplete.
During these special conferences, bits of conversation broke out again
here and there among the audience, rising and spreading like dust in
the wake of a procession.
“The Roquevillards,” remarked the lawyer Coulanges, who ranged
himself on Mr. Frasne’s side, “will never raise their heads again after
such a drubbing.”
“Oh, well, now,” objected Mr. Paillet, who was always in a good humour,
“wait till you hear the father’s reply, and then look out for Mr.
Porterieux.”
A man of the people, a frequenter of court trials, overheard him.
“Yes, the old man is tough,” he commented more racily.
And Mr. Paillet laughed and insisted:
“You’ll see whether he knows how to bite yet, and if his teeth are
sharp.”
“He looks very tired,” murmured a lady compassionately.
“Say, rather, he looks quite broken up,” replied Mr. Coulanges,
tidying some small matter about his clothes. “Two old men aren’t worth
one young one,” he added, with a manner that was as much as to say,
“especially with women.” Then he pointed down to the two lawyers, who
were exchanging their observations not far from where Mr. Battard sat,
with his fingers in his beard, watching to see the defence’s final
downfall.
Mr. Roquevillard took off his lawyer’s cap and stood up. He
glanced in turn, quite deliberately, at his daughter and his son,
and gathered hope and confidence from the sight of them. Silence
fell on the room immediately, a silence deep and throbbing with
expectation, that made people hold their breath and their hearts
stand still. This man with the almost white hair, this old man
with his record of more than sixty years of probity and talent and
upright living, who stood forth as the sole representative of so many
generations of honourable and patriotic men, uttered, by the mere act
of rising to his feet, an eloquent protest against the calumnies and
defamation with which the long argument for the plaintiff had tried to
overwhelm his race. Had they not insinuated even that La Vigie had been
sold to pay back money that had not all been squandered by the thief?
It was a protest made before a word was spoken, and one that all the
Battards in the world could not have impressed more forcefully upon the
audience.
The court-room clock marked the hour of three. The old lawyer had
risen slowly to his feet, and now drew himself to his full height; his
head, erect, showed clearly in the broad band of light marked out by
the rays of the pale sun, too pale now to inconvenience those on whom
it fell. His high, bare forehead, his finely accentuated features,
dulled by age, but nevertheless still full of pride, his stiffly curled
moustache, made up a fighter’s face, a leader’s, that one could not
behold without an impression of forcefulness and keen and eager living.
But the flame that dwelt habitually in his deep eyes, once so sharply
imperious, now shone with complete serenity rather than with any lust
of conquest.
“Broken down, do you say? Just look at him,” protested
the lady under Mr. Coulanges’s escort.
“And yet I don’t recognise him any more,” observed Mr. Paillet.
Margaret and Mr. Hamel, on the contrary, all attention, and quite
vibrating with anxiety, recognised in him the same superhuman
exaltation that he had brought back from that strange walk to La Vigie
the night before. He began his remarks in a voice that was rather low,
a fact which inspired Mr. Battard, not without some satisfaction, it
must be confessed, to remark that: “His fine organ isn’t what it was.”
Then, abruptly, as a curtain is drawn apart, his voice opened up
clearly, sounded the rallying call, the summons to the dead, who last
evening on the icy shadowed slopes of the hills had made up his phantom
army. There was a living silence in the room, heavy and storm-laden,
and he plowed through it like a vessel through the sea.
To pass judgment on the prisoner, he said, it was incumbent on the
jurors to know him, and to know him they must go back to what he came
from. For it was the uncertain destiny of man, born in such and such a
corner of the earth, of such and such a race, to follow a predestined
course, and by his own force of will to work his way through to
efficiency and his destined end.
“You who come from lines of honest forefathers, and yourselves have
founded families, must listen to this history of a family that I
shall tell you, before you decide upon your verdict....”
To the peasants from the plains and mountains, of whom the jury was
composed, who, by nature and reflection, could not but be sensible
to this actual human chronicle, the truthfulness and example of it
striking true to their honest minds, he then told the long story of
successive Roquevillards: the first ancestor of them all, who had laid
the first stone of the old house, planting the roots of his tree of
life in his native soil, the struggle of successive generations adding
their efforts, one to another, clearing the ground by the sweat of
their brows, showing their doggedness with the stubborn soil, or in
the face of intemperate or hurtful seasons, the chance destruction of
crops by hail or frost, their sobriety and content with a few things,
their thrift, which, at the expense of their personal enjoyment, made
provision for the future--a thrift at once disinterested and in itself
an act of faith in the coming generations. Thus the beautiful estate
of La Vigie, whose vines and woods and fields and orchards produced
so abundantly, laughing in the sunlight, in the time of harvest,
represented the economy and endurance of a whole race, straight as a
line of tall and growing poplars. For land that is cultivated by man
assumes a human face, and when we behold our properties we are gazing
on the countenances of our ancestors. And yet to what end had all this
collective labour of the Roquevillards been reduced? To-day their
domain belonged to the plaintiff, their adversary, who had gotten it
for nothing. Had the Roquevillards laboured for five hundred years to
make this present to him? No, but with their patrimony which they
had patiently and painfully built up they were ransoming this last
Roquevillard of them all. Who, then, had been despoiled, and which was
the thief? For one hundred thousand francs paid down Mr. Frasne was
receiving, accepting, a property worth almost twice that sum. Who was
getting rich, then? Who was being ruined? In the name of the dead who
paid this ransom, the accused must be acquitted.
But was not a family just a great material force, visibly expressed in
the continuity of its patrimony, by its mutual obligations permitting
the payment of the debts of some by the fruits of others’ toil? Was
it not indeed something else, too, less palpable but more sacred--a
solid chain of traditions, a common heritage of honour, probity and
courage? What use was it to transmit life if you were not to supply it
with a worthy setting, support and comfort from the past, opportunity
for a well-stored future? For to transmit life was to admit life’s
immortality.
And he recited the public services of the Roquevillards, all the
outward ways of existence, useful and sometimes illustrious even, that
their forefathers had followed. This one, the county magistrate, had
died at his post during an epidemic in the town, which he had been
the foremost in resisting. Another, later, in a period of troubles
and disorders, had administered the finances of Chambéry and restored
order in its involved affairs. Whole-hearted magistrates of the Savoyan
Senate, soldiers killed by the enemy in the great wars, they had worn,
beneath toga or uniform alike, the same bold, brave hearts that had
beat beneath the peasant blouses of the first forefathers of them all.
The last of them all, Hubert, dying for his country, alone in a strange
land, far from all who were dear to him, under a fierce and hostile
sun, had given voice to the final vow of his race when he had written:
“I offer my life as a sacrifice for the honour of our name and my
brother’s safety.”
Could the gentlemen of the jury reject this offering? As well forget
all the victims for centuries past that had signalised the constantly
renewing virtues of this family, like the fires which cleansed their
fields at evening of the withered herbage. He threw the weight of
accumulated merits in the balance and made the scales tip.
The entire army of the dead, who had come down from La Vigie the
evening before, to leap across the valley in the dark and join their
chief as he stood erect at the foot of the old tree on the Saint Cassin
plain, filed by in a long parade.
To the merits of the dead he added the virtues of the living. This
was not a time to be modest and defer to reticence. He would give
all honour to Felicie in the hospital at Hanoi, and again to his
sisters, who had made themselves poor in order to suppress even the
suspicion of fraud on their brother’s part. For the payment delivered
into Mr. Frasne’s hands had not, and could not be, in the eyes of the
culprit’s family or of the jurors, either a restitution or an
admission, but a definite rejection of all complicity in the theft,
even an unknowing or involuntary one.
He barely excused himself for enumerating and insisting upon the
rendering of so many services, and reproaching the plaintiff with
ingratitude for neglecting them. On the other side they had not
scrupled to forget them, or worse still, to make them appear as faults
on the part of the accused. What the plaintiff really wanted to do was
to build on the pretended guilt of the defendant and overwhelm with one
blow the defences of his past; he was unjust enough to deny the accused
the right to its protection. Yet the merits of a race constitute a true
defence of it until and unless the sum of its demerits weighs it down,
unless it wilfully provokes its own downfall. Was there any one who
pretended to believe that the sum of the Roquevillards’ demerits had
yet borne them down? No, the dead could go moral bail for this last of
the Roquevillards, as they had just supplied his material bail in the
sacrifice of La Vigie. Even if he had his faults, his judges could not
justly declare him guilty in this instance.
How indeed could he be guilty now? By what phenomenon could
the descendant of so many honest men be suddenly stirred to
crime? What definite proof could they furnish of his crime? What
weight, in the face of the moral presumptions of his family
and surroundings, which flowed round him like the water of a
torrent, could they give these miserable presumptions that chance had
hatched out and circumstances twisted incriminatingly? The keys of the
office--they had passed from hand to hand. The number of the safe’s
combination--how could the defendant have hunted it out, guessed its
use? And when had the clerk Philippeaux written it in his memorandum
book? Did the jurors dwell on his lack of personal resources? He had
himself paid all the expenses of the journey, large and small, without
exception, either with money that he had taken away with him, as to
which the examination of witnesses had given a full account, or with
what he had received at Orta. The hotel bills which the defence had
recovered and exhibited proved this. What, then, had been done with
the stolen one hundred thousand francs, if all his expenses had been
defrayed by advances from his family? If he had put it away somewhere,
as was insinuated, why had he come back and surrendered himself to the
law the moment word came to him of the judgment that had been entered
against him by default?
Nothing was left of the accusation against him, nothing but the
animus of revenge, a spirit of revenge that could not even resist
the temptation to make a profit out of its own humiliation. It was a
singular affair, indeed, in which the victim carried off the spoils
from the pretended thief.
Mr. Roquevillard brought his argument to an end in a few words:
“Gentlemen of the jury, I have finished. In the name of all our
families’ dead, whose long line makes up our everliving honour, in
the name of our land slowly acquired and laboriously cultivated by
succeeding generations, but given up to-day and fully sacrificed to
consolidate our honour, I ask you to restore to me my son. Give him
back to me, not for pity’s sake, but in justice; not as a favour, but
with all your hearts. All his race and I myself will answer to you for
his innocence....”
He sat down. He had spoken only an hour. When his voice, which had been
calm and sonorous, always under control, rising and swelling like the
grave notes of a hymn, ceased speaking, there was a prolonged silence
in the room for some moments, the solemn and religious silence that
one hears in church. People had heard, not the explosion of wrath and
bitterness that they had expected as their due from this redoubtable
old lawyer in answer to the hateful violence of Mr. Porterieux: not the
scandal of a lover’s recriminations against his mistress that they had
counted on; but a proud defence that disdained invective, confident in
its authoritative, moral force, admirable and moving along its straight
and simple lines, like the proportions of those serene and motionless
statues that purify desire and stir the spirit. And the name of Mrs.
Frasne had not once been uttered.
All of a sudden a cry rang out:
“Hurrah for the Roquevillards!”
It came from Mother Fauchois, and she threw her whole heart into
it. The crowd in the court-room had been overborne, dominated and
conquered; it broke into long applause. While the presiding judge
rapped on his desk to check this demonstration, which nevertheless had
put the irritated Mr. Battard to flight, Mr. Vallerois leaned forward
once more to Mr. Barré. The latter now asked leave to speak, as Mr.
Hamel had declined, excusing himself from availing himself of his
right to speak in rebuttal after having neglected to use his right to
sum up.
“I have heard, like you,” Mr. Barré said in substance, addressing the
jurors, “the plea made by Mr. Roquevillard. No, the guilty party is not
this young man here. And since the accused has had the generosity not
to designate any one, I’ll not myself indicate things any further. I
will denounce, however, the too clever machinations of this plaintiff,
who disarms our sympathy by having used his private sorrows to build up
a fortune. Make haste and bring in a verdict of acquittal for Maurice
Roquevillard; restore him to his father, who is an honour to our bar.
If the young man has been reprehensible in his private life, he need
not nevertheless be retained any longer on this charge of abuse of
confidence.”
The day was waning, leaving the whole room filled with the
evening light. The jury retired to its deliberations, and brought
in immediately a unanimous verdict of acquittal.
“Bravo!” cried Jeanne Sassenay approvingly, in a loud voice.
“Father,” murmured Margaret softly, “mamma would be so happy.”
And the spectators, turning and going out, exchanged their comments on
the way. Mr. Latache, winding up his remarks before a little group,
shook his head sententiously.
“It’s a good rap over the knuckles for Mr. Frasne,” he said. “After
being publicly reprimanded by the public minister, he ought to shut up
his offices and leave the country.”
“He’ll sell La Vigie again,” declared Mr. Paillet.
The lady whom Mr. Coulanges was seeing home expressed her delight at
the way things had turned out, to take her cavalier down a peg or two,
a pastime in which she seemed to find great pleasure.
“And the little Sassenay girl will buy it back. She has a big dot.
Did you notice the look she gave the young prisoner, the triumphant
Maurice? She’s going to marry him.”
“Yes, that will be the way of it,” said Mr. Coulanges, gloomily summing
things up; “the Roquevillards have always been lucky.”
IX
THE WILL TO LIVE
THE good will of the presiding judge hastened the formalities of
liberation, and while the crowd, having left the court-room, massed
itself in the space outside the court-house, to watch for Maurice and
his defender to come out, and to cheer them, the more enthusiastically
because their remorse was tardily shown, Mr. Roquevillard was waiting
for his son in the inner court. He was alone, for he had asked Charles
Marcellaz to see Mr. Hamel home. The struggle over, he felt tired and
worn, and was lost in his meditations. A timid voice called to him:
“Father.”
“Is it you, Maurice?”
Instead of throwing themselves into each other’s arms, quite
simply, they stood motionless, as if frozen. The lack of some
first gesture is enough sometimes to create separations, to make
obstacles. On his son’s face the father read admiration, gratitude,
filial piety; on the father’s face the son read love and goodness,
but also the new stigmata of weariness and age. They said
nothing; sorrowfully, with a shyness they could not overcome.
In the street outside they heard the noise of cheers.
“Come,” said Mr. Roquevillard brusquely.
He led Maurice to the other side of the courtyard, where a gate opened
on a public garden, luckily now deserted. He crossed it with rapid
steps, hurried quickly over the iron footbridge beneath which rolled
the muddy waters of the Leysse, and the two men reached the cemetery
presently without having exchanged a word.
The cemetery at Chambéry lies to the eastward of the town, at the
beginning of the vast plain which stretches as far as Lake Bourget;
over it the rocky hill of Lemenc stands guard, and beyond that the
regularly storeyed peaks of Le Nivolet. The shadows of night were
already settling down over the sacred field, and little by little
reaching the hills, but the setting sun still covered the mountain,
stirring its whiteness as with a flow of blood--one of those fine
winter evenings that are cold and calm, naked as marble images, and of
a divine purity.
Maurice could distinguish, opposite him, the thin columns of the
Calvary where his heart’s love had overwhelmed him. A last ray of light
threw their outlines into relief, then they seemed to recede against
the walls of the little monument and lose themselves in it.
“How far away it all is!” he thought.
Some cypress trees, with branches like lance-heads, sprinkled with
hoar-frost, stood grave as sentinels set to guard the enclosure.
Passing these, they went on and on, past the graves of the poor,
scarcely distinguished by the mounds beneath the snow, until they came
finally to the broad avenue of perpetual concessions.
“Father, I know where we are going,” murmured Maurice at last, thinking
of his mother.
“We’re going to our family tomb,” explained Mr. Roquevillard; “to thank
our dead for having saved you.”
“Father, it was you that saved me,” said Maurice.
“I was speaking in their name.”
As they drew near the end of their pilgrimage, they made out, across
the empty graveyard, a black figure kneeling before the gravestone
which stood just before a wall covered with inscriptions.
“Father, look; there’s some one there,” said Maurice.
“It’s Margaret! She has got here ahead of us.”
The girl heard the dull noise of their footsteps on the trodden snow,
and turned her head. She blushed on recognising them, and rose, as if
she would go and not be in the way at their first interview.
“I came here to be near mamma,” she said.
“Don’t go,” her father bade her gently.
Along the slopes of Le Nivolet the evening was mounting upward. Only
the snow on the higher levels still fought with the shadows, the light
slipping and flowing over it in a cascade of gold and purple. With
one last flash, as if of apotheosis, the victorious shadow scaled the
highest grade and occupied the summit.
The wall opposite them bore a single family name, their own, but
beneath it there were given names and dates in great number. A branch
of perennial ivy climbed over it with its green leaves, and fell half
forward, like a crown of spring.
“Listen,” said Mr. Roquevillard. His face bore the same stamp of
serenity as at the trial. “It’s night,” he said, “and we are in the
field of the dead. And yet from every corner of the earth you hear only
the strongest words of life. Look, before the shadows hide it; all
round you spreads the country that your heart loves best. And here,
too, lies your family, at rest.”
In his turn Maurice knelt, and remembering his mother, who had gone
without farewell to him, and his brother, who had made the sacrifice of
his life for him, he hid his face in his hands. But his father touched
him on the shoulder, and spoke to him in a firm voice.
“My boy,” he said, “I am an old man now. You will soon succeed me. You
must listen to me now, this day, when I feel it is my duty to speak
to you. Here are the symbols of all that is enduring. To care for the
dead is in a sense the fulfilling of our immortal destiny. What is a
man’s life, what is my life, if past and future don’t give it its true
meaning? You had forgotten this when you went in search of your individual
destiny. There is no set destiny for the individual, no greatness in
life, except in servitude. We serve our family, we serve our country,
God, art, science, an ideal. Shame on the man who only serves himself!
You, Maurice, you have found your strongest support in us, but your
dependence too. Man’s honour lies in accepting his due place in life.”
Maurice, rising from his knees, saw the Calvary of Lemenc before him in
the twilight, and the thought came to him sadly, “What of love?”
His father guessed what he was thinking of.
“Such a little thing, dear boy,” he said, “may divide the honest and
the dishonest impulses in a man. Love breaks this barrier down. The
family keeps it strong. And yet, even at this hour, Maurice, I won’t
speak ill of love, if only you know how to understand it. Love is
our heart’s sigh for all that lies beyond our grasp. Cherish this
longing in your heart. It is yours to cherish. You will find it again
in doing good deeds, in nature, in fulfilling your destiny without
fear or frailty. Don’t misunderstand it. Don’t mistake it any more.
Before you give your love to a woman, remember your mother, think
of your sister; think of the happiness that may be in store for you
some day of having a daughter of your own to bring up. I was glad
when you were born, and at your brother’s birth and your sisters’ I
rejoiced. With all my strength I have protected you. At my death, I
tell you, you will feel as if a wall had crumbled down before you, and
left you face to face with life. Then you will understand me better.”
“Father,” murmured Maurice, breaking down. “I shall not be unworthy of
you.”
“My boy!” replied Mr. Roquevillard quite simply. And Margaret, seeing
them at last in each other’s arms, remembered the vow she had made her
mother.
In the deepening sky, toward La Vigie, an early star began to shed its
light. Mr. Roquevillard, holding to his heart this son whom he had won
back, this last and only son, marked it as a sign of hope. And in the
darkened graveyard, where he had come to return the dead their visit to
him of the night before, even though he felt that he was menaced, too,
by death, the head of the family made his confession of faith in life.
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